Notable Nosh: Chinese Beef Burger – Sybaritica

I have been playing around with a little ‘snackie’ sort of dish I tentatively call ‘Shanghai Sliders’, which is essentially a tiny little steamed ‘burger’ made with Pork. I was therefore interested to come across the sandwich you see pictured above at small Chinese restaurant in Halifax, where it was actually called a ‘Chinese Beef Burger’ on the menu, and was described as ‘Beef Shank in Nang with Sweet Bean Sauce’.

I pretty much guessed that the ‘Nang’ was the same thing as ‘Naan’ and this turned out to be the case. Indeed, it turns out that ‘nang’ is a variant on the name common in the Xinjiang region of western China. The meat was clearly from the shank, or shin, which, when red-cooked (as I believe this sandwich meat to be), is often served cold on Chinese appetizer platters,

Anyway, the whole thing was pretty good and the meat nice and tasty. The sweet bean caught me by surprise a little bit because, at the first bite, I actually could have sworn that they had used mayonnaise  on the bread (which wasn’t the case at all). I usually like lettuce on sandwiches and burgers but I didn’t care for it here and I took it out after second bite. There was nothing wrong with it all, I just found it interfered with my appreciation of the meat. I also enjoyed the naan and I think I shall use it for sandwiches more often in the future.