Xi’an is a large city in Shaanxi Province in northwestern China. You might know it for its famous attraction: the terracotta soldiers. Xi’an also marks the beginning of the Silk Road, so the city’s cuisine employs the abundance of traded spices from trade, with bigger flavours like cumin, chilli and Sichuan peppercorns coming to the forefront. Northern Chinese people also tend toward noodles and bread over rice, so that’s what you should prioritise at Burwood’s Xi'an Eatery.
The cumin and spicy beef burger ($9.50) is a good place to start at this small but well-decorated spot on bustling Burwood Road. The robust beef shreds are barely contained in the thin toasted bun with cumin leading the deep rumble of spice. Like the Xi’an lamb skewers ($13.80/5) there’s enough Sichuan pepper and chilli to make it mouth tingling any fragrant without giving you too much to cope with. Handmade noodles ($16.80), served with more of that stir-fried spicy cumin beef, crisp green capsicum and sweet curls of onion, are chewy and beautifully cooked. The other standouts are their panfried pork dumplings ($15.80/10) that arrive linked up by their crispy golden skins. Encasing lean pork and herbs in wonderfully delicate skins, they are easy to tease apart with chopsticks, and excellent in a blend of the included chilli sauce and vinegar you’ll find on your table. They beg to be punctuated with slurps of TsingTao beer ($8.80), or BYO wine if you want to make this cheap and enjoyable eat feel fancy.
