Mashi Street Sha Soup (Lianglaifeng)

The Mashi Street sha-soup shop began as a small eatery on the north side of Mashi Street in the Guangxu years of the late Qing, selling sha soup that traces its name to the pheasant broth said to have been created by the legendary Peng Zu, and has endured for over a century as the emblem of Xuzhou's breakfast culture, paired with sister house Lianglaifeng as the city's two great morning brands.

The sha soup was named a Jiangsu Famous Snack in 1983 and a Chinese Famous Snack by the Ministry of Internal Trade and the China Cuisine Association in 1997; its parent company Jinyue runs the two time-honoured brands Lianglaifeng and Mashi Street across more than twenty chain outlets in Xuzhou.

Sha soup takes chicken broth as its base, simmered with wheat kernels and flour over a gentle fire until thick and silky, scattered with white pepper and finished with a swirl of egg, eaten with eight-strand youtiao or a flatbread wrapped around fried dough for a warming, stomach-settling start to a Xuzhou morning.