What's the food like in Xingyi? What should I actually order?

What's the food like in Xingyi? What should I actually order?

Xingyi's food is southwest-Guizhou home cooking — sour-and-spicy (suānlà), not Sichuan-numbing, built on rice noodles, rice cakes, and goat. The one dish you must try is mutton rice noodles (羊肉粉). Rice noodles sit in a rich, long-simmered goat-bone broth, topped with thin slices of goat meat — it's called "mutton" in English, but the meat is goat — plus chilli oil, spring onion, and coriander. It's a breakfast dish above all; locals queue from early morning. A bowl is cheap, roughly ¥12–18, and some stalls are halal (清真), worth knowing if that matters to you. The local curiosities are worth one order each. Chicken tangyuan (鸡肉汤圆) flips the script — elsewhere in China these are sweet dessert balls, but Xingyi serves them savoury, in clear chicken broth with ground sesame and peanut. Shuabatou (刷把头) are little steamed open-topped dumplings, a teahouse classic ordered by the basket. For street snacking, grilled erkuai (烤饵块): pressed rice cakes grilled over charcoal until blistered and chewy, brushed with chilli sauce — cheap, filling, easy to order by pointing. One warning: zhé'ěrgēn (折耳根, fish mint), a raw herb with a fishy-medicinal taste scattered through salads and noodle bowls. Locals adore it; many first-time visitors quietly push it aside. To skip it: "bú yào zhé'ěrgēn." Almost no English menus — follow the morning queue, point at what locals are eating, use camera translation. The full dish-by-dish guide with ordering tips, in English, is on visitxingyi.com.