Zhuming Hao knows how use a 12-inch crepe maker, homemade green bean dough and more than 10 different ingredients to create the most ubiquitous street treat in China, and he’s brought it to Boston’s Chinatown.
In a 50-square-foot space in the mini food court on the second floor of the Avana Loft Building at 42 Beach St., Hao and his friend Yongshan Rui opened a Chinese pancakes stand on April 15 and, by the end of the day, had run out of pancakes. Within three days, they sold out more than 800 pancakes without any marketing campaigns.
Both men are from the northern part of China near Beijing: Hao is from Tianjin and Rui is from Shandong. They came to the United States five years ago to attend college.
“I saw some of my friends posted pictures of the Chinese pancakes on Weibo (the Chinese Twitter), so I just dropped my homework and rushed here,” said Sun Fei, a freshman student at Northeastern University.
Chinese pancakes, known as “Jianbingguozi” in Mandarin, are the most common street food in the northern part of China. Its basic elements have never changed: green bean dough with eggs, fried dough, sausages, scallions and sweet and sour sauce.
Even though the Chinese pancake is supposedly easy to make, it still takes either Hao or Rui five minutes to finish one pancake because they are new to the business, and right now that’s not fast enough to serve the demand.
But some Chinese customers are willing to wait up to an hour to get a taste of their homeland.
The demand sometimes runs so high, as it did the day they opened, that they run out of the materials to make the pancakes and have to call it a day. To provide fresh and healthy pancakes to their customers, Hao and Rui wake up at 6 a.m. each day to prepare the ingredients themselves.
“I really like their Chinese pancakes,” said Kison Gao, a student at UMass-Boston and a frequent customer. “Also I trust their pancakes because I know it is all home-made and healthy.”
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Zhuming Hao knows how use a 12-inch crepe maker, homemade green bean dough and more than 10 different ingredients to create the most ubiquitous street treat in China, and he’s brought it to Boston’s Chinatown.
