Hubu Alley is a food street in Wuhan - tour guides will bring tourists here though locals will normally not eat here 😂 Still, it's a pleasant walk and a good place to get acquainted with some local specialities, especially when one does not have sufficient time to explore authentic local street food.
There are about 200 little shops on both sides of Hubu Alley, most of them along a 100 metre stretch so it makes for an interesting, leisurely walk. There are a few shops serving local Wuhan specialities while the majority sells generic food found in such similar manufactured "food streets" at appropriated historic locations in China. Let's take a walk together 😄
There are a few stalls making 豆皮.
☝ Must Try. 豆皮 is a Wuhan speciality. It is glutinous rice with savoury salty minced pork wrapped in tofu skin, then fried in a shallow wok. It tastes salty-savoury-sweet, leaning on the salty side. The texture is layers of softness from the firm tender sticky rice to the soft minced pork and tofu skin. It is quite greasy.
☝ Must Try. 鴨脖子 is another Wuhan speciality.
鴨脖子 is duck neck, skinned, marinated in a salty-savoury slightly spicy sauce, grilled and sprinkled with sesame seeds.
It's a popular local snack food. Perfect to go with beer 🍻 There's lots of time to pick out the meat from the neck bones while drinking with friends 😄
The most mentioned place to get this fermented spicy grilled duck is at Zhou Hei Ya 周黑鸭 or "Black Duck", a large franchise chain stall - ZHY kiosks are in every corner of Wuhan. Besides the traditional duck neck, Zhou Hei Ya stalls also have whole duck, web, tongue, head, intestines, wings, drumsticks, gizzards etc.
With such strong recommendation from locals, we had to buy some to try in the hotel room lo 😄
☝ Must Try. The iconic Wuhan staple 武漢熱乾麵 (literally "hot dry noodles") is represented by 蔡林记 another large franchise chain stall. 熱乾麵 is loved in the same way as Singaporeans love bak chor mee (minced pork noodles) and the way JB folks love kway teow tng (rice noodle soup).
熱乾麵 is boiled wheat noodles tossed in a sesame, peanut sauce and oil blend with minced pork. We can add chili sauce to taste. I love it 😋
I enjoyed 熱乾麵 but only had it at Shangri-La Hotel where we were put up. I didn't have a chance to try a street side one and was at the receiving end of cruel jabs from locals 😂 Next time, I must try a street side 熱乾麵 😄
The rest of the stalls are mainly "traditional" food found in similar manufactured "food streets" found in most major cities in China.
臭豆腐 or "stinky tofu" .
臭豆腐 is fried fermented tofu and it is actually quite delicious and smells good once you acquired a taste for it 😄 The signature "stinky tofu" aroma filled the air around it, otherwise Hubu Alley have very little other smells - I wish the alley have more and different kinds of interesting aromas 😄 .
There are many stalls selling braised pork trotter, knuckle and tail.
Fried crayfish, snails, beef tendon, cuttlefish and tofu.
Fried shrimps, crab, slipper prawns and crayfish.
The 絕味烤麵筋 stall has the longest queue of the entire Hubu Alley.
絕味烤麵筋 is a franchise serving grilled wheat gluten balls.
Fanciful steamed bao. Those at the bottom are mushroom lookalike baos.
After the long day was done, we gathered in a hotel room for a ZHY "Black Duck" and beer session 😂
The duck parts were eaten chilled. The flavour was robust savoury-salty-spicy of the numbing kind. The robust marination overwhelmed any natural duck flavour, if there was any.
The texture was fibrous - the flesh was quite chewy and stiff. I like the wings best as they had some fat and the flesh was relatively tender. The neck was all fibrous meat with the skin removed. The thigh was meatiest but it was chewy and quite hard. This "Black Duck" is designed for drinking sessions 😄
Hubu Alley 武汉户部巷 is an interesting food street to visit though it's a sort of made-for-tourist McFood World of Chinese street food. (For authentic local street food experience, Wuhan locals go to places such as Xuesong Road 雪松路.)
A similar manufactured "food street" in Zhujiajao near Shanghai 👈 click
Restaurant name: Hubu Alley 武汉户部巷
Address: Hubu Alley between Min Chu Lu and Ziyou Lu, Wuhan, Hubei.
GPS: 30°32'48.0"N 114°17'52.0"E 30.546669, 114.297784 (Min Chu Lu entrance)
Hours: 11:00am to 7:00pm
Date visited: 8 Jun 2017
AirAsia X flies direct from Kuala Lumpur to Wuhan via Flight D7 878 every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Departs KLIA2 at 6:00pm and arriving at Wuhan Tienhe International Airport at 11:10pm.
Flight D7 879 flies from Wuhan direct to KL every Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday departing Wuhan at 00:25am and arriving in KLIA2 at 05:25am.
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