What to eat this month

Deep winter is paomo weather — the autumn-winter bowl in Tongshengxiang's own telling — with hulutou, lamb-offal soup and youcha at dawn, and huanggui rice wine ordered warm; the persimmon-cake griddles on Beiyuanmen are still frying fresh pulp.

Spring Festival falls in late January or February — Yongxingfang's bowl-smashing rice wine was ¥5 a bowl at the 2025 one — and this is the last month of persimmon cakes from fresh fruit; when Ramadan lands here (roughly mid-February to mid-March in 2027, by the lunar calendar) many quarter kitchens move to after sunset.

No seasonal dish of its own in our entries: the persimmon cakes have gone over to frozen pulp, and the old houses are turning from the autumn-winter paomo to the spring-summer shuipen bowl; Ramadan can run into mid-March.

Qingming month, and nothing seasonal in our entries — eat the fixed must-eats, and take the lighter spring-summer bowl, shuipen lamb soup, before 11:00 when it is at its best.

The one spring note: for three or four weeks the fruit stalls are all Bailuyuan cherries (the city's picking day is around 20 May) — and the honey cold zongzi come out of the quarter's ice-boxes, opening the cold-food season with liangpi.

Dragon Boat month: the quarter's zongzi is the honey cold one, sliced with a thread and drenched in syrup; the 'Sanqin set' lunch — liangpi, a roujiamo, a Bingfeng orange soda — is the city's summer meal, and huanggui rice wine is now drunk cold.

Peak heat: liangpi, honey zongzi and Bingfeng by day, the quarter's charcoal skewers past midnight; paomo is the winter bowl — take shuipen instead if you want lamb soup.

Still the cold-food month, and the last full one for honey zongzi; if you are taking vacuum-packed cured beef on, the shops themselves warn the seal is not a summer guarantee — keep it cool.

Lintong's autumn opens: from September the quarter and the Datang Everbright City are lined with pomegranate-juice stalls — ask the price and say 'press it now' before they pick up a fruit; the honey zongzi are on their way out. Mid-Autumn falls in September or October, and our entries carry no mooncake of Xi'an's own.

The last weeks of fresh fire-crystal persimmons and the last month of real pomegranate juice; persimmon cakes every second stall on Beiyuanmen, and the winter bowls — paomo, hulutou, lamb offal, youcha at first light — are the reason to get up early.

Deep winter bowls and persimmon cakes from fresh pulp; huanggui rice wine warmed; the Winter Solstice passes without a dish of its own in our entries — the year-round must-eats carry the month.