Chen Yuzhu, who comes from Qianxi County in Bijie, Guizhou Province, started his overseas business in 2008. He is interested in the classic food of his hometown, so he opened his first restaurant mainly selling Guizhou beef rice noodles in 2013 in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City’s Queens borough. Since then, he has been called the “Rice Noodle Prince” in America.

To sell the rice noodles in the early days, Chen often went to the nearby subway and shouted near the entrance: “Special noodles from my hometown Guizhou!”

He also played videos in his restaurant—for example, how to cook beef rice noodles in consomme (清炖肉汤) and sour soup. Guizhou beef rice noodles have become a popular local food brand through Chen’s effort. He named his restaurant “Mifen Prince”. And he has opened 13 restaurants to sell beef rice noodles in America.

The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has greatly affected the business. Restaurants were closed. So he decided to increase online orders and sell semi-finished products to get through the hard times. Broth (肉汤), meat and noodles are packed separately, making it easy for customers to heat up a bowl of Guizhou beef rice noodles in two minutes at home. As a result, Chen succeeded.

So he opened more restaurants—in New York, Houston and San Francisco, and achieved surprising success. Chen is now planning to spread Guizhou food culture around the world.

In many countries around the world, street food is popular with not only local people but also outsiders.

In Colombia, the favourite is arepas (王米饼), a kind of lovely bread cake. In India, you can get wonderful rice dishes with vegetables. These are often served with puri (小麦饼), made of flour (面粉) and water. On the streets of Thailand, you can buy fish soup, chicken and lots of different kinds of noodles. For dessert, you can have fried bananas, fresh fruit pancakes or Thai sweets. In Germany, sausages are popular and in France, it has lovely pancakes called crepes (薄煎饼).

In many ways, street food is better than restaurant food. Firstly, it’s cheaper and you know it’s fresh because you can watch the cook make it in front of you. Secondly, it’s also much more fun to eat. People often buy and eat food outside at places like music festivals and also at sports events like football matches. Besides, at the seaside in many countries, people eat chips, ice cream and seafood. Seafood runs directly from the sea to the table everywhere. Street food can stand for the culture of the area. So for the travelers it is a necessary part to enjoy.