Bengbu Maxia Street Crayfish 蚌埠蚂虾街龙虾

Bengbu Maxia Street Crayfish (蚌埠蚂虾街龙虾) is the crayfish of Maxia Street (蚂虾街) in Bengbu (蚌埠), Anhui, a lane of a hundred-odd metres on Nanshan Road (南山路) where, in 1979, a street vendor put crayfish into his braising stock.

How it is made

The dish started as a stall-holder's experiment. In 1979 Shi Shunli (石顺利), who sold lu-braised foods (卤菜) in the lane, put crayfish, which nobody wanted at the time, into his braising stock (卤汤). Lu braising cooks food in a stock seasoned with soy sauce and spices.

Lu-braised, thirteen-spice (十三香) and oil-braised (油焖) crayfish are still the classic flavours. Newer versions include crayfish in a chilled mustard dressing (捞汁芥末), steamed, dry-fried (干煸), iced (冰镇) and "black gold" sweet-and-spicy (黑金甜辣).

Where it comes from

People in Bengbu call crayfish maxia (蚂虾), and the lane where Shi Shunli started took its nickname from them. Its peak came in 1998: the documentary Ten Years of Shrimp Street (虾街十年) records about 60 businesses squeezed into the hundred-odd metres, more than 20,000 diners a night, and crayfish shells carted away by the truckload.

In 2023 the Bengbu city government named Maxia Street as a renovation project in its three-year plan for developing distinctive commercial streets. Crayfish are now served well beyond the lane: the city has more than 1,200 crayfish restaurants and more than 200,000 mu (about 13,300 hectares) of land farming crayfish.

Questions before you order

Why is it called Maxia Street?

Maxia (蚂虾) is the Bengbu word for crayfish, and the lane on Nanshan Road where a vendor began braising crayfish in 1979 was named after them.