Paomo Guan, as its name suggests, serves up paomo—the hearty Muslim dish that made Xi'an famous.

For those few of you who have not made your way to see the Terracotta Warriors, paomo is a fun dish. First, you break up one or two pieces of unleavened bread into small pieces and put them into a bowl. Once the task is completed, your bowl will be taken to the kitchen where mutton broth is poured over the bits of bread, which expand as the broth soaks in. The delicious broth is simmered with lamb and spices, including aniseed star, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves and caoguo (amomum-like nutmeg but with a rough), just to list a few. Side condiments of chopped cilantro, chillis and sweet pickled garlic can be added to your paomo once the bowl is brought back to your table. There are two kinds of paomo offered here—classic yangrou paomo (lamb) and xiaochao paomo, a hot and sour version.

Please remember that mo, the unleavened bread, is quite filling, and for a small stomach, one piece is more than enough. Customer have a choice of breaking the mo themselves or having it done by machine in the kitchen. If you choose the latter, we suggest that you ask them to just put one mo in your soup, and to give you the second one on a side plate in case you can actually eat more. It costs 18RMB for a bowl of paomo. .

A bowl of paomo accompanied by a few cold dishes (liangban cai) can satisfy a hungry stomach without spending much at all. Try the shredded carrots in sweet and sour dressing, green veggies with peanuts and soybeans in sesame oil, or mipi, a cold rice noodle doused with chili oil. Paomo Guan also serves a number of other standard Shaanxi dishes.

This restaurant is adorable. It has the low stools and tables popular in the Shaanxi countryside, and the walls are decorated with folk art from the area, albeit possibly too many. There's also a cozy outdoor porch, shaded by red and blue bamboo blinds, that's nice to sit if the weather is not too hot or cold. Paomo Guan is the sister restaurant of nearby Qin Tang Fu, just three doors south, which serves a wider variety of the hearty cuisine of Shaanxi province.

59 Chaoyangmennei Nanxiaojie, Dongcheng district (tel 6559 8135). Open 11am-2:30pm, 5pm-10pm. Meal for two 50RMB.
泡馍馆 东城区朝内南小街59号