Shredded Pancakes in Mutton or Beef Soup is a local Moselem delicacy honored as “a superb dish in Shaanxi”. It is originated from mutton and beef custard in ancient times that was listed as royal food in the Western Zhou Dynasty . Poems about it can also be found in Sima Qian’s “Historical Annals” .Then in the Song and Yuan dynasties , this delicacy gained even greater populaity because of an increase in the Moslem population in Xi’an .
There is a legend that connects the table manner for this delicacy with Emperor Tai Zu , Zhao Kuangyin, the first emperor of the Song Dynasty . Zhao was poverty-stricken and reduced to be homeless at an early age . One day when he was wandering in the street , he begged in a meat store for some hot mutton soup , he felt much warmer and energetic . Ten years later, Zhao came to his throne . Once when he was on an inspection tour in Chang’an he came o the store where he had begged for soup and asked his wife to bake some pancakes , broke them into small pieces , cooked for a few seconds with seasoning and soup and at last added several mutton slices. To his surprise , when the dish ws served , Zhao enjoyed it immensely and awarded the owner with 100 tales of silver . With the spread of the story , more people came to the store to try delicacy . Since the helpers in the store were fully occupied , the diners had to break the pancakes by themselves . This is still practiced today .
In 1644 , a restaurant named “Lao Ma’s ” opened at Qiaozikou specialized in selling this delicacy . Everyday the restaurant was crowded with diners and thus its business boomed by leaps and bounds . Later , after the Eigh-Power Allied Forces occupied Beijing in 1900 , Empress Dowager Ci Xi and Emperor Guang Xu fled to Xi’an . Ci Xi thought highly of the dish after she tasted it and wrote down three Chinese characters for the restaurant “Tian Ci Lou”(reataurant conferred by the royal family ). Ever since then , the restaurant grew much more famous .