The secret ingredient

The only thing that could possibly be rarer than an orderly queue on the streets of the capital is perhaps a lost penguin. Yet before lunch and dinner every day, the vast majority of the street on Gulou Dongdajie gives itself up to an orderly, long queue of lao Beijingers looking to munch down on something that isn't even local.

If you haven't been there before, the Shandong Qiang Mian Mantou (steamed bun) store very much resembles a needle exchange, with a line of customers bobbing up and down looking for their regular fix. "They only make 30 or 40 at a time. That's why you've got to stock up every time you come!" said Zao Jiang, a retired Beijinger looking a little twitchy. "The only way to explain it is to look at my wife. Normally she'll only eat half a mantou, but when it comes to these ones she'll eat three," he laughs, pointing to his cheerfully robust other half.

Like most from the area, Zao stocks up in bulk every time he visits, walking away with several scores of the buns, choosing to keep them in the freezer should the family get peckish.

Unlike the standard Beijing mantou, which are rather dry, and normally consumed without filling, resembling some kind of cardboard snack, the Shandong variety have a softer, moister texture, and are a staple food of the province. Although they come with many different fillings, the sweet red bean paste ones that have made the Gulou store famous are amongst the most common.

A retired couple surnamed Han had traveled on the bus from Haidian district solely to visit the store, which has received more than a little media attention of late for its street occupying delicacies. "They really have an original recipe here," says Mrs Han. "They just make them better than most other mantou restaurants in the city. There's something in the way they make them - they're so soft, and they actually taste healthy and clean when you're eating them."

Other people confirmed this. "Out of all the places I've been to, there's just something about this place," says one retired Beijing resident, who declined to give her name. "The food here is actually organic. They don't bring them in frozen from Shandong like a lot of places and they don't use softening powders or agents to change the taste of the food. I think that's why so many people like them and will queue."

Forgive us for being skeptical, but a certificate for organic food can be bought in China for considerably less than a bag of mantou, and we were unable to reach the restaurant owners for fear of being mobbed. If the locals believe they're organic though, they're probably better than most. And one thing is for certain, the prices are cheap. They start from just eight jiao per mantou and rise to 1.6 yuan for the red bean filled ones. The locals claim that they taste like sugared cocaine and are willing to wait in the 30 minute to two hour queue to swag a bag.

If there's one rare tourist attraction you'd like to see in Beijing, it should definitely be to check out the capital's only civilized queue, and maybe have a bite to eat while you're at it.