Several Tibetan restaurants operate along and around Zhongshan Street in central Xining, catering to the city's Tibetan population and to travellers curious about plateau food. The menu staples are momo (steamed or fried dumplings filled with yak meat or vegetables), thukpa (noodle soup), tsampa (roasted barley flour eaten with butter tea), and yak meat in various preparations — grilled, braised, or sliced cold with chilli sauce.
Butter tea (po cha) — strong black tea churned with yak butter and salt — is an acquired taste that most visitors find strange on first encounter but often come to appreciate in the context of cold-weather plateau travel. Order it with a bowl of tsampa and experience one of the few genuinely distinctive food combinations left in China that hasn't been absorbed into the mainstream. Most Tibetan restaurants are identified by prayer flags and thangka decorations in the windows.