美食沙漠

měishíshāmò
noun

Meanings

  1. 1 culinary desert
  2. 2 place with a poor food scene

Examples

Wǎngyǒu xìchēng zhè zuò chéngshì shì měishíshāmò.
Netizens jokingly call this city a culinary desert.
Tā bàoyuàn xuéxiào shítáng jiǎnzhí shì měishíshāmò.
He complained that the school cafeteria is basically a culinary desert.

Tips

register
Internet-era set phrase, often used to mock cities like Beijing, Hangzhou, or Nanjing in food-ranking debates. Calque of English 'food desert,' but in Chinese it implies 'no good restaurants' rather than the urban-planning sense of 'no grocery access.'

Stroke Order

měi
shí
shā