We do our best to step outside the comfort zone in most countries. Food in China was definitely an uncomfortable experience for us, since I am an incredibly picky eater. Fortunately, we did manage to learn how to eat the "set meal" which is what the meal is called if they bring many plates out at once. We even found some things that I liked. Above is a dish of sweet rice layered over duck and then deep fried. They should put this on a stick and sell it at the state fair; it was pretty good.
Above is the meal we ate at the Tang Dynasty Show. The cup contains fried chicken, there is a fried Gyoza (dumpling), and some veggies.
Notice that the beer is being contained by the glass only by the powers of surface tension. Now that's a well poured beer!
One thing that I really wanted to do was try a dumpling feast. We had 14 different types, plus appetizers. Most were really tasty and included flavors such as pork, beef, ham, walnut, red bean paste, egg, and spinach. The fish and squid were not the best ones.
There is such a thing as dumpling soup, and they prepare this at your table by igniting a colorful flame under the pot. All in all, we did some of our most adventurous eating in China. Surprisingly, there was almost no fried rice available, and we never saw any of the foods you would normally associate with Chinese cuisine, such as eggrolls, wontons, etc. I don't know whether Americans invented those and just call them Chinese, or if we just weren't in the right geographical area of China to experience them, but we were sad not to find them. -Anna
I love dumplings - what I think is funny is how they are called different things based on how they are cooked - I think Guo Ze are fried and Jiao Ze are steamed.
ReplyDelete- Emily
is there Mongolian barbeque there? I know we had some in Taiwan, but it was completely different from the fast food places that pose as mongolian bbq here.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't see BBQ or any kind. We were very disappointed by the monotony of the meals - always a spread of 5-6 things plus plain white rice. We had to look really hard for the dumplings. Where are the eggrolls, kung pao chicken, and crab rangoon? Maybe the food is very comparmentalized by geographical region, that's our guess.
ReplyDeleteI know that many of the people on our trip were disappointed that there was no crab rangoon, egg rolls, etc. Since I had never had chinese food before actually going to china and am very picky as well, I was happy to just find one or two things to eat each day. We only got fried rice once, but I agree, all meals were basically the same with 5-6 dishes plus a bowl of white rice (which they never served until a while after the meat dishes). Had we not had Dr. Hsu with us to do the ordering though I'm not sure what we would have ended up with...I am very impressed by you two and your ability to survive in such a foreign land : )
ReplyDeleteTiffany