Do hungry gamblers go for Chinese fast food?

Panda Express, in a press release today, announced the opening of its 50th outlet in Nevada. According to the press release, Panda Express has "nearly 700" outlets in the U.S. That means that Nevada, with only 7 tenths of one percent of the US population, has 7 percent of all Panda Expresses, or ten times the number per capita as the US as a whole. Who's eating all that stuff?

Pig's Nipples Anyone?

Singapore's New Paper brings us an article about Ian Powers, the American co-host of Singapore TV's Extreme Cuisine.

This season, the Extreme Gourmet menu includes deep-fried lizards, rabbit head, pig's rectum, cow's vagina and goat's placenta.

They probably covered pig's pizzles last season.

Fuchsia Dunlop's Excellent Adventure

I recently found out that Fuchsia Dunlop slipped into and out of California in November (her first ever visit) with three top Sichuanese chefs in tow. Her mission was to present them at a major conclave/demonstration at the Culinary Institute of America's Napa Valley Campus and incidentally serve as a tour guide (they insisted on going to Disneyland). I only found out about it through stumbling across two first person accounts on the BBC News website:

California Dreaming through Chinese Eyes


Asia's Hottest Chefs Turn Up the Heat

Welcome to the "new look" blog

I've dumped the b2 blog because a) it was impossible to do anything with it other than post without being a php programmer and, more importantly, b) it had no defense against the particularly obnoxious phenomenon known as "comment spam". I was getting in excess of 20 "comments" to a single post from a spambot for a gaming website, and could do nothing about it except to go in and manually delete each one.

If I encounter the same problems with this blog, I will turn off the comment feature; not a big deal, because commenting is what the forums are for. If I get ambitious (or some help), I may at some later stage install an on-site Movable Type blog, but for the moment this is what it is.

54 Kinds of Game on the Menu in China

This article in The Shanghai Star discusses the controversy over alocal news story about 54 kinds of wild animals permitted to be served at restaurants across the country. I can only recall eating snake and sparrow; I guess I've some catching up to do.

Risky dinning

PETA will not be amused.