@GarySoup's Eating Chinese blog

Hang Fer Lo, the "Delmonico's" of 19th Century San Francico Chinatown

2011-02-12T19:02:00.000-08:00

"Hittell's Handbook 0f Pacific Coast Travel," by John Shertzer Hittell had this account of San Francisco's leading Chinese Restaurant in 1885:

The Hang Fer Low Restaurant, on Dupont street, between Clay and Sacramento, is the Delmonico's of Chinatown. The second floor of this and other leading restaurants is set apart for regular boarders, who pay by the week or month. The upper floor, for the accommodation of the more wealthy guests, is divided into apartments by movable partitions, curiously carved and lacquered. The chairs and tables, chandeliers, stained window panes, and even the cooking utensils used at this restaurant were nearly all imported from China. Here dinner parties, costing from $20 to $100 for half a dozen guests, are frequently given by wealthy Chinamen. When the latter sum is paid, the entire upper floor is set apart for their accommodation, and the dinner sometimes lasts from 2 P. M. till midnight, with intervals between the courses, during which the guests step out to take an airing, or to transact business. Among the delicacies served on such occasions are bird's nest soup, shark's fins, Taranaki fungus (which grows on a New Zealand tree), Chinese terrapin, Chinese goose, Chinese quail, fish brains, tender shoots of bamboo, various vegetables strange to American eyes, and arrack,(a distilled liquor made of rice). Champagne, sherry oysters, chicken, pigeon, sucking pig, and other solids and liquids familiar to the European palate, also find their places at the feast. The tables are decorated with satin screens or hangings on one side; the balconies or smoking rooms are illuminated by colored lanterns; and Chinese music adds to the charms of the entertainment.

Hang Fer Low was located at 713 Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue) prior to the Great Earthquake of 1906, and moved to 725 Grant Avenue after the quake. Somewhere along the way the spelling of the name was changed to the risible Hang Far Low, and in the 1950's, perhaps tired of the low humor the name engendered, it changed its name to the Four Seas. It still exists today, but has long been overshadowed by other Chinatown restaurants.

Dumpling Kitchen -- Pretender to the Dumpling Throne?

2010-12-24T19:47:00.000-08:00

I haven't been doing my homework; otherwise it wouldn't have taken me two and a half months to discover a new Shanghainese restaurant out in the fog belt claiming dumpling royalty. It wasn't until Jonathan Kauffman's review that I discovered Dumpling Kitchen, named modestly enough in English, but called 一品包餃王 in Chinese, which translates to something like Number One Grand Poobah of Making Dumplings.

The smallish room formerly housing Han Goeng Seafood on Taraval was slammed at lunchtime on Christmas Eve, and the din filling the room was predominantly Cantonese. According to Kauffman's review, the chef at Dumpling Kitchen is a veteran of Shanghai Dumpling King on Balboa. Sure enough, as I was being seated at the only empty table, a two-top at the back, I spotted a plate of what looked like SDK's signature sugar puff pastries floating through the crowd. I ordered xiao long bao, of course (my chief mission being to check them out) and sheng jian bao. The prices were certainly reasonable ($6.00 for ten XLB and $5.50 for eight SJB). However, the xiao long bao were something of a disappointment, oversized and sloppy in construction. The skins were supple enough, and the minced pork filling of the right texture, but the essential "soup "was characterless and oddly sweet. In addition, the vinegar dipping sauce was somehow off; I'd swear it was cut with soy sauce.

The sheng jian bao were also a disappointment. To use an Irish Bull, I'd say they weren't as good as I expected, but then I didn't expect they would be. Compared to street food-worthy sheng jian bao in Shanghai, they were undercooked on the bottoms, and seriously lacking in fatty broth. This seems to be almost universally the case in the US (and Canada), where apparently SJB are treated as if they were supposed to be healthy eats, instead of the drizzle-down-the-chin fat bombs they are meant to be.

Dumpling Kitchen has a fairly full menu of Shanghainese appetizers and xiao cai to check out at humane prices. There may be some gems on the menu, but xiao long bao and sheng jian bao aren't among them. In his review, Jonathan Kauffman suggested that the xiao long bao at Dumpling Kitchen might be in the sweepstakes for best xiao long bao in San Francisco. For what it's worth, I'd peg them at no better than fourth, behind Shanghai Dumpling King, Shanghai House, and Bund Shanghai's XLB.

Dumpling Kitchen, 1935 Taraval at 30th Ave., San Francisco

Poster Bao for San Gabriel Valley Dumplings Hails from San Francisco

2010-10-19T08:11:00.000-07:00

I post a lot of pictures, largely food-related, to flickr. They're licensed as Creative Commons - Attribution, which means that anyone can use them for any purpose whatsoever as long as they acknowledge the source. Sometimes the emphasis is on "creative" in their use. A picture I took of zeppole being sold at an Upper West Side street festival in Manhattan showed up in a popular magazine's online feature on ballpark food -- representing the food sold at Yankee Stadium. The French onion soup I photographed at Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal ended up at a similarly named restaurant in Paris, a SF Japantown noodle shop ended up in Tokyo, and Torta Loca in San Francisco's Mission District found new fame posing as one of the best places to eat in Acapulco.

In general, I've adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy toward location misrepresentation of my photos, as long as my phony name is spelled right. The latest instance, however, of a referential head-fake involving one of my pics is so egregious that it almost borders on chutzpah, especially in light of the historic SF-LA rivalry (which I'm always happy to stir up). I have to call you on this one, LA Weekly.

In the article depicted and linked above, the redoubtable and award-winning Jonathan Gold (he's a writer, not an apple) uses juicy political gossip as a hook for strutting about some of San Gabriel Valley's juicy dumplings, known to us cognoscenti as xiao long bao. The article goes so far as to dub a San Gabriel mall as the "the U.S. epicenter of the soup dumplings called xiao long bao" and was headed by a column-width photo by yours truly of some of the most photogenic dumplings ever to appear on the face of the earth.

Well, Jonathan (and I know the photo selection is not your bad), I don't do LA, and therefore can't call you on the excellence of San Gabriel Valley soup dumplings. I haven't been to LA in decades, and certainly not since my 1992 xiao long bao epiphany in Shanghai. What I'm getting at here is that the mouth-watering dumplings in the picture you honored by using it in your article cannot be found anywhere near San Gabriel. The picture was taken of the dumplings at Shanghai Dumpling King in the foggy outer Richmond District of San Francisco, the venue most loved by Bay Area xiao long bao aficionados. They're real, and they're spectacular.

Come up and try them some time.

Biang! Biang! You're Fed

2010-08-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Biang biang mian, a.k.a. you po che mian at Xi'an Famous Foods, Flushing

[This article has also been posted in my Full Noodle Frontity blog]

"Biang Biang" noodles are the stuff of folklore. Not because of the dish itself (though it deserves to be legendary) but because of the very name. The word "biang" is a Shaanxi localism not found in any modern Chinese dictionaries, famous for its complexity. It is written with 57 strokes, and pity the poor sign-maker that has to paint it twice. No one knows for certain where the name originated, but the most plausible guess is that it represents the sound of the noodles being slapped against the work surface when being made. This theory is advanced by Xi'an Famous Foods' Jason Wang in this video. Biang Biang noodles, being "as wide and thick as belts" are also famous for that reason as one of the "ten strange wonders of Shaanxi." But don't look for "Biang Biang" noodles on your menu; although phonetic substitutes like 棒棒麵 (bàng bàng miàn) or 梆梆麵 (bāng bāng miàn) may sometimes be used, according to Wikipedia, the dish is most commonly listed on menus outside of Shaanxi as you po che mian (油泼扯面).

You po che mian, roughly "oil-sprinkled torn noodles" are wide wheat noodles tossed (or stirred) with chili oil and some or all of: bean sprouts, crushed garlic, chili flakes, cabbage, and cilantro. The noodles are made by tearing wide strips of noodle dough in two lengthwise, rather than iteratively pulling them to thinness as done with "hand pulled" noodles (la mian). Traditionally they were supposedly made more than an inch thick and a meter in length, but fortunately are found in a more manageable size nowadays. Biang biang mian/you po che mian is an excellent hot weather dish, hard to find even in China outside of Xi'an. If you're lucky enough to be in New York, though, head for the nearest outlet of Xi'an Famous Foods for the excellent version depicted in the photo at the top of this page.

The Now Bao: Four Postmodern Pork Buns

2010-06-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I knew little about gua bao, the Taiwanese steamed clamshell buns stuffed with savory meat. When in New York my mind would be set on their distant cousin, the rou jia mo found at Xi'an Famous Foods in Flushing, the split-open pan bread with yawning maw stuffed with an explosive mixture of lamb, cumin and jalapeños. Then came another New York visit and the ritual of treating my daughter to a trendy, but always ethnic, restaurant meal as a reward for use of her apartment. This time it brought us to Momofuku Ssäm Bar. At Momofuku you have to try the "pork buns" the buzz went, and so we did.

The pork buns you get at Momofuku Ssäm Bar are not your father's pork buns and maybe even not your father's gua bao. They were envisioned by one David Chang, a Korean-American who has parlayed a large cooking talent, hype, and a sense of location, location, location into a mini-Momofuku empire, with his signature pork buns as a touchstone at each location. Chang's venues charge a momofukin' fortune (sorry, couldn't resist) for their offerings, and his pork buns have been taken note of both by imitators with dollar signs in their eyes and by other cooks who feel challenged to make something better or more authentically Taiwanese. The spawn of Momofuku's pork buns dot the haute Asian Fusion landscape; collectively, they involve a more or less traditional folded-over steamed bun, pork belly of some provenance. and various approaches to spicing (generally including sweetness). I've had occasion to sample three notable successors as well as Chang's original, and here are my reflections.

From the start, David Chang's pork bun is an odd duck. Or pig. Or both. A couple of slabs of slow-cooked pork belly, along with scallions and pickled cucumber are placed in a bun which has been slathered with hoisin (haixian) sauce. The intent was apparently to combine the trendy excess of pork belly (the culinary gift that keeps on giving) with the luxe experience of eating Peking Duck. I'm not opposed to sweetening the meat, being married to a Shanghainese of some coooking skill, but I found the use of hoisin sauce for this purpose a bit jarring. Just what the hell was I eating? Not only was this gustatory head-fake a bit uncalled for, it was also dearly bought. At $9.00 for two smallish buns it fell off the value scale, according to my felicific calculus. (But I'll leave the ranting about Momofuku's prices to others.)

One who seems challenged to one-up rather than imitate David Chang is Eddie Huang, the Taiwanese-American chef and former lawyer who founded Baohaus New York: Fresh off the Boat. Arguably in the same talen league and even brasher than Chang, Huang has also just opened the more ambitious Xiao Ye, the second outpost in what may be his own mini-empire (the Momofuku for the rest of us?) Huang skyrocketed to fame with his gua bao selections (cited as Best Bun in New York by New York Magazine). His take on the pork belly gua bao, The "Chaiman Bao," became his most popular item and incidentally launched a transcontinental controversy which is yet to be resolved. Eddie's Chairman Bao uses a generous hunk of pork belly (mine seemed leaner than Momofuku's) which has been "red cooked" in what I recognized as traditional Shanghainese style, made Taiwanese by being covered with with crushed peanuts and red sugar. Pickled mustard greens and cilantro add to the complexity. Not only did I appreciate the fuller symphony of flavors and textures, I found Baohaus' bao a better value, $4.00 for a palpably more generous portion of leaner meat.

A few months after Eddie Huang's baos, including the Chairman Bao, propelled him to casual food stardom, a food truck called "The Chairman Bao Truck" began serving gua bao on the streets of San Francisco. The Chairman Bao Truck was a concept which sprung full-blown from the head of a company called Mobi Munch (who later claimed to never have heard of Eddie Huang and his Chairman Bao). According to SF Weekly, Mobi Munch was founded "to offer turnkey infrastructure and development planning to the growing wave of gourmet food trucks." The founders, veterans of the chain restaurant industry, tried unsuccessfully to interest several local gourmet street food vendors in their service, then came up with the Chairman Bao Truck and populated it with a chef-operator named Eric Rudd (from Minneapolis, but with some local cooking experience). As might be expected, the mercurial Eddie Huang went ballistic over the use of the Chairman Bao name. I've shared his anger, but am trying not to aim it at the hapless operator, who is caught in the middle.
The affair will end in a sporting, if not completely amicable way with a bun-off between the two enterprises in September in San Francisco.

I caught up with the Chairman Bao Truck's pork bun last Friday night at Off the Grid at Fort Mason Center. It was the cheapest (at $2.95) but also the smallest of nouveau gua baos that I'd tried to the moment. It contained grilled pork belly, pickled daikon and pickled sweet onions. It was more discreetly spiced (NO hoisin sauce) and, though texturally monotonous, a well-behaved disciple of Momofuku's pork buns, though not as interesting or as satisfying as the Baohaus version. On a previous visit, when they had no pork buns on offer I tried the meatball and the tofu buns, and I'd actually recommend the tofu bun of the three.

The last of my four samples, encountered barely two hours ago, came from the opening lunch service of Spice Kit, a new San Francisco Financial District venture which looks like a winner. Fred Tang's gua baos are truly on the tiny side (indeed, they are listed on the menu as sides) and are $2.95 for one or two for $5.00. But the mighty mites, so round, so firm, so fully packed with grilled pork belly deserve to be upgraded in size or quantities to mains (which, for the record, includes Banh Mi, Ssam and salada). What hoisin sauce was present (and the menu claims it was there) kept a discreet distance from my palate, letting the flavor of pickled cucumber and scallions come through, and the firmer texture of the grilled (rather than slow-cooked) pork belly made for a nice contrast to the steamed buns. I made a meal out of my two mini-buns by adding an order of not particularly memorable ginger slaw and amazing house-made lotus chips. Who knew lotus root could taste so good?

Overall, as is probably is clear from the above comments, I prefer the gua bao from Baohaus NY for its flavors, textures, value and attitude. But I also have to give a nod to the porky munchies at Spice Kit, certainly my surprise of the week so far, and I wouldn't toss the pork buns from Momofuku or The Chairman Bao Truck into the compost barrel if they were handed to me. But to tell the truth, if you laid out all four next to one of Lao Liang's rou jia mos at the Golden Mall, hmmm......

Xiao Long Bao Mecca's Faded Glory

2010-05-11T08:25:00.000-07:00

Note: an abbreviated version of this post originally appeared in the blog of the Asian Art Museum.

The steamed dumpling known as xiao long bao, described so evocatively by Olivia Wu on the Asian Art Museum's website, is synonymous with Shanghai, and for generations of Shanghainese eating xiao long bao was synonymous with a visit to one particular establishment, the Nanxiang Mantou Dian (Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant). Here, in the historic Yu Garden area of Shanghai, in a second-floor dining room overlooking the nine-turn bridge and the mid-lake teahouse of blue willow China pattern fame, whole feasts are made from nothing more than stacks of dumpling-filled bamboo steamers, accompanied by small bowls of a thin soup.

According to local lore, xiao long bao were created by Huang Mingxian, in the Shanghai suburb of Nanxiang, around 1861. Huang owned a pastry shop and also hawked large steamed buns in a nearby classical garden. It was a competitive business, and Huang, with his pastry-making skills, came up with the delicate, thin skinned xiao long bao to distinguish his wares from the other vendors’, creating an instant sensation.

Their fame spread beyond the confines of Nanxiang, and in the year 1900, a relative of Huang’s named Wu Xiangsheng brought them to Shanghai, taking over an establishment named Changxing Lou. He perfected the delicacy, renamed the restaurant the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant, and booming Shanghai introduced xiao long bao to the world.

On a cool, misty day in early April 1992, I had my first ever meal on Chinese soil – a brunch consisting of xiao long bao at the Nanxiang Mantou Dian. My host Daisy (she’s now my sister-in-law) decided that the quaint snack shop that had hosted the likes of Queen Elizabeth II and Fidel Castro was a suitable introduction to Shanghai, and it is testimony to her judgment that I have been xiao long bao-mad ever since. The timing of our visit there was fortunate, for when we attempted to return three weeks later we found it closed for an extensive remodeling and reconfiguring as a more tourist-oriented enterprise. The dining area was expanded from a single room to three on two upper floors, and a takeout window added on the ground floor, and therein lies a melancholy tale; it's become obvious to xiao long bao aficionados, including yours truly, that the quality of The Nanxiang's XLB has fallen off significantly since that time.

The fall from grace of the Nanxiang Mantou Dian's xiao long bao is particularly noticeable in the thickness of the wrappers, especially when compared to the creations of the new standard bearers like De Long Guan, Jia Jia Tang Bao and Shan Wei Guan (see my earlier Xiao Long Bao Report Card). My theory is that the takeout window is the culprit here. When you order from the takeout window, your dumplings are unceremoniously dumped from a steamer into a paper boat, and of necessity are made with industrial-strength wrappers to avoid breakage from this rude treatment. The veritable xiao long bao factory on the ground floor (which you can observe through the windows) also makes the XLB for the main dining room on the second floor, so it's not surprising you are getting takeout-grade dumplings there, too. The more expensive third floor dining room has its own xiao long bao chefs, but even there the offerings seem to reflect both lowered expectations and a horror of breakage, coming with wrappers that are more delicate than downstairs but still thicker than they were in the glory days. My rule of thumb is that if at least one in a dozen doesn't break under a too-casual lifting, the maker isn't pushing the envelope (or the wrapper,as it were), and depriving you of the real xiao long bao miracle.

The Nanxiang Mantou Dian is now owned by a holding company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and has added additional branches in Shanghai and more than a dozen franchises in other Asian countries. Although xiao long bao connoisseurs will warn you that its dumplings no longer meet the gold standard the restaurant itself established, locals still revere the Nanxiang as the Mecca of xiao long bao and flock there to jockey for tables; the street-level takeout window, where the dumplings are still a proletarian $1.80 for sixteen dumplings, draws hour-long lines.

Lanzhou La Mian Part II

2010-01-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

In an earlier post, I documented my love for the Lanzhou Zheng Zong Niu Rou La Mian shops which can be found all over Shanghai (but especially the one on Hainan Xi Long). As promised, Here is a bit more of the science and history of this saving dish.

Making hand-pulled noodles requires an exceptionally supple dough; in practice this is usually achieved by the addition of kansui (jiang shui, or 鹼水), an alkaline solution of potassium and sodium carbonates, or a powdered base for same. Historically, however, the noodles were actually made supple by kneading lye from wood ash directly with the wheat flour. According to this article, "lye-kneaded wheat noodles" have been found in only three places in the world: Lanzhou, Gansu province, China; Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Okinawa. This practice probably was developed in China and introduced to the other two venues by Hakka travelers. Lanzhou is the only place in China where the practice persists. There, the lye is derived from burning mugwort grasses (peng cao) in a hole and extracting solidified rock-like mugwort ash (peng hui , 蓬灰) by a dripping method. The traditional use of peng hui can be seen in this video.

Lanzhou beef noodles as we know the dish is said to have originated with Ma Baozi (马保子,1870-1955), a member of the Hui nationality, in Lanzhou at the end of the Qing Dynasty. He first sold his noodles of the street, and achieved such fame fame for thier tastiness that in Lanzhou they became known as "Ma Baozi Beef Noodles." In 1919 he opened his first "bricks and mortar" shop. Today, there are around 1,000 beef noodle shops in Lanzhou. The traditional characteristics of Ma Baozi Beef Noodles are said to be "one clear, two white, three red, four green, five yellow" (一清、二白、三红、四绿、五黄), a reference to clear soup, white daikon radish, red chili oil, green cilantro and yellow noodles. (The use of an alkali imparts a yellowish tint to the noodles, which use no egg.)

I'm indebted to Sunny's Sohu Blog for the picture of the Ma Bao Zi restaurant at the top of this page. I learned a lot about Lanzhou and the background of Lanzhou la mian from her post. Please visit it for more tempting photos of the restaurant and its wares.

Happy New Year, and another Xi'an Ming Chi update

2009-12-31T10:59:00.000-08:00

I've been dilatory in updating my blog, and blame fragmented interests plus a twitter addiction; but I can't let the year end with a new post and a hearty Happy New Year wish.

My 2009 noshing highlights are pretty well covered in the blog and here's the outlook for 2010: First and foremost, if plans materialize, I may be relocating to New York by the end of the year and will have one, two, many Xi'an Ming Chi analogues to discover in its five boroughs. Failing that (or supplementing it, if the plan comes to fruition), I will make a more resolute effort to track down some far-fuing San Francisco and Bay Area diamonds in the rough that I have heard rumours of. And of course, come hell or high water, I will work in at least a month in Shanghai, which calls me, Expo 2010 or no.

Now for the Xi'an Ming Chi update. As readers of this blog will probably have figured out, my favorite hole-in-the-wall for Chinese small eats outside of China is Xi'an Ming Chi, or Xi'an Famous Eats, in a ramshackle basement mall in downtown Flushing, New York. I have previously blogged about it here and here. The photo at the top of this post is of the shop's famous Liang Pi, a cold wheat-starch noodle dish which, as I discovered, is the perfect hot-weathyer lunch.

As of my last visit to New York, Xi'an Ming Chi had opened a second outlet, in the more conventional Flushing Mall food court, with no diminution in the quality of the food. Now comes news of a third branch, opened just this month, in Manhattan's Chinatown. According to coverage by the Village Voice and Serious Eats, the food is apparently up to the standard of the original, and thus presents an option for those without the time or inclination to head out to Flushing, though I can't imagine anyone not wanting to visit this little corner of China. The new branch is at 88 East Broadway #106, New York NY 10002 (at Forsyth Street).

Chop Suey: Chinese Cuisine's Prodigal Son

2009-10-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Chop suey was nothing less than the poster child for Chinese-American food in the mid-Twentieth Century. Iconized in art (Edward Hopper) and song (Flower Drum Song), it was also the signature offering of many Chinese-American restaurants, judging from their signage, which displayed "Chop Suey" more prominently than the restaurant's name. The origins of chop suey have been extensively studied by Jacqueline Newman (at least two articles in Flavor & Fortune Magazine), Jennifer 8 Lee (The Fortune Cookie Chronicles) and by Andrew Coe in a new book named, yes, Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the Unided States, among others. Although evidence has been uncovered that chop suey has an antecedent in a south China dish named za sui ("mixed remnants") consisting of stir-fried chicken gizzards and other offal, something in our collective psyche seems to want it to be of American invention, our contribution to global Chinese cuisine. Several different stories have been cited to validate chop suey's American invention, the most accepted of which revolves around a traveling Chinese statesman named Li Hongzhang, of whom more below.

In researching another Chinese culinary mystery, namely why Anhui cuisine is named as one of China's "Eight Great Culinary Traditions" I kept coming across references to a dish named "Li Hongzhang Hotchpotch." This dish is usually listed as one of the four or five landmark dishes of Anhui cuisine, and one source describes the dish as follows:

Li Hongzhang hotchpotch is a popular dish named after one of Anhui's famous personages. Li Hongzhang was a top official of the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911 AD). When he was in office, he paid a visit to the US and hosted a banquet for all his American friends. As the specially prepared dishes continued to flow, the chefs, with limited resources, began to fret. Upon Li Hongzhang's order, the remaining kitchen ingredients were thrown together into an impromptu stew, containing sea cucumber, squid, tofu, ham, mushroom, chicken meat and other less identifiable food materials! Thus appetites were quenched and a dish was created.

"Li Hongzhang Hotchpotch," it is immediately evident, is the very dish we call "chop suey." So, an obscure dish with humble origins in China is reinvented and achieves fame abroad as the ultimate in adaptive cuisine, and then the land of its reputed creator is proud to welcome it home and bask in its reflected glory.

Go figure.

Did the Chinese invent the Turducken?

2009-10-13T18:23:00.000-07:00

If you've listened to football broadcaster John Madden around Thanksgiving, or even if you haven't, you may know about "turducken." That's a mashup of the words "turkey," "duck," and "chicken" and the name of an over-the top Thanksgiving specialty. The turducken consists of a turkey stuffed with a duck, which is in turn stuffed with a chicken, all of the creatures having been first deboned. The chicken, in its turn is also stuffed with some form of conventional stuffing. According to the Wikipedia entry for turducken, this delicacy was apparently invented in Louisiana, possibly even by the legendary Paul Prudhomme. One shop in Louisiana prepares around 5,000 turduckens per week around Thanksgiving, and they are even available by mail order.

Surely such a monument to meat could only be born in America, or some other Western nation prone to fresser excess, right? Well not exactly. As every wise person knows everything originated in China, and could turducken be any exception?

While searching recently for information on the eats in Zhengzhou, Henan Province (where a friend has invited me to visit), I came across references to "taosibao" (套四宝), or "four treasures wrap." This was not some kind of Chinese burrito but, according to an introduction to the food of Henan I found on the web, a dish that existed at least as long ago as the Qing Dynasty:

The dish is famous for integrating chicken, duck, dove and quail that represent strong, fragrant, fresh and wild flavor respectively. The four birds are combined with the bigger containing the small ones, which are as a whole without any bone. Being placed in a fine pottery soup bowl with blue patterns, the dinners can only see a whole duck floating in the soup. After eating up the delicious duck, they will find a fragrant whole chicken. Eating up the chicken, they will again find a delicious whole dove in front of them. Finally, they will find a quail which is also as a whole and stuffed with sea cucumber puddings, shredded fragrant mushroom, and water － soaked bamboo slice.

Well, it's not exactly a turducken, as no turkeys were apparently to be had, but the dish outdoes a turducken by having four birds telescoped into one instead of three. If a turkey had been available, you can rest assured that it would have formed a fifth layer of a "套五宝."

How does a taosibao go down? According to the same article, "The dish contains several tastes, is neither fatty nor greasy and is tasty and refreshing. The customers praise that the course is strong, delicious, and nutritious so that the aftertaste is continuous." In other words, it's a gift that keeps on giving.

On Dog, Guinea Pig and Real Pig (Not you, AB)

2009-09-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

Persons with reservations about the practice of eating dog in Asia are probably not tinfoil hat-wearing PETA regulars, vegans or even anti-red meat. Their often expressed concerns are that a creature nature intended as a pet and a friend is ending up on someone's dinner table. But what if they had it backward?

Dogs are the descendents of wolves, and according to a recent New York Times Article, a new study of dogs worldwide suggests that wolves may have first been domesticated for their meat. The study, performed by a team of geneticists at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden lays out the story. Based on samples of mitochondrial DNA from dogs all over the world, all dogs appear to have come from a common lineage, and that lineage appears to have originated in (where else?) South China more than 10,000 years ago. Timing and other factors (including lack of a plausible alternative motive, I suppose) suggest that the purpose of muzzling, caging and breeding wolves was for meat for the dinner table, or whatever they ate on in those days.

Continuing the subject of edible pets (or pettable edibles, if you will), I blogged sometime ago about a modest proposal for Peru to export cuy, a.k.a. guinea pig, to China. Cuy is a delicacy in Peruvian cuisine, the country is currently producing more than they can eat and, as I explained, introducing the delights of cuy to China would partly repay Peru's culinary debt to China. This blog post, which included a picture of a cutie of a guinea pig, drew an avalanche of comments (well, four at last count). One of these comments is worth repeating here:

I'm an American married to a Peruvian living in China. I love cuy and would be ecstatic if I could order one off a menu here in China!!!

My wife's grandmother raised her own cuy (so she could feed them only the best) until she passed away, and they tasted amazing.

Incidentally, my wife and I run two small restaurants (www.snowymtncafe.com) for tourists here in the foothills of Tibet, and we serve a sampling of Peruvian dishes. I would add cuy to the menu tomorrow if we could find any!

Eugene, the author of the comment and his Peruvian wife Cindy operate their restuarants in Xiahe and Langmusi. According to their website, their menu offers:

Chicken Quesadillas

Homemade French Fries

Pizza w/ lots of Cheese

Spaghetti Bolognese

Lomo Saltado

Bistec a lo Pobre

(Peruvian Style Steak)

... & Tons of Local Dishes

Next time you're in Xiahe or Langmusi stop in and yak it up with Eugene and Cindy to and let me know if cuy has made it to the Himalayas yet. Even if not, enjoy the rare opportunity of enjoying lomo saltado with your momos.

As for the "real pig" in the title to this blog post, it has to do with Anthony Bourdain, and no, I'm not calling him a pig.

As I noted in an earlier post, Lao Liang's Xi'an Ming Chi at the Golden Mall in Flushing was to be included in Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations TV series on September 7, and as promised, I monitored Bourdain's visit on the edge of my seat. Before I comment on the subject, I need to do some penitence.

In the past I've been anything but a Bourdain fan, for reasons that are no longer important, and have not been shy about letting people know it. However, after watching the Outer Boroughs episode, and before it (once I found out where the Travel Channel was on my cable dial) the 2009 San Francisco episode, I have decided that AB is, at this stage of his and my lives, a mensch, and that we are really soulmates. The politics of food have become as polarized as electoral politics these days, and Anthony and I happen to sit on the same part of the foodie spectrum, the place for real people who like real food (note the lower case initials), distant from foodies who breathe correctness and gorge on labels like "sustainable," "organic," and "humane," which have no direct relationship to tastiness. What I once thought was Bourdain's schtick has become a stick to beat Alice Waters with, and I like that.

So where does the pig come in? Overall, I thought the New York Outer Boroughs segment was excellent, and happy to see Bourdain enjoying the well-known "lamb burger" (roujiamo) at Xi'an Ming Chi and giving Lao Liang's place some strokes. The only nit I would pick was that he didn't have time to try anything a little more out there, such as the notorious "lamb face salad," which you can take as literally as you like. However, Lao Liang was up against another stall in the Golden Mall which featured a bounty of golden fried pig offal, and who could blame Anthony Bourdain from being seduced and, er, pigging out on those before he even reached Lao Liang's stall?

Lao Liang's Got His Roujiamo Workin'!

2009-08-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

In a blog post from last year I wrote about the delights of the Xi'an specialties at a food stall in a ramshackle basement food court in downtown Flushing, and of its personable creator, who calls himself Liang Pi. In two trips back to New York this year (a brief one in April and a two-week stay this month) I made trips early and often to his venue and am happy to report that Lao Liang has his mojo (make that roujiamo) workin'. Since my 2008 visits, the Xi'an Ming Chi stall have been featured in various media from the New York Times to China Central Television; received visits from the likes of Anthony Bourdain (more on him later) and Zhang Yimou; expanded his operations to a second outlet in the shinier (but less soulful) environs of the Flushing Mall on 39th Street; started a slick little website where you can check out his menu; and acquired a Facebook Fan pag e!

On my 2008 visits to Xi'an Ming Chi I was too preoccupied with trying all of the stall's hot noodle options that I never got around to trying the dish Mr. Liang is so proud of that he named himself (and his new outlet) after, Liang Pi. This cold noodle dish, made from wheat starch noodles mixed with bean sprouts, kaofu and other condiments and drenched in a complex spicy sauce is pure dynamite for hot weather eating, as I well found out this month when the temperature hovered around 90 degrees F with high humidity for most of my stay. I'm also happy to report that it travels well as takeout, since they package the sauce separately for you in a plastic bag. It made the 20-minute trip on the 7 train back to Long Island City from Flushing on a couple occasions with flying colors. (Well, the colors, mostly red, fly when you pierce the plastic baggie and hose the cold noodles with its contents; it's as satisfying as opening a hydrant on a 95 degree day.)

As readers of my blog know, I am not a big Anthony Bourdain fan, especially after his Shanghai segment two years ago. However, I will certainly be watching No Reservations on the Travel Channel on its September 7 debut, because that's when AB will be featuring New York's Outer Boroughs, and his visit to Liang Pi's Xi'an Ming Chi is slated to be shown. If Bourdain gives Lao Liang and his food its due, he will have redeemed himself for taking the fall (in my esteem) in Shanghai.

Lanzhou La Mian -- Part I

2009-07-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

On my periodic tours of Shanghai, I'm usually on a mission to visit as many different far-flung notable small eats establishments as I can get to, which means very few repeat visits. However, when I reviewed my notes for my April stay this year, I found (not surprisingly to me) that I had visited one restaurant no less than 10 times in the space of a month. This restaurant happened to be a noodle shop of the "Lanzhou La Mian" stripe, Lanzhou Zheng Zong Niu Rou La Mian (兰州正宗牛肉拉面), roughly translated as "Authentic Lanzhou Hand-pulled Beef Noodles."

Why so many visits to this shop? For starters, it was just steps from the apartment hotel I stayed in. It was also open early and late (7:00 AM to 4:00 AM), was extremely inexpensive, and its products were tasty and filling. Thus, if it were raining (which it often was), if I were late getting around and famished, or just too plumb lazy to go further, it was there; but most of all, I had come to love the noodles from this shop from my previous visit in October 2008.

Shanghai has some 250 "Lanzhou La Mian" styled restaurants, judging from the listings in dianping.com. About 50 of these, like the one across from my hotel, are "official" Lanzhou La Mian Shops, with identical names, identical signage, identical menus, identical prices and more or less the same modus operandi: although there is a kitchen at the back of the shop, the noodles are made when ordered at a work table at the front of the shop, and passed, when finished, through a sliding window into a large pot of boiling water on stove set up outside. After all, who wants large pots of boiling water inside an un-air conditioned restaurant in a Shanghai summer?

In addition to the beef noodles, Lanzhou La Mian establishments will also offer lamb (but no pork, being Muslim and halal) noodles. In addition to pulled noodles they will have knife-shaved noodles (刀削面), lamb or beef pao mo (泡馍), or hand-torn steamed bread in soup, and other non-noodle and non-soup foods characteristic of the Lanzhou region. Despite this fairly extensive menu, the hand pulled beef noodles are always the main attraction, but don't go for them because you are a beef-eater. The thin beef slices, along with generous sprigs of cilantro are little more than garnish for the fresher-than-fresh noodles in a skillfully complex broth. A "small" bowl (enough for a hearty lunch) will set you back 4 yuan (about 60 cents), while a dinner-sized bowl if 5 yuan (about 75 cents).

It's notable that although the name and the origin of the specialty noodles come from Lanzhou, Gansu province, more often than not the Lanzhou La Mian restaurants are operated by Hui nationality Muslims from neighboring Qinghai Province. The history (and science) behind Lanzhou La Mian, and the development and popularization of today's bowl of beef hand-pulled noodle soup by one Ma Bao Zi in the early 20th Century, are fascinating subjects that will be touched on in a subsequent post.

Xiao long bao report card update -- Lin Long Fang and Fu De Xiao Long

2009-05-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

I'm just back from another month-long foray into the streets of Shanghai, which constitutes a major part of my excuse for not having posted in so long. I vowed not to get hung up on tracking down additonal xiao long bao venues to add to the reports I filed last fall in order to do justice to a broader sample of street foods and xiao chi, which I will be reporting on in due time; however, I couldn't resist checking out a couple of very different, but worthy new XLB venues I caught wind of.

The first of these, Lin Long Fang Te Se Xiao Long Bao (麟笼坊特色小笼包), or Lin Long Fang for short, had been open for less than a week when I visited it, judging from the earliest reviews of it on dianping.com. It has the look of a Jia Jia Tang Bao Clone; from the layout of the place, the content and pricing of the menu, to the bandana headgear worn by the small army of young women (yes, young women exclusively) making the baozi, it's Jia Jia with a different color scheme, brown in place of red. Even the Jia Jia trademark of steaming the vinegar dish along with the xiao long bao is here. Fortunately, they've succeeded, or very nearly succeeded, in cloning the Jia Jia xiao long bao. They seemed to me to fall faintly short of Jia Jia's mark in wrapper suppleness and flavor intensity of the soup, but otherwise they were very good, perhaps a B+ in my grade book. Lin Long Fang is also conveniently located (10 Jianguo Dong Lu, near Zhaozhou Lu) and it a bright, upbeat venue I'll gladly return to.

The other new (to me) xiao long venue I tried, Fu De Xiao Long was very much the opposite of Lin Long Fang. It was a proverbial hole-in-the-wall in a working class Hongkou neighborhood, and looks like it has been there forever, though judging from the vintage of the earliest dianping.com reviews has only been around for about a year. I'm tempted to say that Fu De is a cross between Fu Chun and De Long Guan, but I won't; it does share the same comfortable, weathered neighborhood ambience of those two, however. Like De Long Guan, the xiao long bao came in a small quantity (six baozi) for a small price, 4 Yuan (about 60 cents). I found the wrappers a little on the heavy duty side, however, and the "soup" at once a bit t0o sweet and too salty. I'll give Fu De's XLB a B. An added bonus to a visit to Fu De is the presence, immediately to the east on Dongyuhang Lu, of a very lively, blocks-long street market, where you can fand a seemingly endless array of street foods and wares for sale. You can find Fu De at 862 Dongyuhang Lu, about four blocks south of the Linping Lu Metro Station on the No. 4 line.

Butterfly Effect: Erma Yina, the Blogger, the Movie, the Earthquake and the preservation of Qiang culture

2009-03-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

In August of 2004, a tourist took a snapshot of a beautiful young Qiang woman named Erma Yina and posted it on his personal blog. The photo touched other Netizens, resulting in a flood of Chinese tourists to Taoping Village, Sichuan where the girl was photographed, and a flood of more pictures and national celebrity for Erma Yina followed. As a result of the girl's Net-driven idol status, a movie was shot in Taoping, "Erma's Wedding," short on plot but very long on local color.

On May 12, 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake all but wiped out Taoping and Erma Yina's birthplace of Li Xiang and threatened the future of Qiang culture.

Probably influenced by the Internet-spurred celebrity of Taoping Village and its famous resident Erma Yina, approximately 10 billion yuan (US $1.5 Bn) of investment from China and abroad has been allocated "to save and rehabilitate the quake-threatened Qiang culture."

The movie, "Erma's Wedding," was recently released in an English-subtitled DVD in the "Follow Me Chinese" series which features, though not exclusively, movies of a high propaganda value. The movie is described as "A true record of culture and natural landscapes of Qiang ethnic minority before 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake."

From Peru with love: Cuy on China's Tables?

2009-03-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Peru has borrowed more from Chinese cuisine than has any other non-Asian nation. Peruvian-Chinese "chifas" (whose name derives from chi fan, or "eat [rice]" dot the Peruvian landscape more than chop suey parlors ever did the U.S. landscape. It's said that even non-Chinese restaurants in Peru have a variety of wonton soup as a standard menu offering, and lomo saltado, which amounts to Peru's national dish, is said to be of Chinese invention. It goes without saying that Peru would like to repay China for its culinary largesse beyond her greatest conbtribution to China's larders to date, the potato.

Enter the cuy. As the intriguing blog Double Handshake explains, the cuy, better know in the English-speaking world as the guinea pig, is a favored delicacy in Peru:

The animals, which reproduce extremely quickly, are full of protein and low in fat. Cuy, as it is called in Peru, can be fried, broiled, roasted or turned into soup. Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs annually.

It seems that modern breeding methods have produced more guinea pigs than Peruvians can eat, and export options are currently limited. Why not, wonders the blog (which covers both China and Latin America) interest China in adopting a new taste treat? It convincingly lays out half a dozen good reasons why cuy would probably catch on, including a catchy slogan “It’s keyi to eat cuy!”

To Double Handshake's list of reasons why it makes sense to export guinea pigs to China for human consumption, I would add another: precedent. A cuy, or guinea pig, after all, is just another rodent, albeit a cute one. A rat is a rat is a rat, and skinned and cooked (see the picture in the Double Handshake blog) a guinea pig looks remarkable like the end product in an earlier blog post of mine, Eating your way through the Chinese Zodiac. That gustatory delight started out as the uncute critter depicted below. I've yet to taste either, but perhaps another selling point for cuy might be the catch phrase "It tastes just like rat."

From the Shanghai Bites Archive: Bow-wow stuffed baozi creates controversy

2009-02-10T10:41:00.000-08:00

[Note: I have decided to let my Shanghaibites.com website and blog expire, and am reprising selected posts here in the @GarySoup Blog. This one was posted on February 27, 2007 in Shanghai Bites]

No, this is not something Michael Ohlsson ("Weird Meat") missed. It's a Yankee-style hot dog place, and the weirdest thing about it is its location: the northeast corner of People's Square, near the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center. I tried the dog last December, when I took the picture. There seemed something not quite right about the bun, but otherwise it walked like a hot dog, talked like a hot dog, and looked like a hot dog to me. And I should add tasted like a hot dog.

The controversy, if it can be called such, relates to the graphic logo of the jauntily leaning dog. Others in the blogosphere have pointed out that it's a copy of the logo used by Top Dog, the beloved and venerable mini-chain in Berkeley, California. I think it has also been reported that the Mac Dog owner once worked at Top Dog for a few months. Is Top Dog complaining? Not that I've heard. Should they complain? Unless they are planning to expand beyond their three East Bay shops to Mainland China, I think not. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

From the Shanghai Bites Archive: Bourdain Blows It

2009-02-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

[Note: I have decided to let my Shanghaibites.com website and blog expire, and am reprising selected posts here in the @GarySoup Blog. This one was posted on August 5, 2007 in Shanghai Bites]

I was excited to hear that the latest installment of Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" had him in Shanghai, sampling local small eats. When I caught the re-run, though, I found it to be a huge disappointment. Although the episode was identified as "Shanghai," there was a scant 10 minutes or so of an hour-long blitzkrieg Long March to Shangrila, and it was stock travelogue stuff. AB at the Nanxiang Steamed Dumpling Shop, proclaiming their xiaolong bao product to be "the best dumplings in the world." AB stopping by Xiao Yang's for some shengjian bao (a.k.a. "fried dumplings"). And finally, the really exciting and titillating blip of Anthony Bourdain buying "stinky tofu" from a street vendor and representing that it was something new to him. Then poof, off to cormorant fishing (another travelogue yawner).

The Nanxiang is certainly photogenic in its setting and activity (as in the above photo), and deserves a visit simply because it's a shrine to xiaolong bao. But it was galling to see Anthony Bourdain, as has been done with almost every video tour of Shanghai before, hunker down with the local tourism boosters and agree with them on the party line that the Nanxiang's XLB are the best anywhere. True, they once were, but if AB's team did their research, he would know that the Nanxiang's culinary glory has faded and there are probably mom-and-pop shops making tastier, nore delicate-skinned xiaolong bao in almost every Shanghai neighborhood today.

Shengjiang bao from Xiao Yang's establishment and even chou doufu from street vendors are also covered in almost any guide book a visitor is likely to bring with him. But I forget, Anthony Bourdain's show is on the Travel Channel, after all.

Vetting Bund Shanghai con't.: Four very different thumbs go up for New Year's Day dinner

2009-01-27T07:43:00.000-08:00

Expect the worst, but hope for the best, we like to say in the U.S.

A couple of posts ago, I embraced Bund Shanghai Restaurant tentatively, based on the imperfect nature of the breakfast fare I tried and/or of my sense of taste, then impaired by a head cold. Last night the Spring Festival gave me an excuse to take a flyer on it for dinner with my personal review panel in tow, they being three generations of very picky Shanghainese women in the persons of my wife, Mother-in-law and step-daughter. Coming in cold, as it were, with them, I was prepared to be both disappointed and scorned, but happily suffered neither fate: we all loved it from first bite to last.

I ordered conservatively, with the intent of getting a read on how well they did the Shanghai classics. We started with kao fu, five-spice beef and salty duck for cold dishes, followed by Yan du xian (see post below). pan-fried nian gao (also de rigeur for a Shanghainese New Year's feast) and hong shao rou (red-cooked pork belly), always a potential show-stopper. We added onion beef (on the request of my stepfaughter, whose tastes have become somewhat Americanized) and gambled on something called "Seaweed fish" from the Chef's Specials menu which sits in a little holder on each table.

The kao fu came first, and my MIL, the toughest critic of the bunch, led the chorus of praises for Bund Shanghai's version, which featured kaofu cut into smaller diamond shapes than usual, blanched Virginia peanuts and donggu (Shitake) mushrooms. The Nanjing salty duck was lean and appeared to have been freshly cured, showing no sign of refrigerator burn, dry edges or other discoloration. It was as good as I've had at Xiao Jinling in Shanghai, famous for its Nanjing duck. The five-spice beef was lean and tender shank meat, subtly spiced, not overpowered by five-spice powder as is often the case.

Yan du xian, a soup that eats like a casserole, is considered by some to be the most indispensible part of a Shanghainese New Year feast. It is listed on the Bund Shanghai menu as "Boiled Bacon and Pork Soup" and contains (for symbolic reasons) both cured pork and fresh pork, winter bamboo shoots and tofu sheet knots (bai ye jie). Bund Shanghai's version was comforting, rich, and salty. Some might find it too salty, but "salty" is part of its name and of its aim. The nian gao ("Rice Cake w/Shepherd's Purse and Shredded Pork) was the softest I've ever had, almost of melt-in-the-mouth tenderness. I wondered if this was a misfire, expecting a little more al dente character, but the three women were wowed by it.

The hong shao rou ("Soy sauce-braised pork" on the menu) was as unctuously appealing as only red-cooked pork belly can be, and Bund Shanghai's version did not commit the error of being too sweet. Hard to believe, but the owner told us that the house's red-cooked pork butt (ti pang) is even better.

The onion beef was unexciting to me, but the stepdaughter loved it and took the leftovers home with her.

The "seaweed fish" probably got the coolest reception, partly due to its unfamiliarity and possibly due to the fact that it came last, after we were pretty much stuffed. It turned out to be yellowfish filets that had been dipped in a thin, seaweed-infused batter and deep fried, then arranged on the plate to look like fish. "Not very good," said my wife, as she reached for another piece of it. I thought it was fine.

We finished with jiu niang ("Small Mochi in Rice Wine Sauce," as the menu put it), complements of the house. I abstained, because this dish is too sweet for my tastes, but my wife had no trouble eating my bowl as well as hers.

We spent time talking to some of the staff and found out more about the restaurant. The owner has been in the US from Shanghai for 20 years, and is an attorney with a private practice. He actually opened the restaurant create a livelihood for recently immigrating relatives. (His mother is the cashier, and a sister is the hostess).

There are two dinner chefs at Bund Shanghai. One formerly worked at the Jin Jiang Hotel in Shanghai, and the other worked as a chef for the Municipal Government of Shanghai (official functions and the like). We chatted briefly with the latter and found out he is actually from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, which made him a hit with the girls, who are Wuxiren as well). Both chefs had worked at various restaurants in the suburban Peninsula area before he recruited them to work for him, a reversal of the usual direction for talent drain.

Yan du xian: Shanghai's Spring Festival comfort food

2009-01-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

[Click on picture for source document and more pictures]

One of the first things I learned about Shanghainese people was that they all seemed to love a soup they called something like "EEE-tuh-shuh." It was something they might crave at any time of year, but was particularly important as a harbinger of Spring. It always contained both salted pork and fresh pork, and Winter bamboo shoots. Some versions, like my wife's, also contain bai ye jie, or knotted strips of tofu "sheet," and sometimes greens and bean thread will be added. It was some time before I figured out that "EEE-tuh-shuh" was the Shanghainese pronunciation for yan du xian (腌笃鲜). Here's how yan du xian was described in the only article I've ever been able to find in English, from a 2003 edition of the Shanghai Star:

With the Spring Festival (the Chinese Lunar New Year) drawing near, "Yan Du Xian" is again in the limelight. It was said that this course was the most necessary one on the dinner table.
Before 1900, peasants living in the suburban areas of Shanghai made their living by starting small businesses such as charcuteries. They raised piglets and sold the meat to the shop and the left-overs were usually cured into bacon which was hung high in corridors.
When bamboo shoots came out in the following year's early spring, local families took the bacon down and added it to some fresh meat and pieces of bamboo shoot.
The ingredients were placed in a large cauldron and cooked over a slow fire for a whole afternoon until it turned into a pot of delicious soup.
The pickling process is called "Yan" in the Shanghai dialect, the simmering is called "Du" and the fresh meat and bamboo shoots are called "Xian", giving the soup its name.
The usual recipe for this soup is first to stir-fry some ginger and shallots, add water and high-grade Shaoxing wine, boil the mixture then adddiamond-shaped slices of bacon, meat and bamboo shoots. Simmer on a slow fire for not less than two hours

Many festival foods in China are symbolic because of their names, which may be homonyms for, or rhyme with, the names for desirable things or qualities; since the pronunciation of words varies considerably among dialects, the symbolic importance of many such foods are not always transferable among regions and can sometimes be mystifying. The primal symbolism of yan du xiang, on the other hand, is fairly obvious, with the cured meat representing the previous year's bounty, and the fresh meat and especially the fresh bamboo shoots representing the promise of the new year.

Solid, Jackson! Shanghainese food comes back to SF Chinatown.

2009-01-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

If you had told me a year ago that there would be a full-on Shanghainese restaurant in one of the most venerable locations for a restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown by this time in 2009, my reaction would be about the same as if you had told me we would have a black President of the United States with "Hussein" as his middle name. As it was once explained to me, most of the prime retail property in Chinatown is in the hands of the various Family Associations, networks of immigrants and their descendants from various parts of Guangdong province. First dibs on leases for good restaurant locations usually go to the Home Boys, who are inclined to serve up home cooking, which means Cantonese food.

640 Jackson Street was long the address of the Jackson Cafe, a Chinese and American (not Chinese-American) restaurant which sustained me in my salad days nearly 50 years ago. It was known for brusque waiters (including one who usually had a transistor radio glued to his ear, listening to a Giants game), local celebrities like Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Lenny Bruce, and good cheap food from both sides of the menu. It eventually became "Jackson Pavillion," then "New Jackson Cafe," so you can imaging my reaction when it suddenly turned over as "Bund Shanghai" run by real Shanghainese people and offering a menu of real Shanghainese food. "Solid, Jackson!" (or something like that is what I said to myself). There hadn't been a Shanghainese restaurant anywhere near Chinatown for at least a decade, when one of the successors of Meilong Village/DPD gave up the ghost. It, even, was in the Kearny St. "Pale" as I call it, where non-Cantonese restaurants are tolerated, not on the hallowed ground of Jackson Street halfway up to Grant Avenue.

Bund Shanghai (known simply as "Shanghai Restaurant" in Chinese) opened on January 21, and I couldn't resist vetting the xiao long bao, of course, as well as a couple of my other Shanghainese breakfast standards, xian dou jiang and sheng jian bao. With the caveat that I was suffering from a head cold which somewhat impaired my tasting ability, here are my first reactions.

The xiao long bao were good, better than the mean for the San Francisco area, though not on a par with San Francisco's best (which are from a place called "Shanghai Dumpling King"). They were of the proper size and had the appropriate amount of "soup," but the wrappers were a touch too thick, and the broth slightly lacking in intensity.
The xian dou jiang (savory soy milk soup) was also good, but but not quite as good as the exemplary version at another San Francisco restaurant, Shanghai House (which serves up the best I have found in the Western Hemisphere). Bund Shanghai's version was well curdled, complex in flavor but neither salty nor spicy enough (but that could have been on account of my impaired taste buds).
The sheng jian bao (pan fried dumplings) were the biggest disappointment, partly because the Maître de said they were a house specialty. Like most American versions, they wimped out on the amount of pork fat in the broth, and they were barely browned on the bottoms instead of having the hell scorched out of them. They were fried bottoms down, not folded top down (Xiao Yang style) and garnished with sesame seeds. It's only fair to mention that I have yet to find a really satisfying serving pf sheng jian bao anywhere in the US.

I've yet to find anything earthshaking about Bund Shanghai , though there is still a lot on the "xiao chi" and dinner portions of the menu that I intend to check out. I'm inclined to cut the place some slack because it is a 15-minute walk for me; the other two Shanghainese restaurants in San Francisco (mentioned above) are an hour-long haul to the foggy Outer Richmond by bus, and, especially when it comes to breakast eats, it's all about location, location, location.

Say it ain't so: Molecular Gastronomy in China

2009-01-09T07:42:00.000-08:00

"Smoke made of green tea rises from the smoked salmon and avocado roll. Shark fin in saffron soup comes in a transparent capsule. Rosy beads in bird's nest soup look like fish roe but turn out to be made of jam."

These words begin the lead paragraph in an article titled "Tech away restaurants" about Molecular Gastronomy in Beijing, a movement spearheaded, ironically, by a noted Beijing Duck resturant, Da Dong. "Molecular Gastronomy," in case you've been living, er, sous vide, involves pushing the physical and chemical processes that occur in cooking to extremes, using expensive laboratory equipment, and indeed sometimes contracting out to laboratories run by mad scientists for prepping the food. I've railed against molecular gastronomy in Western settings, because I consider it an anti-food movement and it saddens me to see grown men playing with their food. It may have a place in the culinary spectrum, but too often shows up as a bailout for creative bankruptcy. What Da Dong (which may be trying to escape its image as a "Johnny One Note" restaurant) and apparently other places in China with a front-runner mentality are doing to Chinese food strikes me as especially insulting. Chinese food is more art than science; in fact, I'd put it near the furthest end, culinarily, of the art-scientist spectrum. Putting it in the hands of the men in white coats but no white hats is to be party to a marriage as forced as the pun in the title of the bombshell China Daily article.

Besides, haven't the food chemists in China had enough fun with Melamine?

The Won Lee Restaurant Sign: a wee bit of cultural justice in Florida

2009-01-01T08:22:00.000-08:00

Somehow I missed this story as it developed (I don't always have time to read the West Volusia Beacon) but spotted it in a year end summary in the DeLand-Deltona Beacon:

In 1999, DeLand passed a sign ordinance requiring signs to meet more stringent regulations. The city gave out-of-compliance businesses a 10-year grace period, which expired May 2009. Won Lee Chinese Restaurant owner Seamus Poon asked commissioners to not make him take down the historic 1950s- style sign. Later in the year, the commission postponed enforcing the ordinance on the Won Lee sign and other nonconforming signs until 2013.

Through the magic of Google search, I was able to find this excellent article about the background of the skirmish, which includes the background of Won Lee's owner and the origin of his colorful name, as well as identifying a hero on the DeLand City Commission, Leigh (not Lee) Matusick, who took up Mr. Poon's cause.

Come 2013, I hope to be there (at an age respected in Florida) to argue for giving both the Won Lee sign and the name Seamus Poon Historic Landmark status,

Only in China: Teacher Appreciation Fortune Cookie

2008-12-29T09:42:00.000-08:00

Fortune cookies in China? It's not unthinkable. I once hauled a big bag of freshly-made fortune cookies to Shanghai, and passed them out after a big meal with my extended family. They were a big hit with the inlaws, with a lot of guffawing over the appropriateness of the fortunes (thanks to some creative translations on the part of my wife).

Thanks to Jennifer 8. Lee, whose intrepid pursuit of fortune cookie lore tracked down the only person making fortune cookies in China, I found the website of Beijinger Nana Shi. She seems to have a flair for the high end possibilities of the fortune cookie, and her website's description of her "Teacher Appreciation Fortune Cookie" is probably bookmarked in many a student's browser (not to mention the browser of his or her teacher):

"This delicious cookie is an example of the best of both worlds! This Giant Gourmet Fortune Cookie is hand-dipped in your favorite Belgian Chocolates and decorated with M&M®s candies! This confectionary colossus is an incredible combination of gourmet cookie, chocolates or caramel and melt-in-your-mouth candy! It's almost the size of a football and weighs in at just under 1lb. Your personalized message goes on the foot-long fortune inside! Confectionary Artisans hand wrap each cookie in a crisp, clear cellophane bag and tie it with a matching water-color Ombre Wire-Edged Ribbon. Fortune Message: The best teachers teach from the heart, not from the book."

Remember the simple days when a shiny apple would do?

Go for the education, stay for the beef noodles: On-campus eats in Shanghai

2008-12-28T18:24:00.000-08:00

Fudan University cafeteria photo by Mimi Yang, dianping.com member

In Googling around in search of whatever it was in preparation for my last Shanghai trip, I stumbled across an informational website for Shanghai with something different to offer a foodie. While websites abound listing or recommending all manner of eating places in Shanghai, it wasn’t until I discovered shanghaitown, a website rich in information for overseas students, that I ever saw a guide to on-campus dining in Shanghai. This is a topic of particular interest to me, since I sometimes stay at an apartment conveniently located to both Fudan University (scrumptious beef noodles) and Tongji University (terrific T-bone steak). The full rundown, school by school, begins here; the website’s recommended list is summarized here:

Shanghai University Baoshan Campus: Xinjiang mixed Long noodle with vegetable in the Islamic Restaurant, Boiled Beef in Hot Sauce, Rice Cake with T Bone Steak, Pan Fried Beef Bun, Sandwich and Coffee in No.5 Street Restaurant.

Tongji University: T Bone Steak, Fried Egg with Tomato, Beef Noodles.

Shanghai Normal University: Saute Rice Noodles with Green Bean Sprouts on the second floor of West Restaurant, Korean Well-Done Rice by Stone Pot.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University: Beef Ramen Noodles,

Northeastern University, China: good snack bars

Shanghai Medical College Fudan University: Savoury and Crisp Chicken, Pork in Soy Sauce

East China Normal University: Earthenware Casserole, Malatang.

Fudan University: Beef Ramen Noodles

Foreign Trade College in Songjiang University-Town: Breakfast

Shanghai International Studies University: Steamed Bun

Lixin University in Songjiang University-Town: Barbecued pork, Steamed Bun

East China University of Politics and Law in Songjiang University-Town: Pan Fried Pot Sticker, Fried Egg with Tomatoes

Northeastern University in Songjiang University-Town: Spicy Chicken

The full skinny is worth reading for the pithy comments by students. One noted that there are many restaurants at Tongji University and offered these words of wisdom:

"Newly-opened restaurants are not as good as previous-opened ones in taste; restaurants with good environment are not as good as restaurants with bad environment in taste".

Happy Dumpling Day!

2008-12-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Children make dumplings to celebrate the upcoming winter solstice day at a kindergarten in Hami, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Dec. 19, 2008. As the Chinese tradition, people eat dumplings to celebrate the winter solstice day. (Xinhua/ Cai Zengle)

It's the Winter Solstice, a traditional day for eating dumplings. In most of China, this means ear-shaped jiaozi, though in the south of China and in the diaspora stuffed sweet rice dumplings (tang yuan) are substituted. I'm off to to enjoy a dumpling lunch with friends, but there are some mouth-watering dumpling photo essays from the Chinese media here, here, and here. A nice overview of Chinese winter lore can be found in the Black Dragon Press Journal.

Going out for Chinese in Shanghai, Circa 1935

2008-12-20T21:58:00.000-08:00

Whether you were a westerner living in the International Settlement or the French Concession or a well-heeled local, if you went out for a big Chinese dinner in 1930s Shanghai, you probably headed for Sun Ya. Sun Ya, now known as Xinya, is a mammoth four-floor establishment which served the best in Cantonese cuisine. Although the quality of the food has suffered in the intervening years, Xinya remains a popular establishment for large gatherings, especially wedding parties. The seafood "hot pot" meals and the "dim sum" are still worth a visit, as is the fact that Sun Ya/Xinya is somewhat of a culinary shrine. Because Shanghai had for so long been the primary point of contact with China for resident and visiting Westerners, and because Sun Ya was the restaurant they were most likely to know, it played a large part in establishing expectations for Cantonese food throughout the Western world.

A prized possession of mione is a copy of a 28-page English-language Bill of Fare for Sun Ya, circa 1935. I don't know the exact date of the menu, though it's apparently from shortly after the restaurant moved from 579 Nanjing Rd. to its current location. It is more than a menu, but a tutorial in dining at a Chinese Restaurant. Its glosses provide an inside look Chinese Restaurants of the time, including an explanation of the strange goings-on that might have been encountered by the unaware diner. A scanned version of it is available for perusal on the eatingchinese.org website.

I'm fond of the "Miscellaneous Dishes" section of the menu on page 8. Item number 100, footnoted, is "Sweet and Sour Pork*." The footnote identifies this dish a "a very popular Cantonese dish among foreigners." That, of course was before General Tso's Chicken.

Cinema Stir-Fry: A Symphony of Cooking Utensils

2008-12-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

This is the second post in a series I've decided to call "Cinema Stir-Fry" (Celeste Heiter's wonderul blog has bragging rights to "Chopstick Cinema"), the first being about a move called Xian Doujiang.

A Symphony of Cooking Utensils (that's a literal translation, which hopefully sounds less cumbersome in Chinese) was made in 1983 by Teng Wenji, but somewhat prophetically points to the economic reforms of the 1990's. The protagonist, Niu Hong (played by Sun Chun) is a young cooking school graduate who is made manager of the dysfunctional Chun Zheng Restaurant. The restaurant is rundown and simply drifting (it's a State Owned Enterprise) and the idealistic Niu takes it upon himeslf to shape it up. He performs miracles with apparent ease, getting bank loans for remodeling, upgrading the menu and generally gussying up the place and the employees' attitudes. Soon the place is turning a handsome profit, which he re-invests in his employees as well as catering and other related activities. Along the way he deals with petty frictions between employees, truculent customers, and ultimately Communist Party apparatchiks, who are appalled by his personal initiative and insubordination (which includes sending a representative to Party meetings he considers useless instead of attending himself). Most of all, they are miffed at his failure to turn over all his profits to the Party, and Niu's refusal to bend on the issue gets him fired.

Intertwined with the restaurant reform saga are several love interests, including a couple of triangles in which Niu is the odd man out. One of these triangles includes Liu Junying (played by Yin Tingru), who is supporting herself through art school by working at the restaurant. Niu becomes infatuated with her, but finds out she is engaged to a famous young writer (who plays a key role in saving Niu's bacon by the end of the movie).

The movie has a thin but well paced plot, with excellent cinematography, and the enigma of Niu's capacity for mismanaging love even when it's thrown in his lap keeps it from being utterly banal. Although Niu's love life doesn't pan out (so to speak), the movie ends with Communist ideology and the free enterprise spirit walking off hand in hand.

Although a majority of the movie was filmed in the restaurant, there are disappointlngly few scenes of food and food being prepared, with the highlights here being a watermelon feast that Niu treats the employees to, and a scene of Niu cooking in the busy kitchen.

The Man Who Would Not Eat Chinese Food

2008-12-12T09:48:00.000-08:00

Stephen Conroy, Australia's Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, is from Melbourne but might as well be from Mars, according to his peers: he does not eat Chinese food!

Phillip Hudson reports on this rara avis in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Robert Ray famously called him a dalek, but the faction warlords from Labor's NSW Right thought they had encountered a genuine alien in Stephen Conroy. They identified with his confidence and ferocious determination to win. They even begrudgingly tolerated his lifelong abstinence from alcohol. But how could they do business with a man who did not eat Chinese?

"One of the first right wing factional dinners I ever went to in Sydney was of course Chinese," Conroy says. Insisting he did not indulge the cuisine, his co-diners stared "at me as though I was from another planet, not just from Melbourne". That's because the real deals in the NSW Right are sealed over a good Chinatown meal, often within stumbling distance of the ALP's Sussex St headquarters.

"If you can't eat Chinese food you starve," says the former Labor leader Kim Beazley. "But I think Steve lives on adrenalin. He could quite cheerfully turn up at a Chinese restaurant for three hours on a glass of water while he pursues politics. For those who are his enemies, they always ought to be aware this bloke would rather a fight than a feed."

Fortunately, Conroy is not Minister for Dining, Catering and Carryout.

Potstickers, Pilsener Urquell and Puccini

2008-12-11T23:17:00.000-08:00

My onetime favorite restaurant in Shanghai was a State Owned Enterprise, Yu You (越友), which roughly translates to "Yu [Shaoxing] Opera Friends." It actually started life as a gathering place for fans and performers of this musical form, and I could imagine the strains of "Dream of Red Mansions" filling the air in the main dining room, which was alway full of good cheer due in part to the tall bottles of Shanghai Beer which seemed to adorn every table. Yu You has been gone for years, progress and profit having replaced it with an upscale Japanese restaurant called Ambrosia. According to an article in The Prague Post by Wendy Leung, however, the combination of Chinese food, opera (both Western and Chinese) and beer lives on in the Czech Rebublic at a little restaurant in Vinohrady called "Dobrý den."

Have you ever been at a pub and thought, “If only I could nosh on Chinese food and listen to live opera while enjoying my beer?” Well, someone has. The Dobrý den, a little neighborhood Chinese restaurant in Vinohrady, launched its first “opera pub” night in late November, and will host another Jan. 12.Restaurateur Patty Zhu was an opera singer for four years in Beijing and Hong Kong, before finding her way into the import business in Prague and eventually opening Dobrý den last year. The restaurant soon became a hangout for professional Czech singers in the area, and the idea of pooling their talents germinated.While a pianist accompanies on a portable electric keyboard, Zhu and her friends belt out French, Italian and Chinese opera favorites in front of a jam-packed dining room, while guests drink beer and snack on tapas-style Chinese plates.If you’re looking for a surreal evening, you’ll find one here. For more information, check Dobry-den.eu.

According to Dobrý den's website, the musical offerings at the first "opera pub night" was:

Mozart: duet Don Giovanni
Cherubin
Puccini : Kalaf
Samson and Dalila
G. Verdi: Libiano
Dvorak: Rusalka
Dvorak: Princ
Why are the roses red
Weber: Memory (Cats)
Mayila
Con te partino (Bruschelli)

There's no mention of what "tapas" were served, but the restaurant's website lists the lunch menu. Did you know Sweet and Sour Pork is "Vepřové ve sladkokyselé omáčce" in Czech?

Northern Chinese food

2008-12-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled across an article about a man named Sun Jiantao, who opened a restaurant called "Chinese Dragon" in Murmansk, Russia. The article was in Chinese, but according to an automatic translation, I think it claims to be the first Chinese restaurant north of the Arctic Circle (66° N. Latitude), though you can't trust those machine translations. I knew it wasn't the only Chinese restaurant north of the Arctic Circle; my favorite Chinese restaurant that I've never been to, Misigisaq Restaurant, is in Sisimiut, Greenland, (latitude 66.93). I also knew that my daughter can claim to have been to northernmost McDonald's in the world, in Rovaniemi, Finland (lat. 66.48), and if there's a McDonald's there, there has to be a Chinese restaurant or two in the vicinity.

But was the Chinese Dragon in Murmansk (lat. 68.59) the northernmost Chinese restuarant in the world? I had to know, but it didn't take long to debunk that notion. As a fan of Cheuk Kwan's Chinese Restaurants series of movies, I knew all about Michael Wong's "Lille Buddha" in Tromsø, Norway, and its competitors. A quick check revealed Tromsø's latitude to be 69.65, esily besting Murmansk. Not only that, but Tromsø may have as many as six Chinese restaurants; I can't be sure that they all are still open, but in addition to Lille Buddha, I found references to Tang's restaurant, Choi's Kjøkken, Lotus, Shanghai, and Il Mare (which doubles as a Latino dance hall on weekends), all in Tromsø.

Could Tromsø be bested? I soon found what must be the real Heavyweight Champion of Northern Chinese food, Ny-Ålesund, Norway. At 78.93, it is so far north that it's mostly populated by staff at climate research stations, and a flickr photo displays what appears to be a nameless Chinese restaurant. Search attempts to find a name for this restaurant pricked that bubble, however. According to the account of Ship's Captain Philip Rentell of the Saga Rose

"As I walked around, tourist style, I was surprised to come across what appeared to be a Chinese restaurant. On closer observation it was, of course, the Chinese research station from Shanghai, but the large stone Chinese dragons outside were both impressive and deceiving."

The real winner? Until someone furnishes evidence of a Chinese restaurant in Longyearbyen, Norway (lat. 78.22), the northernmost place to get a Chinese restaurant meal appears to be in a town right here in the U. S. of A. (and with no funny letters in its name), Barrow AK, Latitude 71.29. That place would be Sam and Lee's Chinese Restaurant, at 1204 Agvik, next to Pepe's North of the Border, which might be the northernmost Mexican restaurant in the world.

What kind of welcome will you find at Sam & Lee's? Take it from local Floyd Davison's advice to a visitor:

"Whatever, when you get here... get settled in and then drop by Sam & Lee's Chinese Restaurant. It is possible to miss me in the evening. These days between 9 and 11 in the morning is almost a guaranteed thing though. Just look for one big fat old guy and one short fat (older) guy (me) sitting in the middle of the room downstairs acting like they own the joint. (You won't have to find us actually, as we usually latch onto every tourist who walks in, just for entertainment."

And give me a report on the Mongolian Beef, willya?

Crime-fighting fortune cookies

2008-12-06T09:40:00.000-08:00

Imagine opening a fortune cookie and getting a message that says "Watch out for pickpockets – mind your valuables." This might happen to you if you are dining at the Crown Buffet Chinese restaurant in Leeds, England, reports the Yorkshire Evening News. It seems that inserting anti-crime messages in fortune cookies was the bright idea of the West Yorkshire Police and Leeds City Council, and supported whole-heartedly by the restaurant owner (we don't know if there was an "or else" involved). The cookies will also be handed out in car parks. I don't know if Jennifer 8. Lee has checked in with an opinion on this, but to me it would take all the fun out of fortune cookies if you opened one and it said "Lock valuables out of sight or take them with you" -- even if you added "between the sheets."

Trading Chinese food for sex with prisoners -- Since we're on the subject of crime, I found in The Watertown Daily Times, a newspaper I grew up reading (and the long winters in its watershed area can make anyone go goofy), this article on bizarre goings-on at a "correctional facility" in Gouverneur, N.Y. It seems that a frisky female commissary worker had a few sexual favors on the menu for male inmates. Not only that, but "She also provided inmates working in the commissary with food from the outside — including McDonald's fare, Chinese food and brownies," according to the article.

I don't know about you, but if I were a male inmate, I think gettin' a little from a person of the opposite sex would be treat enough; getting some Chinese food -- even takeout Chinese -- as well would be like eating your tofu and having it too.

Children on the sauce in Shaoxing

2008-12-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

When you think of Shaoxing, you usually think of the yellow rice wine they are famous for. Not to worry, the children in the picture aren't waiting for a new batch of Shaoxing jiu to be drinkable, they are watching the manufacturing of another kind of sauce. They're at the new National Sauce Culture Museum in Shaoxing, and according to that institution's website, the museum "digs up the profound sauce culture of Shaoxing which has famous“ three urns culture“( wine urn, sauce urn, dye urn) and extensive Chinese sauce culture." With admirable candor, the museum goes on to add "It is rooted in the background of Zhejiang province with great culture and adjust to the domestic active market economy and also the trends of building museums by big enterprises abroad .At the same time we are glad to get the support of local tourism department ." The local "big enterprise" behind it is the Shaoxing Zhewei Foods Company, but the website hastens to addthat Prof. Zhao Rongguang of Zhejiang University is in charge of designing and maintaining the museum.

I was tipped off to the existience of the National Sauce Culture Muzeum by an article in the Fall 2008 issue of Flavor & Fortune Magazine, which delivered a little more clarity than the English language component of the museum's website:

This museum tells the history of sauces beginning with the first person known in the sauce industry, Cai Yung (133 - 192 CE). His statue graces the entrance as does a wall telling about sauce culture in China. These and the museum tell, in Chinese and English, how soy sauces were taken to Japan by Monk Jianzhen in 755 CE, and lots more.

The Flavor & Fortune article was written by the magazine's founder/publisher Jacqueline M. Newman, professor and Chinese cookbook collector, who gave a plenary lecture at the 2007 China 1st Sauce Culture International Forum, which dedicated the museum. In her account she reports that "On the way home [the speakers] stopped at a Shaoxing wine factory and tasted and viewed specifics to that local fantastic fermented product."

We have no pictures of the adults on the sauce in Shaoxing.

Youdunzi, you done me good!

2008-12-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

I was late coming to Youdunzi, long a popular Shanghai street food, but I have an excuse. Youdunzi are usually made by the same street vendors (most often women) who make chou doufu (stinky tofu) and I find it hard to pass up another rendition of stinky tofu when I come across it. After repeatedly hearing Shanghainese (including my sister-in-law, Daisy) wax rhapsodic about youdunzi, I finally got into them near the end of my Shanghai stay in October, and regretted my tardiness in doing so.

A glance at the picture above is enought to tell you that youdunzi are tasty; after all, anything coming out of a deep fryer looking golden brown and crunchy like that have got to be tasty, right? But just what are youdunzi?

Youdunzi (油墩子), if you auto-translate it will come out as "oil block." "You" means oil, and often, as in this case, signifies deep fried, and "dun" means "block." But why "block"? I don't know, but some older Shanghainese pronounce it youdengzi and insist the name should be rendered "油凳子" where the "deng" character means "stool," as in the type of stool you sit on, and the food in question does resemble a shallow stool in shape. I'd tend to agree with that theory, except searching on "油凳子" doesn't yield many results, whereas "油墩子"does.

To make our deep fried "blocks" or "stools," a flour, water and egg batter is pressed into a special long-handled mold (shown in the picture on the right), and this "skin" is stuffed with a mixture of shredded luobo (daikon) and minced green onion, then covered with more batter and lowered into boiling oil. The process is illustrated in this photo tutorial (in Chinese). What emerges from the oil is a marvel of delicate crunchiness surrounding a tangy soft inner melange of savory daikon and green onion. Some versions add white pepper for additional spiciness, and some also add shreds of carrot. There are even recollections of sweet versions, in which red bean paste is used as the stuffing.

If you are averse to street food, you'd better hope you know someone whose grandmother makes youdunzi, because you are unlikely to come across these in restaurants.

Window Shopping in Chinatown with Google Street View

2008-11-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

View Larger Map

While most visitors to San Francisco's Chinatown know Grant Avenue and the shops vending Chinoiserie of various sorts, the real heartbeat of Chinatown is Stockton Street, where the locals shop for everything that goes into making a meal. At peak times (midday or late afternoons) on certain blocks, the pedestrian density rivals anything I've seen in Shanghai or Hong Kong, and the provender on display is nearly as exotic.

I've put this up as an experiment; elbow your way through the virtual crowds, and imagine the smell of the durians, the sounds of the live chickens and bullfrogs on display. Let me know what you think.

Din Tai Fung Trumped on Home Turf?

2008-11-27T10:17:00.000-08:00

I've long maintained, sometimes vociferoously, that there were cheaper and better alternatives in Shanghai to vaunted Taiwan upstart Din Tai Fung's xiao long bao, even though the iconic Nanxiang has fallen from grace. Xiao long bao is, after all, a populist food, and places like Jia Jia Tang Bao and De Long Guan are just doing what comes naturally when they provide superior dumplings in a no-frills environment at a fraction of Din Tai Fung's price.

It comes as no surprise to me, therefore, that Din Tai Fung might be trumped on its own home turf (Taipei) in the xiao long bao department, and this article in The Taipei Times seems to comfirm that suspicion:

Mention xiaolongbao (小龍包), or steamed dumplings, and the name Din Tai Fung (鼎泰豐) is bound to enter the conversation. But any dumpling aficionado is just as likely to tout a cheaper and even better alternative.
One such place is Mingyue Tangbao (明月湯包, Mingyue Steamed Dumplings), which enjoys a loyal following. During busy times it’s not uncommon to find a line of people waiting outside this modest shop near the Tonghua Street (通化街) night market.... .

Both connoisseurs and newcomers should try the house specialty, mingyue tangbao (明月湯包, NT$120 per basket of eight), the shop’s name for its xiaolongbao. The marks of a good dumpling were all there: the outer flour wrap was delicate and thin but didn’t break when picked up with chopsticks; each dumpling had a good proportion of soup, meat and dough; and the minced pork was lean and tasted fresh.

Mingyue has also caught the attention of bloggers, most notably Monya, whose blog 懶洋洋胡言亂語 (roughly "Indolent Babblings") is in Chinese but whose mouthwatering pictures of the small eats offered by Mingyue are worth 10,000 words.

Gung Haggis Fat Choy Tix Soon!

2008-11-26T12:00:00.000-08:00

I have favorite Chinese restaurants I've never been to, like Misigisaq Restaurant in Sisimiut, Greenland, and if I have favorite events I've never been to, topping the list would the annual bash in Vancouver known as Gung Haggis Fat Choy. This event features a 10-course Chinese banquet with a Haggis theme, lavish entertainment, and probably a modicum of sedate tipsiness (it being Vancouver, after all). You see, Robert Burns' Birthday usually occurs around Chinese New Year, both events feature big meals, and there's this guy named Todd Wong (sometimes a.k.a. Toddish McWong) who.... but let his website tell you all about how one logical, if goofy, idea metamorphosed into a mega social event that spun off a dragon boat racing team, promotes intercultural good will and supports the arts.

Todd's website is about to announce the availability of tickets for the 2009 event soon, and maybe it's time to push aside the specter of a bland boring turkey and smack your lips at the thought of GHFC's legendary deep-fried haggis wontons.

Shanghai: a xiao long bao report card

2008-11-23T19:41:00.000-08:00

I recently wrapped up a 30-day visit to Shanghai in which I couldn’t resist repeated indulgence in my passion for xiao long bao. I didn’t consciously plan a systematic review of the state of the dumpling art, but there were XLB vendors of repute that I had to track down simply because I knew they were there, and there were other places I stumbled across that I couldn’t turn away from without vetting. All told, I had xiao long bao at least 15 times, at 12 different venues. If you are wondering where Din Tai Fung is in all of this, I have discussed my reaction to DTF in the past in this and other forums; in a nutshell, I found DTF’s XLB to be very good, roughly the equal to Jia Jia Tang Bao’s, but so grossly over-priced by local standards that I found no reason to return to DTF on this trip.

Here is my October, 2008, Shanghai xiao long bao report card:

A+

De Long Guan -- Jiangxi Lu

De Long Guan made its way to the head of the class by shamelessly pandering to my memories of my first xiao long bao 16 years earlier. This Proustian feat was described in an earlier post and won't be repeated here.

Jia Jia Tang Bao -- Huanghe Lu
Jia Jia Tang Bao -- Liyuan Lu

Despite my preference for De Long Guan's evocative product, Jia Jia Tang Bao must still be considered the King of Xiao Long Bao in Shanghai, because the former's smallness of scale and its somewhat daunting premises make it unlkely to assume the role of a destination restaurant. Jia Jia, on the other hand, has its small red-hatted armies of ingenues (see the picture art the top) well trained to turn out sizeable quantities of baozi with the speed and precision of DTF's operating theater personnel.

The xiao long bao at Jia Jia are of uniformly thin skin, carefully wrapped and filled with solid and "soup" fillings of complexity, consistency and flavor. I didn't detect a whit of difference between the two locations of Jia Jia, or between their current locations and the former location on Yunnan Nan Lu.

Long Pao Xie Huang Xiao Long (Qibao)
Nanjing Tang Bao (Shouning Lu)
Shang Wei Guan (Xiangshan Lu)

Of these three, Shang Wei Guan was the most frustrating. It had been given the highest rating for taste by dianping.com reviewers of any XLB specialist that had a significant number of reviews, and was the hardest for me to track down, which I did on my last day in Shanghai. The XLB had amazingly thin wrappers, the thinnest I have encountered in years, but they were a bit sloppy in construction, and also tossed casually in the steamer so that they were randomly scattered in the long rather than than nicely arranged (one was actually lying on its side). Even so, I would have ranked them higher if the soup had had the intensity of De Long Guan’s. Long Pao Xie Huang Xiao Long in Qibao (on the Qibao Old Street) and Nanjing Tang Bao on Shouning Lu (a pretty good little food street itself) were two I stumbled across. They both came close to Jia Jia perfection, failing primarily in the flavor density of the broth.

Fu Chun Xiao Long (Yuyuan Lu)
Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian (3rd Fl)
Shanghai Lao Cheng Huang Miao (Haichao Lu)
Yi Pin Guang Tang Bao (Guangyuan Lu)
90 Duolun Lu Tea House

Fu Chun Xiao Long also was something of a disappointment, primarily because of my expectations; it had been mentioned in the same breath as Jia Jia Tang Bao and De Long Guan in a 2007 “Best of” listing by dianping.com but it fell short of the other two, in my estimation. In particular, the wrappers were not only thick, but constructed with blow-holes on top, like the version the Taiwanese used to make and top off with a pea.

For the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian (or whatever it’s called these days) this was the first time I’d tried the third floor XLB, though I have noted elsewhere that the second floor and the ground floor takeout XLB have fallen far from the pinnacle of excellence of the Nanxiang’s heyday. I had heard various reports on whether the third floor XLB were better than downstairs, and I found that they seemed to be a bit fresher, but with little other discernible difference. This may be due to the fact that the third floor has its own production crew and facility, while the other two levels get theirs mass produced in the highly visible ground floor kitchen, where the stockpiling is obvious to anyone who has stood in the takeout line.

Shanghai Lao Cheng Huang Miao is a chain of restaurants featuring Shanghai small eats; there happened to be a branch within short walking distance of my hotel so I was able to enjoy passable XLB for breakfast at will. They were not, however, of destination quality.

Yi Pin Guan Tang Bao is a venue I discovered when I was giving some visiting friends a walking tour of the French Concession area and they expressed a desire to try xiao long bao. Following my instincts, I left Hengshan Lu and wandered in the direction of Jiaotong University and sure enough, found Yi Pin steaming XLB on the street. They were great if you are there and hungry, but, like Lao Cheng Huang Miao’s, not something to go out of your way for.

“C” is probably a generous rating for the XLB at the tea house at 90 Duolun Lu (I never caught the actual name). They were oversized and bland, but came as an accompaniment to a lovely glass of longjing tea and I can’t think of a nobler role for xiao long bao.

Not Rated

De Xing Guan -- Zhonghua Lu

De Xing Guan’s xiao long bao are not orthodox xiao long bao, being oversized and of a different, though satisfying flavor in the filling. De Xing Guan has been around and revered for its tasty food for so long that event though what they dish out is, for lack of a better description, tantamount to a Shanghai version of a New York soup dumpling a la Joe’s Shanghai, they can call it anything they want.

Chinese Menu Translations: No more "Government Abused Chicken?"

2008-11-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

English translations on Chinese Restaurant menus have long been a source of cheap yucks. Ludicrous, and sometimes even x-rated translations on menus have been a major component in the corpus of "Chinglish", a phenomenon that inspired web sites and picture books. Now, if the municipal government of Beijing has its way, these gaffes will become a thing of the past.

According to a China Daily article,

The Beijing municipal government's foreign affairs office and the Beijing tourism bureau have jointly published a book, Chinese Menu in English Version. It lists 170 pages of Chinese and Western dishes, and beverages. And nowhere is "chicken without a sexual life" to be found.

The book will no doubt come in handy to those restaurants that depend on translation software for the English names of dishes. "Government Abused Chicken" is now correctly rendered as Kung Pao Chicken.

The official list is published on many (mostly Chinese) websites. The most accessible source is here. I'm working on a spreadsheet version, with Pinyin Romanization included.

Thankfully,

The pamphlet does not include such items as "General Tso's (or Tsao's) Chicken" and "Singapore Fried Rice", popular mostly overseas. For that matter, Yang Chow Fried Rice and even the well-liked Egg Foo Young are not included.

Those dishes are on their own. And to correct another omission, 狗肉 on your menu is "dog."

Pinda-Pinda, Lekka-Lekka

2008-11-17T09:58:00.000-08:00

Or, on Chinese peanut cookie vendors, Amsterdam, and the national anthem of Indonesia.

According to an article in the Hong Kong Standard, pinda-men, or peanut cookie vendors, were the first Chinese many people in Amsterdam had ever seen. At the onset of the 1930’s, Amsterdam’s small Chinese community consisted mostly of seamen, tucked way in boarding houses when not shipping out. Came the economic depression:

"Then, hard times had hit the small Chinese community. One old man, Ng Kwai, started to sell candies on the street and found that peanut cookies from southern China were a hit. Many of his compatriots soon followed, making the pinda-man into a phenomenon."

This phenomenon was noted and magnified in 1933, when an entertainer who performed under the name of Willy Derby recorded a ditty based on the chant or the pinda-men, “Pinda-Pinda, Lekka-Lekka.” “Pinda” means peanut in Dutch and “lekka” means delicious (think “lekker”). This recording met with riotous success in Dutch-speaking parts of the world, including, famously (or infamously depending on where you sit), Indonesia. It is widely believed, it seems, that a little bit of plagiarism transformed this ditty's chorus into Indonesia's natonal anthem, Indonesia Raya. As one website puts it,

"The national anthem of Indonesia ‘Indonesia Raya’ composed by WR Supratman, welknown because his face is on the 50.000 Rp note, which was played for the first time in public on the [previously mentioned] Youth congress is also said to be an imitation of a Dutch song i.e. ‘Pinda, Pinda, Lekka, Lekka’ sung in the 1920’s by Willy Derby, a man who became famous in Indonesia because he is also the composer of ‘Hallo Bandoeng".

This contention is unerstandably controversial, with egos at stake. A ditty in Dutch about a poor Chinese street vendor the inspiraton for Indonesia's national anthem?? Its' been the subject of much discussion in area message boards, with some claiming there is little resemblance between the two songs. One enterprising individual even put together a video for presentation on Youtube comparing, phrase by phrase, the chorus of Pinda-Pinda Lekka-Lekka with Indonesia Raya. You be the judge.

Xinjiang Matang -- an ancient and arty confection

2008-11-15T10:06:00.000-08:00

Across the street from the hotel that was my home for a month in Shanghai is a mall with a plaza in front of it. This plaza, and the sidewalk along the entire block to the east, hosts an impromptu night market offering an ever-changing array of temptations ranging from knock-off handbags to stinky tofu. One night I spotted a curious sight on the plaza: a vendor with a flat-bed tricycle upon which sat what appeared to be a massive cake, partially cut away, and artfully decorated with candied fruit on the top. This sight rang a bell with me, and hastening to my computer I found a message board discussion I had seen before that identified this wonder as a Xinjiang confecton called matang (麻糖) sold by itinerant Uighur vendors.

I don't have much of a sweet tooth, but I ccoudn't resist returning and buying a hunk, meekly agreeing to the asking price and not complaining when he "accidentally" cut off a piece that was considerably heavier than the jin (0.5 Kg) I asked for. By then I was surrounded by other vendors who were either admiring my temerity or bemused by my naivete. Oh well, I ended up with a fine 20 oz. hunk of rare (and not too sweet) candy for around $5 in US money. As I found out later, the Xinjiang matang is pricey by anyone's standards because it's almost solid walnut paste in composition.

My vendor turned out to be one of a group of nine who had traveled together from Xinjiang. I found this out later from the restaurant proprietor when my Sister-in-Law and I went to dinner at our local Lanzhou La Mian joint and found four matang tricycles parked in front, their owners enjoying the fresh-pulled noodles. (Around the same time an "invasion" of another 10 or so vendors was reported by the media in Jiaxing, south of Shanghai; they were cited for lack of permits and ridden out of town on a rail, something that wouldn't happen in laissez-faire Shanghai.)

Subsequent Googling and machine translation of Chinese sources revealed the following about Xinjiang Matang: It's a specialty of the town of Hotan (or Khotan) in southwest Xinjiang, home of Xinjiang's famous thin-shelled walnuts and possessed of a large Uighur population. The basic process, passed down from generation to generation, seems to be to boil grapes (which the area is also noted for) down to a syrup, then add crushed walnuts and continue the boil. Later, when the mass achieves the right density, it is pressed into a mold and decorated with candied fruit. It's not surprising that the decoration is typically artistic, as this region is also famous for fine carpets.

De Long Guan xiao long bao: a Proustian straight shot to 1992

2008-11-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

I just wrapped up a month-long stay in Shanghai, no small part of which was devoted to checking out the state of xiao long bao and other small eats. I hit a total of 12 different xiao long bao venues; I'll preview the bottom 11 in a subsequent post, but Number 1 deserves its own paean.

I had my xiao long bao epiphany in early April, 1992, at Shanghai's Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian, the place that put xiao long bao on the map and established what was indisputably the gold standard for the noble dumpling. The timing of my visit was fortuitous, because less than two weeks later the Nanxiang was shut down for extensive remodeling and reconfiguration as a more tourist-oriented venue, a metamorphosis that seemed to trigger an inexorable decline in the quality of the xiao long bao served there.

Since my first xiao long bao experiences, I've been hunting down the best XLB I could find wherever I happen to be, and for the last couple of years have been flying the flag for Jia Jia Tang Bao as the best Shanghai had to offer. Visits to the two current Jia Jia locations earlier on this trip did nothing to dissuade me from that opinion, but a subsequent visit to De Long Guan did.

In truth, I had begun to doubt my memory of what I had been so excited about 16 years ago. Was I chasing a phantom, a platonic ideal that didn't exist? Not in the least, it turned out: what the woman at De Long Guan set before me was nothing less than a Proustian straight shot back to 1992 in the form of six precious dumplings. The very size seemed right for once, a millimeter of two smaller in diameter than prevails today. The wrapper was as thin as anybody else's, and the solid filling perfectly chewy, not grainy. But it was the intensity of the “soup” that brought back the flood of memories. It was an intensity that some might fault as too salty, but in reality it was the right partner leading in the irascibly Shanghainese dance of salty and sweet that serves so well to corral and deepen the flavor of a complex medium. I ordered a second steamer to make sure my taste buds weren't playing tricks on me, and the magic remained. I'll be visiting De Long Guan again before I leave town, and praying it will be there when I come back in a year's time. It's a hole-in-the-wall that certainly looks like its been there forever.

De Long Guan (德笼馆)
473 Jiangxi Zhong Lu nr. Nansuzhou Lu

Diving into dianping.com

2008-09-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

In the course of strategy planning for my next trip to Shanghai, I've been digging deeply into dianping.com, China's user-driven restaurant review site. If you haven't heard of it, it combines a Zagat-like scoring system with a Yelp!-like youth and enthusiasm. The full name of the organization behind it is Da Zhong Dian Ping (大众点评) which can be translated as "restaurant criticism by the masses" and massive it is, with ranked reviews of 27,777 eateries in Shanghai alone, at last count. Imaging having a ranked list of nearly 900 noodle shops reviewed by locals, or of 180 places specializing in xiao long bao (I'll try to hit them all, of course).

One difficulty with dianping.com is that it is all in Chinese and my knowledge of written chinese is scant, to say the least. However, by diligently using various machine translation tools and a little imagination, I can more or less figure out who is saying what about where. One of my discoveries was that at least one person was already writing reviews in English, so I took the time to figure out how to register at the website, post reviews, and rank and categorize my eating experiences in Shanghai. I am now proud member no. 3,043,109. I've written 9 reviews so far, and uploaded a few pictures. I've even gathered a few posies from a mini-fan club, who seem to feel grateful that a foreigner has joined the picnic. You can check me out here.

Top 10 What?

2008-09-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

In a moment of self reflection (which, of course, is nowadays done by Googling oneself), I was startled to discover that this very blog had been listed as #5 on a list of Top 10 Asian Food blogs by an organization called "Asian Food Grocer." Truthfully, I would think the very irregular nature of this blog (read "the very laziness of its author") would disqualify it, but I'm vain enough to put this laurel crown on my head.

"blog writing at its best, from fascinating subject matter to intelligent, entertaining prose.... Culture and cuisine intersect perfectly at this cozy little blogspot, so check it out!"

I couldn't have said it better myself, heh heh.

Serving the (Chinese food obsessed) people

2008-07-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

This book caught my eye yesterday (and how could it not?) and I knew it had to be in my library. I know of no other "insider" look at Chinese restaurants in China (unless you count Nicole Mones' novel, The Last Chinese Chef). At first look, it appears to be a Chinese Kitchen Confidential without the posturing or braggadocio. Jen Lin-Liu is a prolific young Beijing-based free-lance journalist and food writer (Time Out Beijing, Frommers', Zagat, etc.) and also happens to be an aspiring cook.

Here's a description of Serve the People from the book's official blurb:

"As a freelance journalist and food writer living in Beijing, Jen Lin-Liu already had a ringside seat for China’s exploding food scene. When she decided to enroll in a local cooking school – held in an unheated classroom with nary a measuring cup in sight – she jumped into the ring herself. In Serve the People, Lin-Liu gives a memorable and mouthwatering cook’s tour of today’s China as she progresses from cooking student to noodle-stall and dumpling-house apprentice to intern at a chic Shanghai restaurant. The characters she meets along the way include poor young men and women streaming in from the countryside in search of a “rice bowl” (living wage), a burgeoning urban middle class hungry for luxury after decades of turmoil and privation, and the mentors who take her in hand in the kitchen and beyond."

The "chic Shanghai restaurant" referred to is Jereme Leung's Whampoa Club, where Jen spent much of her time wrapping xiaolong bao. Remind me to invite her to my home!

Cinema Stir-Fry: Xian Doujiang

2008-06-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

I love Chinese food, and I love Chinese movies. When Chinese movies feature Chinese food, what can be better than that? Sometimes the movies are great in their own right, like Eat, Drink, Man, Women. Sometimes the food steals the limelight, as in Life Show, about a single woman who operates a stall serving spicy duck necks in the Wuhan Night Market. That one actually launched a national chain of popular duck neck restaurants bearing the name of the heroine of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if My Rice Noodle Shop led to an increase in Guilin Rice Noodle restaurants in China and Taiwan; the scenes of spicy horsemeat noodles being made and served made my mouth water. Sometimes the prominent use of a food leads me to enjoy movies more that their cinematic worth would warrant, like in Chicken and Duck Talk, where I enjoyed the efforts of that prominent thespian, Martin Yan.

Nothing, however, prepared me for the surprise that a Taiwanese move of some critical success was actually named for one of my very favorite (if somewhat obscure) snacks, xian doujiang. Xian Doujiang the movie (the English title is Brave 20) is a noire-ish story about two young men who drop out of their college exam prep class and get involved with some of the more colorful elements of Taipei society. The movie stands on its own merits (it made a few festival appearances) and xian doujiang, the food, makes only two appearances (albeit stunning ones) including during the opening titles, and following a traumatic experience by one of the youths, who takes solace in it. The message is clear, however, to anyone with a passion for this savory soymilk soup; the complex interaction of the many disparate ingredients that go into the potion and and the ritual act of stirring it is the perfect metaphor for the lives of the beleaguered protagonists.

Fuschia Does Flushing

2008-06-10T08:10:00.000-07:00

I wasn't just jacking off when I said the 41-28 Main St. mall (a.k.a. Golden Mall) in Flushing was the closest one can come to being in China without leaving the US. This sentiment was echoed by none other than cookbook author and food writer Fuchsia Dunlop when she toured the mall with Joe DiStefano of Serious Eats (who shares my passion for Liang Pi's Xi'an snack stall:

Dunlop was amazed by the diversity of eats and gushed that it was "just like being in China."

The affable Mr. Liang, meantime, has branched out, opening a "Chinese Burger" (roujiamo) stall at the mall just down the street. If he continues cranking out the same great hand-helds at the same low price, he'll soon have an empire on his hands.

Flush in Flushing at the 41-28 Main Street Mall

2008-05-13T08:58:00.000-07:00

I recently went on a 12-day exploratory trip of (mostly) Queens. I stayed with Rachel, my daughter, who lives hard by the first Queens stop on the 7 line, and with her being out of town five of the 12 days, I had plenty of time to graze on interesting eats on my own. I hadn’t really planned to spend most of my free meals at the Golden Mall at 41-28 Main Street in Flushing, but it was there and drew me to it like a moth to a flame. This mall has been extensively dissected on chowhound.com , particularly a Sichuan outlet, Chengdu Tian Fu. It a warren of small food stalls serving food from different regions of China; little English is evident on the premises and it is probably the closest one can come to being in China without leaving the US.

On my first walkthrough of the 41-28 Mall, at lunchtime on a Wednesday, the Xi’an stall, whose name translates as something like Xi’an Famous Eats and offers precisely that, grabbed my attention with a picture of a platter of Rou Jia Mo, or Chinese “burgers”. These, unlike meat bingzi which are stuffed before cooking, are actually prepared and assembled like burgers, with the cooked meats and seasonings placed between two toasted flatbread disks. I pointed to the picture, asked “how much” ($2.50 each) and asked for two lamb rou jia mo. They came out in classic form, with shredded lamb seasoned with cumin, jalapenos and onions. I scarfed one down on the spot, and took the other one “to go” but devoured before I got back to the 7 Train. On subsequent occasions I tried the beef and pork versions, all spiced differently. The beef version seemed to be even better spiced than the lamb version, though I couldn’t put my finger on the difference. The pulled pork Rou Jia Mo was less spicy, more “cured” (salty) tasting. All were good

I returned to the mall for lunch on Friday, and decided to try another unusual cuisine, that of Wenzhou. The easiest place to find Wenzhou cuisine outside of China is said to be Paris, due to long standing connections between Wenzhou and the French automobile industry, but I decided Flushing would do for the moment. I ordered somewhat blindly, as a couple of well-known Wenzhou dishes I had Googled up didn’t appear to be on the menu, and ended up with a big bowl of noodle soup plentifully seeded with skinny fish cakes (which themselves resembled small fish). It was subtly seasoned and tasty, but not particularly exciting.

After my noodle lunch I wandered upstairs in the mall and discovered the Shandong Dumpling stall, and couldn’t resist sitting down to a plate of freshly made shui jiao (boiled dumplings, for which Shandong is famous). They were obvious cooked to order, not par-poiled, due to the elapsed time, and the skins were classic but the filling a bit on the dry and bland side.

On Saturday my daughter left town for five days and our prior dinner commitments were completed, so I returned to the 41-28 mall for dinner. The sight and sound of the young man making la mian (hand-pulled) noodles at the Shanxi place across from Xi’an stall captured my attention, and I ordered lamb la mian in soup. I asked for it “la” (spicy) but the woman server shook her head and pointed to a pot of chili oil on the table. The freshly pulled noodles in the soup were good, perfectly al dente. (I’ve often found hand-pulled noodles too soft unless they were left to “breathe” for a while before cooking.) The “lamb” (which was probably mutton), however, was tough, gristly and bony. It was only after I started eating that I noticed from the signage that this stall’s specialty was apparently not the hand-pulled noodles, but “dao xiao” (knife-shaved) noodles. Oh well, live and learn.

By Sunday, there was no keeping me away from the mall and the Xi’an Famous Eats stall, and I decided to try the Biang Biang noodles. These hand-torn noodles “as wide and long as a belt” are listed as one of the Ten Strange Wonders of Shaanxi Province, perhaps as much for the 57-stroke Chinese character written in duplicate to name them as for anything else. The noodles were fresh and toothsome, and interestingly and deliciously seasoned with a combination of (I think) vinegar, soy sauce, chili and onion, garnished with a veritable forest of cilantro. Avoid this dish if you dislike cilantro (fortunately, I love it).

On Monday I once again hit the mall twice in the same day, feeling the need to check out the shui jiao at the Nan Bei Dumpling shop in the back. These were better than the Shandong stall’s version, with better texture and juiciness to the meat filling, though sparse on the jiu cai component, They came quickly, and obviously been cooked before I arrived, but he turnover at this shop may let them get away with it.

When I returned for dinner that day, I had made up my mind to try another iconic Xi'an dish, yang rou pao mao. Traditionally, the customer is given some hard (stale?) flatbread to break into small pieces in a bowl, which is returned to the cook to simmer the bread in mutton stock and then add the other ingredients for a hearty lamb soup. The Xi’an stall short-circuited the process, using pre-broken bread, but the results were tasty nonetheless, with the flour from the cooked bread adding a comforting thickness with a rich mouth-feel. The server asked me if I wanted garlic (yes!) and handed me a baggie containing five whole cloves of deliciously pickled garlic which I garnished the soup with, along with a little chili oil.

On Tuesday I returned for dinner still craving a satisfying bowl of spicy lamb soup with lots of lamb in it after my disappointment at the Shanxi stall The Xi’an Famous Eats stall owner accommodated me (charging an extra dollar for the extra lamb, I think). I chose the toothsome “belt” noodles I had come to love. This dish also came with a lot of cilantro garnishing, and was spicy enough that I didn’t need to add any chili oil. This was a soup I could eat every day!

Wednesday, April 30 was the last day I had available for a solo dinner in Flushing, so I returned to (guess where). By then I was greeted as an old friend by the owner and his two female assistants. I was set on ordering another Xi’an specialty, Qishan Noodles. Seeing I had brought a beer (it’s BYO) the owner suggested I order a plate of lamb bones as well, because “they’re good to eat while drinking beer”. This dish may be a byproduct, but was one of most rewarding that I ordered, because there was plenty of meat left on the bones, as savory and as falling-off-the-bone tender as from any BBQ. The Qishan noodles (named after a county) are apparently known for the quality of the noodles and the particular spicing and garnishes used, as the dish was available with thin or wide noodles, and dry or in soup. I chose the wide noodles again, in soup. The dish was pleasantly savory but milder than the Biang Biang noodles, but it was the lamb bones that made me feel like Henry VIII.

After dinner, when we did our “zai jians” and exchanged calling cards, I asked the Xi'an stall owner his name. With a sheepish grin he told me he went by “Liang Pi” which means (or at least sounds like) “Cold Noodles.”

The Filipov awards: Dinah Shore

2008-03-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

I'm reviving the Filipov awards for notable non-Chinese persons of the past and present who have revealed themselves to be Chinese food mavens. This award harkens back to an on-going topic in a now-defunct message board I hosted a few years ago. It is named for Alexander Filipov, a victim of American Airlines Fligh 11 on 9/11. According to Katherine Brengle, in an article at dissidentvoice.org, "Mrs. Filipov introduced us to her beloved husband, telling small anecdotes, such as his ability to say, 'Do you like Chinese food?' in 14 different languages."

The first Filipov award goes to Dinah Shore, chanteuse and TV personality of the 40's and 50's. According to her good friend, entertainer Steve Lawrence,

"She was a wonderful cook, by the way. Chinese food she would make like you can't believe! Oh my goodness, she could have opened a Chinese restaurant. You would not have known Dinah Shore was in the kitchen putting out that Chinese food. ... She had woks built into the kitchen, you know those holes where the actual wok goes into the fire. Not a make-believe thing where you put a ring over it."

The 600-page Gorilla and Me on Shanghai's "xiao chi"

2008-02-29T11:17:00.000-08:00

Since we're on the subject of recently published books, let me point out that "Urbanatomy: Shanghai 2008", a new guidebook to Shanghai was published on February 24th in Shanghai. It weighs in at 600 pages (the typical Shanghai guidebook runs less than 300 pages), but a couple of those pages, presenting an overview of Shanghai's small eats (xiao chi), will be dear to my heart because I was recruited to write them. I have yet to see the book (which can be ordered from Amazon but is not yet available here in the U.S.) so I don't know what edits may have been made, but you can read my deathless prose in the eatingchinese forums.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles

2008-02-29T10:30:00.001-08:00

I just received "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food" by Jennifer 8. Lee from Amazon.com. It won't even be officially published until March 3, but I ordered it the minute Amazon alerted me to its existence. I've yet to have time to do more than skim it, but it appears to be a great addition to the eatingchinese.org library, somewhere between the J.A.G. Roberts' scholarly "China to Chinatown: Chinese Food in the West" and John Krich's breezy "Won Ton Lust: Adventures in Search of the World's Best Chinese Restaurant".

Since I lifted the cover image, I'd better include a link to Amazon where you can order it. That links goes through Jennifer's website, so she gets an additonal commission if you order it there.
Jennifer 8. Lee is a metro reporter for the New York Times, and yes, her middle name is really "8." Maybe her parents were inspired by George Constanza -- honk if you get the joke.

Eating Your Way Throught the Chinese Zodiac

2008-02-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

[Also posted in The Xiao Yang Blog]

In all of the discussions I've seen, heard, and participated in about Chinese New Year dining traditions, I've never heard it suggested that eating the animal the upcoming year was named for would be an appropriate tribute to the new year. But why not devour the namesake creature of the spent year? I'll be doing just that come Tuesday night, in fact, because we areleaving the year of the pig behind.

The coming year is the year of the Rat and it occurred to me that I somehow have collected a photo essay on preparing and cooking rats (see above), and I recall a National Geographic photo of a deli in Guangzhou showing barbecued rats hanging alonside the ducks and and bbq pork. USDA Choice rat might be hard to come by in the US, but in New York, at least, one can score guinea pig (a rodent relative) at Ecuadorean delis, and there's probably some other edible rodent around that I'm not recalling at the moment.

Is it possible, I wonder, to eat one's way around the whole Chinese zodiac? Well, let's see. Starting withe easy stuff, we also have chicken (Rooster), which everone who is not a vegetarian has eaten. Almost as many people have eaten Ox (that's cow to you and me). Boar/pig? Starting with our breakfast bacon. Sheep is mighty tasty, especially on a skewer. That gets us to Horse, which is widely available in French Canada, even in tartare form, which I've had at a fast-food frites chain. (Disclaimer: I downed a coule of beers first.) Snake? I've had that, too, in Shanghai, in a soup. A little clam chowdery, it was. Dog? I've yet to have the opportunity, though many have eaten man's best friend. The eating of Monkey in China has been documented, though the horror stories about eating it raw from the freshly cracked scull of a live monkey have never been proven to be anything but urban myths. I have no idea what a Tiger steak would taste like, but I'm sure at least some part of a Tiger has been eaten in Asia, though I won't speculate publicly on which part.

After the above-mentioned Rat, that brings us to Dragon. Hmm, isn't that on the endangered species list?

Paris Hilton's xiao long bao style

2007-11-22T20:43:00.000-08:00

"Celebutante" Paris Hilton just hit Shanghai like a typhoon for an MTV event and the local PR folks immediately set the staqe for her to display her xiao long bao eating technique at the very shrine to XLB, the Nanxiang Xiaolong Mantou Dian.

STEP 1: Lift it from the steamer and dip it in vinegar.

Not bad Paris, but it's traditional to use chopsticks....

Step 2: Place it on your spoon and nibble delicately at it.

You've got it, girl. Sometimes, though, using the fingers just won't do:

For the record, Paris Hilton stayed at the..... Hyatt???

IHT journalist's Shanghai xiaolong bao quest.

2007-11-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

The International Herald Tribune has a nice, perceptive article about xiao long bao and its aficionados, including a nod to "the notoriously fussy eaters at the U.S. website chowhound.com". Its travel writer, Daisann McLane, has obviously paid attention to the discussions on that forum (some instigated or propelled by yours truly). I don't agree that Din Tai Fung's XLB are more worthy than those of Jia Jia Tang Bao (which seems to have lost points for no longer being an out-of-the-way funky dive, I found it to be overall a fair and intelligent review of some of the options. She even called out a place new to me (Fu De, in Hongkou) which I've put on my list for my next trip to Shanghai.

Perspective on the "MSG is bad for you" Canard

2007-09-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

SH magazine has published a good opinion piece on "the greatest urban legend of all" by Christopher St. Cavish. It's a good sumary of all the pros and (very few) cons of MSG, including the now famous quote by Jeffrey Steingarten: “If MSG is so bad for you, then why doesn’t everyone in China have a headache?”

I'm in full agreement with the writer, but I wish he had added one of my favorite talking points: one of the richest sources of digestible glutamate in nature is mother's milk. And you thought it was the cute containers that bring the kids back for more.

Bearding the Dragon in Montreal's Chinatown

2007-07-29T20:25:00.000-07:00

I don't eat sweets, so I obviously can't indulge in Dragon's Beard candy, which is mostly spun, well, pulled sugar. But I can't resist visiting Johnny Chin's small stand in Chinatown every time I'm in Montreal, just to watch it made and schmooze with the affable Johnny.

Dragon's Beard Candy, loved by children (and maybe even adults) in China and Hong Kong, is a mass of hair-thin strands of sugar wrapped around sweetened peanuts, chocolate and coconut or the like. Labor intensive to make, and with a very short half-life of freshess, it's extremely difficult to find, and Johny Chin's storefront stall at 52B R. La Gauchtiere may be the only bricks and mortar location in North America dedicated to the craft.

On a recent visit, Johnny had an apprentice working for him, an attractive but unsmiling young Chinese woman who was obviously well on her way to mastering the craft. Johnny was cagey about her relationship to him, if any, but she obviously was trusted enough to free him up for some holiday travel. Johnny and his wife were on their way the very next weekend to San Francisco for the first time, he told me.

For the young woman, who appeared to be of college age or younger, it was the coolest of summer jobs, I imagined, and wondered if she got to eat her mistakes.

The 10 Famous Teas of China (all 20 of them)

2007-05-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

One often encounters references to the "Ten Famous Teas of China." The list is somewhat problematic, however, because there is really no "official" list and it differs slightly from source to source, with the only constant being that my favorite, longjing (Dragonwell) tea always tops the list. One enterprising website, chinese-teas.net, has taken the bull by the horns, collecting 20 different lists and ranking the teas by the number of times they appear on the lists. Only two, longjing and biluochun, achieved a perfect score. Here is the list developed by chinese-teas.net.

Score	Generic Name	Chinese Name	Province

20/20	Dragon Well	XiHu LongJing	Zhejiang
20/20	Green Snail Spring	DongTing BiLuoChun	Jiangsu
18/20	Iron Goddess	AnXi TieGuanYin	Fujian
17/20	Fur Peak	HuangShan MaoFeng	Anhui
14/20	Silver Needle	JunShan YinZhen	Hunan
12/20	Qi Men Red	QiMen Hong	Anhui
11/20	Big Red Robe	Wu i Da HongPao	Fujian
11/20	Melon Seed	LiuAn GuaPian	Anhui
10/20	White Fur Silver Needle	BaiHao YinZhen	Fujian
10/20	Pu'er	YunNan Pu'er	Yunnan
9/20	Oolong	DongDing WuLong	Taiwan
9/20	Cloud & Fog	LuShan YunWu	Jiangxi
7/20	Fur Tip	XinYang MaoJian	Hunan
5/20	Sweet Dew	MengDing GanLu	Sichuan
4/20	Fur Tip	DouYun MaoJian	Guizhou
3/20	Jasmine	SuZhou MoLiHua	Jiangsu
3/20	Jade Dew	EnShi YuLu	Hubei
2/20	Pearl Tea	PingShui ZhuCha	Zhejiang
2/20	Monkey King	TaiPing HouKui	Anhui

"We're not in China anymore, Toto!" -- Chinese food in Lawrence today

2007-03-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Those of us who live on the Coasts, or in the City With Broad Shoulders, sometime take the availability of reasonably authentic Chinese food for granted. If all we had to eat was the stuff that the Center for Science in the Public Interest recently pilloried again for having a lot of salt and fat (I am shocked, SHOCKED to find that fast food is being sold with salt and fat in it!) we probably wouldn't be Chinese food fans. Or would we? There are plenty of Chinese food fans in places like Lawrence, KS, even though the Chinese food they have available might be somenthing we vaguely remember from distant and simpler times. The Lawrence-Journal World recently interviewed persons in the street, asking what their favorite Chinese foods were, and invited readers to comment with their own favorites. Here's the Chinese dishes of choice in Lawrence:

What is your favorite Chinese food?
March 22, 2007
Asked at Massachusetts Street

"I like General Tso’s chicken. I guess I like it because it’s always the same in all the restaurants, so I always know what I’m getting."

— [Name Withheld], engineer, Lawrence

"I really like the combination fried rice because of the variety of all the ingredients they use."

— [Name Withheld], title abstractor, Kansas City, Kan.
"Crab rangoon, because it’s somewhat sweet and it doesn’t have anything too crazy in it."

— [Name Withheld], Washburn University freshman, Topeka

"General’s chicken. I keep trying other things, but I always go back to it. It’s something about the sweet and spicy flavor."

— [Name Withheld], Lawrence High School senior, Lawrence
Comments
[Edited by Gary Soup to delete flippant and/or demeaning comments or excessive prolixity; each bullet represents a separate reader's comments]

Broccoli and chicken

Beef and broccoli with steamed rice from Hy-vee. It is always fresh and the broccoli is still crisp in the center. Yummy

cashew chicken. mmmmmmmmm.

Chinese burritos.

Hot and Sour Soup, Sweet and Sour , Lo Mein whatever, Crab Rangoon.

Their green beans. Also Mushroon Chicken, and the Pepper Beef, and the skewered chicken. At China Buffet in Leavenworth they have steamed mussels on the shell (evenings). Yum.

Mongolian Beef with Beef.

Hmmmmmmm....Can't say that I've tried everything yet, so, I dunno. I can say that I tend not to like Chinese desserts. A dessert must contain more than a dash of sugar!

i love the broccoli beef.........hold the broccoli

Lo mein noodles. Love them.
I have to watch how much sodium I eat, so Chinese food is a once in a great while treat for me. I love hot and sour soup and anything (well almost) in hot garlic sauce.

mu shu shrimp

shrimp lo mein with crab rangoon simple but goooood

Bu zhidao, keshi wo chang chang xihuan chi yi pan mongol niu rou he yi wan suan la tang.
Egg drop soup from the Plum Tree
Cashew Chicken in Plum sauce from The Royal Peking (I think the best Chinese in town). I don't think any place else does the Plum Sauce with their Cashew Chicken. I like General Tso's Chicken also.I like most Chinese food, actually.
... I'll go dine with jayhawk1234 as I like the broccoli beef minus the beef. Bring on the fried green beans, too. General Tso's Chicken, one spring roll, one rangoon, and some dry fried pork will fill up my plate nicely.... The kids like the authentic Chinese ice cream bar there.
actual favorites are oriental salads........with tofu

酸辣土豆丝
I forgot - crab rangoons are a food group unto themselves. The hubby-to-be has to be reminded often that eating 6 of them at a sitting is unhealthy. But they are so GOOOOOD.

I love Jade Mongolian BBQ. It is so cool to be able to pick the veggies you like and mix it with whatever meat and sauce you like! They also have a regular chinese buffet. Hot and Sour Soup rocks!

My favorite is Grilled Lemon Chicken from Peking Taste chinese buffet and Crab Rangoon from Jasmins in eudora
Love them Raman Chicken Flsvor Noodles too.
Favorite foods...pretty much everything. I love the Spicy Peppered Beef and their fried potatos.
One long quote was too revealing to butcher by shortening:

"I love Panda Garden, King Buffet and Royal Peking also. Oh, and the answer to the question: Cashew Chicken or the sweet Walnut Shrimp from King Buffet. I still remember the first time I had Chinese food. I was a senior in high school 1985 and my mom and I went to Wichita to shop. She saw a little place that was a converted hamburger drive in. You parked by the old speakers and there was a paper menu taped to the old sign. It indicated that you could wait for a server to come out, or you could come in. We went in, and I tasted my first Cashew chicken. Also my first Chinese hot tea. I couldn't drink it because it smelled like A&D ointment (diaper rash ointment). Still can't! But I treasure the memory of that "exotic" lunch with mom, and have been a fan of Chinese food ever since."

Haute Chinese Cuisine: The Novel

2007-03-14T22:07:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in my previous entry, I had planned to be in Shanghai by now, but I ended up postponing my trip until later in the year, for a variety of reasons. Someone who is in Shanghai at this moment, however, and who just sent me a report on the crab xiaolong at Jia Jia Tangbao's new location is Nicole Mones, a new e-Friend and Chinese food soulmate. Nicole is an Old China Hand, a novelist, and a food writer for Gourmet. She's just written what may be a literary first: a contemporary novel entirely framed by the world of high-end Chinese culinary art, The Last Chinese Chef. It's not due to be published until May 4, but she was kind enough to offer me an advance copy, which I have just received. I undoubtedly will have more to say about it once I've read it; in the meantime, you can get a preview of her novel, including a taste of Nicole's stimulating verbal food porn at her website.

New Blogger in Town (Me)

2007-02-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

Now that I've retired and have more time to indulge in my truest passions, Shanghai and Shanghainese small eats, I've decided to focus on this fetish in a new website, shanghaibites.com.
I'm about to set out on another month-long trip to Shanghai, hopefully in better shape and with a better Internet connection than last time, and will be posting directly to the front-end blog for Shanghai Bites.

I won't be neglecting eatingchinese.org, though. My obsession with global Chinese food and hyphenated Chinese food is as great as my obsession with its Shanghainese bites subset, it's just harder to get my arms around it. After all, I'll be spending only a small percentage of my pasturage years in Shanghai, and the Shanghainese aren't the only Chinese with small eats. In San Francisco I live in walking distance of scores of Cantonese walk-away small eats (read dim sum) establishments as well as sit-down Cantonese restaurants, compared to zero Shanghainese joints, and wherever I go in North America, I'm always within an eggroll's throw of an American-Chinese, Canadian-Chinese, or Mexican-Chinese joint, each with its own fascination.

Drop in on Shanghai Bites, esepecially when I'm travelling, and wish me luck!

Weird Meat: Bourdain's got nothin' on Michael Ohlsson

2007-02-22T10:39:00.000-08:00

In searching for a particular dish I wanted to try in Shanghai (I'll leave it to you to guess), I stumbled across Weird Meat, a blog by reformed vegan Michael Ohlsson. It's such a gem I can't believe it hasn't come to my attention before. Michael's a former San Franciscan, a current Shanghai resident and looks a mensch, so I'll forgive him for dissing Shanghai cuisine generally (though he liked the vertical pork bone).

Despite the title, Michael's blog is not meant to shock or tittilate, certainly less so than the posturing of Bourdain (which Ohlsson gently twits for wussiness in one post) occasionally becomes; it is a sober-sided and truly intrepid expedition in food anthropology, even accompanied by reading lists. Although the blogger's travels have taken him all over Asia and elsewhere, his his most fruitful (weird meatful?) hunting ground is Chain, and it includes the fare served at some of Shanghai's most popular restaurants.

http://weirdmeat.com

The "Wok Wiz" and the Tea Wiz

2007-02-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

Red Blossom Tea, in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown, is one of my favorite little corners of the Universe. It's where I go in San Francisco to sample good tea, buy my precious Longjing tea, or just swap Chinese restaurant gossip. It's the product of a makeover of a generations-old tea, ginseng and herbal medicine shop. While the senior Luongs still dispense ginseng and other potions (including Wolfberries, or Goji Berries, a "superfood" just now hitting the pop charts), young sprouts Peter and Alice Luong dispense knowledge and love of fine tea in an attractive modern space.

If you've come to San Francisco Chinatown to learn about Chinese food, you may have taken one of the "Wok Wiz" tours, and if you lucked out, got the "Wok Wiz" herself, Shirley Fong-Torres (sister of journalist Ben) as a leader. She's made the tea shop a regular stop on her tour and on Sunday I happened be there seeking refuge from the noisy street festival outside when Shirley and her tour group showed up, and snapped the above picture. That's Shirley on the left, and Alice Luong on the right.

Fortune Cookies going to the dogs...

2007-02-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

The late muckraking journalist Paul Jacobs once ate from a tin of dog food on live TV, to illustrate a point: the labeling requirements for pet food are more stringent than for people food.

What has this to do with fortune cookies for dogs? Well, they do exist, Virginia, and I spotted them at Cost Plus World Market. Intriguingly, they are advertised as being chicken-liver flavored and therefore are most likely far more tasty than the stale vanilla-flavor variety I sometimes get at the end of a Chinese meal. I have no idea what fortunes are inside the cookies, but the next time I run across a dog that's just finished a Chinese meal I'll ask.

What precedes the fortune cookie reward for eating all your doggie veggies most likely is served in one a dish like the one at the right (they come in two sizes). These strike me as having a purpose in life. Was your last takeout or delivery Chinese food unfit for human consumption? Put it in front of Fido. Was some offal dish from that authentic Sichuan restaurant just too, well, awful? Fido will lap it up. Hmm..... that makes me wonder if.... never mind.

The Offal Truth about Sichuan Home Cooking

2007-02-02T22:48:00.000-08:00

On the eatingchinese.org website I recently added a new feature, "Nasty Bits, Sichuan Style" which is a left-handed tribute of sorts to Anthony Bourdain, who sometimes seems to have invented the eating of offal. It features "Nasty Bits Recipe of the Month", such as "Home-Cooked Ox Penis", the inaugural selection for January. Admittedly, I created the feature to titillate and perhaps draw a few eyeballs to the site, as much as to tweak the self-assured A. B. a little. But there is nothing sensationalized about the source of my recipes, it's a little book called "Home-cooked Sichuan Cuisine" published in China. The recipes, therefore, are presumed to represent a cross-section of dishes served in Sichuan homes. The entire list of recipes in the book is presented below, and perusing it may

a) impress upon you the waste-not-want-not sense of economy of China's cooking and eating culture,

b) give you food for thought about "authenticity" and whether you REALLY want to find it in a Chinese restaurant, or

c) make your mouth water.

Stir-fried Preserved Ham with Celery and Pot-Stewed Tofu
Stir-Fried Shredded Pork and Green Pepper
Steamed Streaky Pork and Taro
Pickled Pigtails with Wild Chilli Pepper
Stir-fried Meat Stuffed Egg Rolls in Fish Flavor
Fried Steamed Streaky Pork
Stir-fried Preserved Ham with Pickled Cowpea
Steamed Upper Part of a Leg of Pork
Sichuan Sausage
Home Cooking Style Shredded Pork
Shredded Pork with Sweet Brown Sauce
Stir-fried Pork Liver with Pickled Chilli
Steamed Streaky Pork with Rice Flour
Fried Streaky Pork Stuffed Bean Curd Sheet Rolls
Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Rice Flour
Stir-fried Preserved Ham and Heartleaf Houttuynia Herb
Stir-fried Preserved Ham of Home town with Garlic Bolt
Pork Large Intestine in Casserole
Dong-Po Pork in Bamboo Canister
Rice Crust and Pork in Luzhou Mellow Wine Flavor
Dry-stewed Pork Balls
Dry-braised Upper Part of a Leg of Pork
Steamed Pork Spare Ribs in Little Bamboo Cage
Dry-stewed Pork Tripe with Pickled Radish
Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Glutinous Rice
Golden Pork Large Intestine with Crisp Skin
Dry-stewed Pork Large Intestine with Mushroom and Fermented Bean Curd
Hot and Spicy Stir-Fried Pig Uterus
Home-cooked Pork Tripe
Hot and Sour Tendon
Stir-fried Pork Kidney
Home-Cooked Tendon
Dry-Stewed Tendon
Stewed Pig’s Brains and Minced Pork
Stir-Fried Tender Ginger and Shredded Pork
Stewed Streaky Pork and Sweet Potatoes
Boiled Mushroom Sprout and Fat Beef in Chafing Dish
Dry-Stewed Oxtails with Garlic
Sichuan Style Fat Beef Rolls on Hot Iron Plate
Stir-Fried Mutton with Sweet Brown Sauce
Hot and Spicy Fried Rabbit’s Head
Dry-stewed Dog’s Meat with Pickled Radish
Home-cooked Ox Penis
Stir-fried Eggplants with Mashed Pork in Fish Flavor

If you answered c) to the above, you are either Anthony Bourdain, an Anthony Bourdain wannabe, the person who A.B. is striving to become, or a Chengdu homie.

Chowhound.com gets our Zeal of Approval

2007-01-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

In light of the suspension of eatingchinese's discussion forums, and while its lazy webmaster searches for a more spam-resistant alternative, eatingchinese.org suggests, nay, insists that its visitors try hanging out at chowhound.com. For those who are unaware, chowhound is a shining example of what God or Gore or whatever Geek invented the internet intended it to be, a vast Community Memory Project, an attempt to pre-empt the power of the computer for the use of the community. Sure it covers "civilian" cuisines, but within its vast network of discussion boards it contains as much appreciation and deconstruction of Chinese cuisine and its bypaths as any two single purpose message boards might have. You can dissect your favorite (or least favorite) Chinese restaurant on the appropriate regional discussion board, ask about restaurants in Turpan on the China board, share your recipe for Strange Taste Chicken on the Home Cooking board, indulge in some serious wok talk on the Cookware board, or give your props to Panda Express on the Chains board. No one will stop you from crying in your pijiu over burgers or doughnuts, either, if that's your perversion.

And you probably will run into me.

Communist Party unit formed at Wal-Mart HQ

2007-01-03T19:19:00.000-08:00

Being a, shall we say, non-fan of Walmart's, I've liked the way that Beijing has jerked Wal-Mart's around, forcing them to allow trade unions in their China stores. Although symbolically stunning, though, that didn't have a whole lot of meaning (as it was probably explained to the Good Ol' Boys in the Bentonville HQ) because independent trade unions in China are just a form of window dressing and have little real power. Imagine my glee, therefore, to read the news that the 300-lb. gorilla, namely the Chinese Communist Party, had decided to camp out at Wal-Mart's China headquarters in Shenzhen.

December 21, 2006
Following the foundation of a trade union at its headquarters in November 2006, Wal-Mart China has now announced the establishment of a Communist Party Branch at its China headquarters in Shenzhen.

Wang Suiming, commissioner of the Shenzhen CPC Standing Committee and director of the Shenzhen Municipal Organization Department, says that the establishment of the Communist Party Branch at Wal-Mart China's headquarters shows that Shenzhen has made a great achievement in pushing foreign enterprises to open party branches in their companies. Wang also says this will help promote the city's efforts in constructing the "Two New Organizations"–economic organizations and new social organizations–particularly the construction of a party league in foreign-owned firms in the city.

Wang asks party members and members of the Two New Organizations to play an example and work to constantly expand the Communist Party's influence and sense of team spirit.

All the glad tidings are in this article.

OK, no more Wal-Mart's postings in 2007. Unless they force my hand, of course.

Eating Chinese food straight from the carton?

2006-12-31T07:15:00.000-08:00

A quote in Dennis Hamill's column in today's New York Daily News, in which he recalls memorable celebrity interviews from the past, caught my notice:

TOM HANKS answered the door to his trailer on W. 43rd St. on the set of "You've Got Mail" wearing a soiled undershirt and eating Chinese food out of a carton.

The notion of eating Chinese food straight from the carton is obviously one of great import to some; there was a recent long discussion thread on Chowhound.com about the practice. Some opined that it was it was something that only happened in the movies; some thought it was just a New York thing; and still others, not New Yorkers, claimed to have done it themselves. In support of the movie-thing theory, there is a whole web page devoted to the subject of eating Chinese food (and ice cream) from the container in movies. I'm not calling those Chowhounds who claimed to do it themselves liars; we are impressionable creatures, after all, and sometimes life imitates art. One of the featured movie occurrences of the practice on the above-referenced web site involved... Tom Hanks.

The Wal-Martization of Chinese fast food?

2006-12-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

This may be from the drug-induced nightmare of a bored wire service employee, or perhaps December 26 is South Africa's April Fool's day, but the African News Dimension (whozat?) is reporting that the 3400 Wal-Marts in the US will start offering Chinese fast food (no, Chinese "Dining"). In the article, Yeshua Yosef writes:

Wal-Mart to add Chinese Dining to its 3400 stores nationwide.

The biggest retailer in America is ending the fast food reign of McD’s and even its submarine vendors; in favor of a new Chinese Restaurant Chain. This food chain will serve Chinese food fast, but not of the McD’s Quality. We will serve food fast, but not fast food, is the claim of the Wal-Mart source who disclosed the story. Wal-Mart has reportedly been looking for an alternative to just subs and burgers; because of the anti-fast food sentiment created by the movie “Super Size Me,” which showed the hazards of eating just fast food. According to the source, “We are already 90% Chinese, so we might as well go all the way, to 110%”, some say, this move may change the face of America, and it’s pant size. Wal-Mart supposedly will save money by shipping smaller sizes to America, as there are claims the 60 % profit they make by buying Chinese is cut into by shipping costs. In this case, smaller waists equal larger profits for the company, at least in shipping costs. Once again the giant retailer is putting America first in its quest to be the best. During the after-Katrina mess, Wal-Mart put America first by halting gun sales in its Louisiana stores, some 40 of them at least. Some say the anger toward government scared many, and so Wal-Mart put its halt in, to help quell the anti-government sentiment. With American families owing somewhere in the neighborhood of $140,000 per family in debts including those to foreign countries, including Japan, Germany and China, these moves by the chain will help, we hope. Now Americans will learn to cook Chinese, at least those employed by Wal-Mart. As one official put it, “We borrow money from the Chinese, so we can buy their products.” India is said to be talking to Target about a similar Chain. Vindaloo and Nan Bread anyone? Unfortunately, the submarine vendor is left scratching it’s head. Our subs are not fast food, but good food fast too, they claim. No doubt, at least one of their patrons has backed that claim up. Maybe they can merge with the Chinese Chain, and create a new sub, maybe the Beijing Cheese Steak, …..it’s a wrap.

I'm highly skeptical about this eventuality, but if true, I can guarantee that if Wal-Mart has its way with Chinese cuisine, the resulting product will be one of the few things sold by Wal-Mart that wasn't made in China.

The ABD's of doujiang

2006-12-23T07:46:00.000-08:00

Shanghainese love doujiang (soy milk/soy milk soup) at breakfast. There's a sweet version which is served either hot or cold. The cold version is ubiquitous in its grab-and-go transparent plastic cups; you usually have the hot version at sit-down places, but it's still just plain soy milk with some sugar added. Who likes that? (Well, a lot of people, apparently.)

The savory version is something else; properly done, it's a masterpiece and food for the gods, IMHO. It's hot soy milk to which has been added vinegar or some other sour matter to curdle it (surprisingly, soybean milk curdles much like cow's milk) and salt and/or a salty agent (the best versions will have brine shrimp in it). Chili oil is usually also present, so with the salty, sour, and spicy combination you'd need only have to add a little sugar to make "Strange Taste Doujiang" but I don't think I would like that. Beyond the above ingredients, other vegetable matter such as scallion tops may be added, and it's sometimes served with a bit of Nori-type seaweed on top. The other indispensable ingredient is slices or broken pieces of you tiao, the Chinese cruller, floating on top. (It's a good thing the do with stale you tiao.)

When I'm in Shanghai I crave savory doujiang for breakfast, and my wife's experience and intuition is`usually successful at tracking down a good version. On my last trip , however, I did a lot of early morning foraging by myeslf, and found it difficult to communicate that I wanted savory doujiang. My attempted Mandarin or Shanghainese request usually resulted in shrugged shoulders or in my getting sweet doujiang (yuck!)

Finally I asked my wife for help. "Simple," she said. "Just ask for 'A-jiang'" (with an "A" as if speaking the name of the English letter "A"). The next time out I found it worked like a charm. My wife then pointed out that if you order "B-jiang" in Shanghai you'll get plain soy milk, and if you ask for "D-jiang" you'll get the sweet version. There apparently is no "C-jiang", not even a "Gentleman's C-jiang" but apart from that I approve of this grading system; I'd give a good version of savory doujiang an "A" any day, and a sweet version a "D" (if not an "F").

A funny thing happened on the way to the Forums

2006-12-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

By now I should have posted an impressive collection of accounts of the best small eats venues from far-flung areas of Shanghai in the eatingchinese forums. But my already stressed old body was overtaxed by my zeal and I spent a week of mandatory chilling out in the cardiac care unit of People's Hospital Number 6 on Yishan Lu. Thanks to the ministrations of Nurse Jin, who was infatuated with my beard, as well as the chou doufu* carried in for lunch by my wife, who hurried to Shanghai to be with me (and perhaps to save Nurse Jin from me), I left the hospital feeling better than I had in months and with a new outlook on life. Henceforth I will always stop to smell the roses, or at least the *stinky tofu. Leisurely pace or not, I still managed to sample every bao, jiao, tiao, mantou and bing in sight of the Hang Hui Hotel (not in your guidebook) as well as dine in some fancier sit-downers like Shanghai Uncle and some destination xiao chi havens like Xiao Yang's for shenjiang baozi and Wan Shou Zhai for the "da huntun." Expect photos and accounts of these to appear here in the Forums.

Mantou, Inc.

2006-11-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

I love mantou by any name, especially if it has a savory stuffing. I was aware that it has many names and many cognates even in diverse cultures, but never suspected that I would find a great overview of the topic in a publication called "AM Costa Rica" (scroll down the page) by a remarkable individual named Lenny Karpman, who happens to be a retired cardiologist from my very own HMO facility, Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. I'm going to have to print it out and carry it with me as ammunition when my own cardiologist tsk-tsk's me about the stuff I eat. "It's OK by Lenny" will be my mantou, er, mantra.

A Taiwanese Eats Gallery

2006-11-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

Stumbling wontonly around the 'net (actually very purposefully looking for information on Wenzhou won tons) I discovered this gallery of Taiwanese "xiao chi." I didn't see the Wenzhou won tons here, but plenty of leads took me through Taipei or Paris (which seem to jointly monopolize Wenzhou food outside of Wenzhou ). Oooh that stinky tofu!

Opdatering translation (sort of)

2006-11-01T22:40:00.000-08:00

I know you have all been tearing your hair out for the last few hours wondering what the hell the last post meant, and how much fuller your life will be when you find out. It so happens that because of my obvious Need to Know, I get regular updates from Misigisaq Restaurant by email. What is Misigisaq Restaurant? Simply the best Chinese restaurant in Sisimiut, Greenland.

Julefrokost is the Greenlandic/Danish version of an extended Christmas holiday, characterized by a lot of easting and a lot of boozing, and the item in the previous post is one of the Julefrokost banquet menus. These particular menus are only posted in Greenlandic, so if you are a little rusty on your Greenlandic, well, you'll know how I often feel when I pick up a menu in China. You can figure out some of the dishes if not all by studying the regular menu, which is available on the site in English (and Danish and Geman as well).

Do they deliver? Well yes, but probably only as far as their dogsled delivery team can go.

Misigisaq E-Opdatering (Say What?)

2006-11-01T07:23:00.004-08:00

Skolejulefrokost 90 kr/kuvert

ved min. 10 pers

Forretter

Rejechips (2 stk)

Surstærk krydret suppe fra Sichuan – ikke så stærk

Kød og Seafood

Indbagte rejer (1 stk/5 pers)

“Det ligner honning” grønlandsk fårekød

Kartofler og muskoksekød i lergryde

Krydret kogt får

Sursød svinekød

Tilbehør

Hvide ris og

Blandet stegtet ris (1 stk/5 pers)

Desserter

Hjemmelavet is

Which Lee's Chinese Restaurant?

2006-10-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

An article in the Nationak Post (Canda) mentioned that Lee's Chinese Restaurant in Rivers, Manitoba, was considered to be the best Chinese Restaurant in the Province (this, of course, because Soo's in Brandon, Manitoba is no more). In searching for more info on this restaurant (which flies below the Google radar, I came across pointers to at least a dozen "Lee's Chinese Restaurants" in the US from South Burlington VT to New Iberia LA. One link led me to a Lee's Chinese Restaurant photo gallery. This Lee's appears to be in Atlanta, GA and the gallery provides some nice little glimpses into a family-run operation. It was posted by Emily Liu, probably the Emily appearing in some of the photos.

But do we get to see The Clan perform?

2006-10-26T21:17:00.000-07:00

I found this in the Maidenhead Advertiser after I finally worked my way through the advertising (seems to be a shortage of maidenheads this year):

IF YOU are after a Christmas party to remember, look no further than the Wu Tang Chinese restaurant.

Enjoy a taste of the Orient in a relaxed, friendly setting which can soon gain party mood momentum as part of the roomy, air-conditioned restaurant can be turned into a disco with karaoke. Proprietor Alan Wu says there will be gifts for customers throughout the festive season and the Christmas menu is now available. It's also a great place to go to escape the too-much-turkey syndrome. Eye-catching Oriental decor, including some wonderful and dramatic gowns and wine bottles ‘dressed' in traditional Chinese attire, is one of the reasons why Wu Tang, in The Colonnade, Maidenhead, attracts its regular customers time and again plus plenty of newcomers. For further details and to book a table for the Christmas season call 01628 788661. For the full story see this week's Maidenhead Advertiser (26/10/06)

Don't miss Thursday's Maidenhead Advertiser for ALL the news that matters to you.

I wouldn't miss it for the world!

Will there be an "East Dawning" in your local mall?

2006-10-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

Now here's an idea. Yum brands, with its expertise in running fast food chains (KFC, Taco Bell, etc.) has developed a Chinese fast food chain called "East Dawning". ANOTHER Chinese fast food chain, you say? Well, this one is in China, uses Chinese recipes and is apparently quite popular, from all accounts. Fast food chains, spawned from multiple branching, have a long and successful history in China (I'm a Qiaojiazha fan myself) but Yum hopes to bring what they've been lacking -- consistency among outlets. (And did someone say "clean bathrooms"?) If Yum could bring the concept to North America, with the Chinese recipes intact, it might have a socially redeeming value.

Chinese Food in China, via the US

Discuss in the eatingchinese.org FORUMS

Happy Birthday to Me! (and why you should care)

2006-10-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe you shouldn't care. But if you're reading this, perhaps you are jonesing for new posts, of which there haven't been any in a dog's age. The relevance here is that a) It's my 65th, b) I'm therefore retiring from my full-time job at the end of the week and c) I'll therefore have more time to post frequently and no have more excuses for not doing so.

Below is the appropriately themed cover of the Happy B'day card my co-worker and buddy Paula gave me:

Yao Ming swears off shark fin soup

2006-08-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Astrid, whose blog may have expired (see below) but not her blog-spirit, for the link to this New York Times story:

Yao Ming Swears off Shark Fin Soup

As the human population increases, many wildlife species are decreasing, and the primary reason is that humans fail to treat animals as friends,'' said Yao, who played for the Shanghai Sharks basketball team before moving to the Houston Rockets.

The Shanghai Sharks indeed...

The WID files

2006-07-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm about to offer some blog archives with a twist: they aren't my archived posts, but someone elses. That someone else is "Astrid," creator of one of my all-time favorite blogs, "Wrapped in Dough." Astrid is now in law school, and let her blog and domain expire, but before she did I saved all of her posts covering her seven-month stay in China and am in process of reconstituting the content on my own website. Here are a few that I have up already:

The Wrapped in Dough Files

Chinese dumplings are for VIP's

2006-07-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

After being laid to their rooms, of course.

This from the Concord Times, Freetown, Sierra Leone:

"Thank you for your warm and kind reception. We have been very well looked after by your staff and Management," Mrs. Nane Annan signed the Bintumani BUCG Hotel register on July 2nd while checking out.

Upon arrival at the hotel, the UN Secretary General greeted Ms. Dong Wen, General Manager of the hotel in Chinese and was laid to their room by top management officials.

Bintumani officials say Mr. Annan and wife heartily ate 'dumpling', a traditional Chinese food meant for very important visitors. The UN Scribe also said 'thank you' in Chinese after eating.

There's New York style pizza, and now....

2006-07-06T09:20:00.000-07:00

As reported in the Providence Journal, a new restaurant in Seekonk, RI, called "Chinese Iron Wok" advertises that it "brings New York China Town Cuisine to Your Neighborhood." Yes, but is it really authentic New York Chinatown cuisine?

A taste of China, and New York's China Town, too

Bloggers Do it Long and Strong (but RIP one Superstar)

2006-07-04T10:01:00.000-07:00

I just finished reviewing the status of the 33 blogs about Chinese food or Asian food in general I have collected over the past couple of years. I'm happy to report that only one has perished, and nearly all the others are recently active (et tu Gary?)

The one discordant note was struck by the announcement HERE that Astrid was about to let her Wrapped in Dough blog go dark, being too busy in law school. For those who knew the blog when its creator had the time to keep it rocking, it was one of the best foodie blogs of any type, and Astrid's seven months of discovery and reporting (with mouth-watering photos) while traveling and teaching in China represent one of the high water marks in food blogging, IMHO. I've save all eighty-some pages or her entries from that period, and will be communicating with Astrid about preserving/republishing them. I'll even promise to spare her lawyer jokes.

Paving the road to hell redux; blog of the week

2006-07-02T07:42:00.000-07:00

Oops, I said it again. But honest, folks, this time it's for real. I'm going to get off the matong and update this blog more frequently, whether anyone cares or not. After all, I'll be retiring soon and what do retired old farts do better than run off at the mouth about this and that, whether anybody is listening or not? And what better analog to blogging is there? So surfers, stay tuned, and googlebots, pay attention.

Anyway, this morning I was happy to discover an entertaining new blog centered on Asian food. It's Noodles and Rice, the Best in Asian Food, by Stef Patag. It's comforting to know that at any given moment there's someone in Cincinatti or wherever thinking of dim sum or whatever.

Oh, and part of the excuse for my absence from the blog is that I was here:

We'll never find out if the food was good....

2006-04-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Man pleads guilty after swiping Chinese food
Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A little lo mein brought a bad fortune to Walter Eliassaint.

The Royal Palm Beach man ended up in jail for swiping some Chinese food meant for his neighbor and had faced 11 years in prison before pleading guilty Wednesday to a lesser charge and receiving a $333 fine.

The China King deliveryman went to the wrong door in January, and Eliassaint, 25, was hungry. He took the bag of food and signed the $27.33 credit card receipt, but was arrested before he could crack open his fortune cookie.

The food was meant for his neighbor, the girlfriend of a former police officer, who was with her and also hungry.

"Was it good?" County Judge Paul Moyle asked Eliassaint at the plea hearing Wednesday.

"I didn't eat it," Eliassaint replied. "I was in jail the same night."

Big Chinese in the Twin Cities Area

2006-03-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

From the Star-Tribune:

Dim sum at 3 a.m.?

When Jun Bo opens early next month in the former Chi Chi's location at 7717 Nicollet Av., Richfield, it will be the biggest Chinese restaurant in Minnesota. The 22,000-square-foot restaurant's largest dining room will have space for 40 banquet tables, or 400 guests -- big enough to accommodate the huge wedding events and community celebrations that are traditional in the Chinese community. Jun Bo will feature a traditional Chinese menu, full bar, and dim sum (the traditional Chinese tea snacks) all day, every day, from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m.

Spring Has Sprung, the Blog is Blooming

2006-03-20T17:14:00.000-08:00

The Blog will begin to bloom again, but not necessarily for the best reasons. I have suspended (abandoned?) my phpbb message board indefinitely after the third hacker attack in 18 months wiped out all the posts and part of the membership roll. I intend to make more use of the blog as a repository for pithy information gleaned on the fly, so check back often. I'm mulling alternative message board solutions, such as more secure software, better hosting arrangement (with better support) and the like, so eventually interactivity will be restored to eatingchinese.org. In the meantime, I have created a "mini me" of the departed forum in the form of a Google Group, so stop by and join in!

On Xtreme Cuisine and HP electronic calculators

2006-02-18T21:56:00.000-08:00

In searching for some fodder for a discusion on a message board (not mine), I stumbled upon this wonderful page on the website for the HP Calculator Museum:

Game for game and other offal stuff in China

Thanks, Dave. And BTW, the first electronic calculator I used was a Friden, ca. 1969. Loved that RPN!

Now I'm wondering what the owner of the Pez Dispenser Museum down in Burlingame is eating these days....

Gung Haggis Fat Choy!

2006-01-10T11:27:00.000-08:00

You see, Chinese New Years always falls near Robbie Burns' Birthday.... and... both events are important in Vancouver.... and... let's just let let Toddish McWong's blog explain it all.

But don't miss out on the haggis spring rolls, haggis ried wontons and the haggis lettuce cups if you happen to be in Vancouver on January 22.

Waiter, there's a USB plug in my siu mai!

2006-01-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

The web site for Houston's Chinatown has a a page exploring the joys and procedures of eating dim sum, complete with suitable illustrations. The page designer, however, seemed to fail to notice that the clip art he grabbed from the web for illustrating siu mai was a publicity photo from a Japanese manufacturer of cute flash media storage devices. If you tak a look, you can clearly see the USB plugs attached to them.

Now, if I can get a steamer of those for $2.50....

Culinary Crime in London

2006-01-08T06:35:00.000-08:00

There's an interesting rantlet in the op-ed section of the London Telegraph today by David Tang (of Shanghai Tang). Unfortunately, it deals more with form than with subtance, and leaves a lot unsaid about the quality and composition of the food itself.

"Spare ribs, egg foo-yung, chop-suey and plenty of fried rice: how to murder a Chinese "

Klingt furchtbar schmeckt aber wunderbar

2006-01-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

Translation: My new year's resolution is to revive this blog, embrace it wholeheartedly, and lovingly feed it nibbles.

Okay, that was a white lie. Actually, it means "Sounds terrible but tastes wonderful". I found this description applied to a German restaurant, Grasshof, while browsing the somewhat scary website of a government supported haute food technology institute, INICON, but the phrase seems to be tailor-made for Chinese food. How often have you uttered something similar, or heard someone utter something similar about the goose chitterlings, fish maw or duck tongues on the menu at your favorite Chinese restaurant?

Anyway, a Happy Klingt Furchtbar Schmeckt Aber Wunderbar, or KFSAW for short to you, and come on back!

Manchu Wok: "Would you like fries with that?"

2005-07-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Or how about some Chinese nachos?

Now Manchu Wok has rewritten its business plan, looking outside of food courts for growth.

The chain is focusing on non-traditional locations such as amusement parks, airports, hospitals and military bases -- as well as stand-alone street level outlets.

It is also expanding its menu to include items such as "Chinese Nachos" and "Dragon Fries" (French fries) to capitalize on a hot tween/teen market that loves Chinese food.

From the Toronto Globe and Mail

Best Chinese Food in North America -- in Akron OH?

2005-07-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

So say Spin Magizine writer Chuck Klosterman:

``Nobody will believe this, but the thing I miss most is the Chinese food. I have never had any General Tso's chicken that's as good as the $4.99 lunch special at Platinum Dragon.

``There was also that place by Summit Mall that has those really delicious pot stickers, and that awesome buffet in Montrose.

Somehow, Akron has the best Chinese food in North America. I don't get it, either.''

Read all of Chuck's spin on this in the Akron Beacon Journal

Indian-Chinese and Chinese-Indian Cuisines

2005-07-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Good article in the Business Standard on the difficulties of porting cuisines between India and China

The Great Tandoori Stir Fry

Cooking Chinese on the Mississippi Delta

2005-07-16T20:50:00.000-07:00

Stir-fried collard greens? Crawfish Cantonese? Gilroy and Sally Chow make do with what's available.

VOA News - Chinese-American Couple Mixes Chinese Food with Mississippi Delta Delicacies

Profile of Malaysian chef Justin Hor

2005-06-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

WHEN you love to eat, you would want to know more about the food. And it's not all about Chinese food for Justin Hor Chee Keong, group executive chef and director of the Oriental Group of Restaurants....

Read more in this Straits Times article.

Why Rickey Henderson has been placed on the Chinese Food Maven Honor Roll:

2005-05-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

After hitting a two-run pinch-hit homer, running around the bases and into the clubhouse and leaving the stadium in the eighth inning of a 14-7 Padres' victory over the Mets: "I had to get to this Chinese restaurant. They closed at midnight. Best Chinese food I've ever had."

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Happy with his takeout in Oldbury

2005-05-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

Just a slice of takeout life in merry olde...

He can always find another takeout here.

From the Fun Facts to Know and Tell department:

2005-04-26T22:36:00.000-07:00

From the Salt Lake City Tribune

Mary Surratt's D.C. boardinghouse, where John Wilkes Booth gathered his co-conspirators to plot Lincoln's death, is now a Chinese restaurant called Wok & Roll.