What was the food like?

When talking to people about my holiday in China nearly everyone has asked about the food, so here's the low down. 

Chopsticks always, of course

Before we set off for China, several people warned us about street food or about the possibility of eating dog (or worse), and my friend Jill seemed to think we would be living on bananas, for some strange reason. In the event, not one of us suffered the dreaded holiday tummy, and the food was delicious.  Our main problem was the unfamiliarity of the menus and the difficulty in making our orders understood.  We ate almost exclusively Chinese food for the whole fortnight, apart from breakfasts.  I was grateful that all our hotels made an attempt at Western breakfast (I couldn't face chilli noodle soup first thing in the morning) and even though MacDonald's, Starbucks and Kentucky Fried Chicken were present in most towns we visited, we avoided them as studiously as we do at home. 

We soon learnt that dishes would be brought up as soon as they were cooked, and so there is no sequence of nibbles, starters and mains and people at the table don't necessarily eat the same time, and even different components of one's meal could arrive at different times. For example, we ordered garlic stir fry broccoli to have with our Peking Duck, but it arrived a good half and hour before the main dish and so it was lucky that we ploughed into it like a starter.  Plain boiled rice comes pretty much automatically with most meat dishes, and special fried rice or noodle dish is seen as a full meal.  When ordering our take-away on our first evening we later realised that part of the confusion was that they only expected us to order one dish each, and thought we were continually changing our mind.  So we only received the last item that we asked for!  I guess this doesn't apply to celebrations, when the table is covered in dishes as we experience in Chinese restaurants at home. 

Louise and I had anticipated a fortnight without wine.  In fact, Louise had come up with a number of strategies for sneaking the odd bottle into the suitcase.  However, we were pleasantly surprised to find wine on the menu in most hotels and restaurants, although it was relatively expensive and we often doubled our bill with just one bottle.  Isn't it often the way when stepping outside the local culture: at the OCT Theatre in Beijing we indulged in a western style coffee and it cost as much as our lunch.  As usual, the French wine was very reliable.  The Chinese wine was drinkable too, although we learnt to avoid one particular brand which tasted like sherry to us. 

Part of my holiday reading was an autobiography called Lion's Head Four Happiness by a Chinese lady called Xiaomei Martell, who grew up in a remote part of China during the time of Chairman Mao.  When she finally finds success in Beijing she describes with relish a meal of Peking Duck, and I'm heartened to find that it fitted exactly my experience.  Sadly I never managed to find Lions Head meatballs on any menu.



Frog dumpling

In Xian, our lovely guide Betty, who talked incessantly and was devoted to making us happy, took us along to Defa Chang restaurant for a dumpling banquet, this being a regional speciality.  The setting was wonderful, and from our window we could see the Bell and Drum tower beautifully lit up at night.  We were served 14 types of dumplings, many imaginatively presented in the shape of the main ingredient: - courgette, pork and cabbage, mixed veg, shrimp, spicy tomato, spicy sausage meat, duck, mushroom, frog (!) and even sweet ones such as walnut.  What fun, and really tasty.  Our second evening in Xian Betty recommended a very local restaurant, where they spoke no English whatsoever.  We felt very adventurous - this was almost backpacker stuff!  With a few tips from Betty and a bit of mime, we managed to get fed and watered, but not necessarily with what we'd asked for.  Here's a selection of the English translations on the menu:


• with large
• with the ear piece
• bouquet worse hairtail
• Clever mix kalonege   
• Beauty Extremely Onion Agaric
• Couples Lung
• Overlord chicken

You don't believe me do you?  Here's some proof:

I plumped for the Overlord Chicken based on a photo of breaded strips, which turned out very nicely.  Ian's strategy was to stick to sweet and sour pork as often as possible.  In another restaurant I took a chance on braised goose and mushroom in oyster sauce, which was very appetising once I had removed the goose feet.  Nobody was game enough for the offering below...

One evening we splashed out on a very posh Sichuan meal in Yu's Family Kitchen, which was a sensational success.  We had a private dining room and our own delightful waitress, who spoke very good English, and served us with the tasting menu of 60 different dishes!  The cold starters alone counted for 16 of them, and the stand-out hot courses included abalone, truffle and gold leaf and Wagyu beef. The spicy chicken and rice wine took my breath away (literally unfortunately, took me a few minutes to recover from that one), and apple balls in Sichuan pepper was an unusual but winning combination. 

Ginger, melon, tomato, lotus flower roots, quails egg, green beans, cucumber, aubergine, potato cubes, tofu noodles, water bamboo, red pepper, pumpkin, vegetable roots in sauce, green paper and black garlic. 

In terms of food, I am overwhelmed with the sheer unexpectedness of it all, from the yak served on one of our internal flights to the edible calligraphy set in Yu's Family Kitchen.

The brush is pastry and the paint is a tomato sauce

 Oh, and we did enjoy bananas when picnicking in our minibus.