A Note on Food

I suspect that a lot of people come to this blog hoping to learn about food, or at least about bland egg noodles served from a pole by peddlers. While these people will be disappointed to learn that one of my favorite restaurants in the world is Cho's Kitchen in Selma, CA and that I've only watched one episode of "Hell's Kitchen," this post is for them.

Thus far the food has been outstanding, though we've been expertly guided by Phil and Rebecca and we've mostly been in highly developed Shanghai. One of the constraints we have is that Kristy does not eat anything that could possibly be construed as seafood. On the flight over, which lived up to longstanding stereotypes for airplane food, one of the better items we received was a plastic bowl of instant Chinese noodles. I thought they were fine. Kristy somehow discerned that "Bonito Powder" is not laundry detergent but derived in some way from fish, and therefore refused to eat them. "This is going to be a long trip," I muttered.

So it was with some surprise that I watched Kristy thoroughly enjoy the notoriously fish-laden Japanese food we had our first night in town. She had noodles. On our second day we walked through a local market and saw a lot of things we have no intention of eating, including a poor catfish being hacked apart with a cleaver in the middle of the street. We opted for Italian food that night.

But by day three we were ready to tackle some actual Chinese food. During our trip to "China's #1 water town," Zhouzhuang, we stopped at a restaurant and began to take notes on what Phil and Rebecca were saying to the waitress.

"I have no idea what they are saying."

"Me neither."

"Hey, that's a cute turtle in that tank over there."

"Hmm."

Out of the kitchen came probably the best Kung Pao I've ever eaten, along with several other tasty dishes. We drank shandies. Phil and I nevertheless felt masculine.

Last night we had more great luck with a late dinner of beef noodles. I would post pictures, but pictures of food never really come across looking very good unless shot in a Hollywood production facility. The below picture doesn't look that great, either, but it was taken near food and hopefuly at least won't make people ill.

No feet eaten yet