I do have plenty of untold stories and observations, though they seem rather more distant than expected given the mere two-and-a-half weeks since I was fully immersed in China. Probably the high number of enormous hamburgers I’ve eaten since my return has accelerated the process of feeling fully at home in America again. But this past weekend Kristy and I decided we needed to use chopsticks and made a trip to a restaurant called Crouching Tiger in Redwood City in order to do so. I ordered dandan noodles, of course.
Writing that last sentence honestly made me start sweating from my face. The noodles were as spicy as the ones I ate at the Sichuan restaurant in Shijiazhuang, and much of our dinner conversation consisted of Kristy laughing at me while I said things like, “Oh man, these are spicy,” and “Can we get some more napkins over here?”
As previously mentioned, the food in China was mostly exceptional. It came in large doses, not suited for those with an instinct to keep eating as long as food keeps coming. This is probably why I’m convinced that I developed the beginning of a gut while there. Well, that and the bottomless tiny glass of beer with every dinner, the daily 3-pack of egg tarts, and the excess Ghirardelli chocolates my wife packed for me anticipating a client team of hundreds requiring authentic San Francisco gifts of goodwill. Had I stayed much longer I might soon have achieved my dream of developing a more convenient and fully portable snack food resting place.
Egg Tarts served with a smile daily
It’s something of a surprise that our dinners ever got started given the diversity and thoroughness of our team’s dietary restrictions. Several people cannot handle spice (I was accused of being one of them, but vehemently fought this assertion through the duration of the trip). Duli has a shellfish allergy. Two of the girls are relatively straightforward vegetarians, though apparently fish qualify as vegetables in Canada. And then one girl is what I will call an “ultra-vegetarian” simply because I don’t know what else to call her, never having attempted regularly to dine with someone who could not even eat onions or garlic. For all the work I do to pick hunks of onions and garlic out of my food I now recognize that I’m probably impacting 10% of the total.
The only restriction I put in place for myself was no dog meat, but I eventually extended this to cats after Duli, his grasp of the language apparently coming along much faster than anticipated, warned me that he recognized the symbol for cat in several dishes being grilled in the Carrefour parking lot. Later we found out it was the symbol for whichever Central Asian ethnicity was associated with that style of cooking, and there was no cat involved at all. Meanwhile, Tom made it abundantly clear that, with the exception of Duli’s allergy, everyone’s restrictions were personal choices and he refused to feel guilty if people struggled to find enough to eat in the local restaurants. As a result, some irony played out in the high frequency of visits to KFC by a subset of the group attempting to stay within the bounds of their healthy lifestyles.
One of the best meal options in China is the Hot Pot, lovingly celebrated in Mukul’s blog here. A hot pot, for those who don’t know, is a pot of boiling water into which you throw a bunch of raw food and then fish it out with chopsticks to eat. Important elements of the hot pot include the collection of stuff already simmering in the water to give it flavor and the sauces used to give the cooked food even more flavor. Well, and the food. I have categorized my hot pot experiences into three types: the community hot pot, the small table hot pot, and the personal hot pot. The community hot pot, as the name I’ve chosen implies, consists of one big “community” hot pot that sits in the middle of a table for 10 or 12 or some other relatively large number that can in good faith be labeled a community. The nefarious inventor of the community hot pot came up with a great way to start arguments, particularly among a group as picky and diverse as ours. Don’t put garlic in the water. Wait – is there shellfish in that? The meat has to go in last. That’s too many noodles. Why are you ordering more beef? YOU ARE SCALDING MY FACE!
At the other end of the spectrum is the personal hot pot, so named because each person at the table has his or her own hot pot to do with as he or she pleases. The fatal flaw in this design is its reliance on the individual’s ability to cook, which puts a significant damper on the experience for me. The other potentially more literal fatal flaw is that it puts the heating unit very close to people who may not be qualified to play with fire. At one restaurant I watched a woman lean over and light her hair on fire. I was about to congratulate her for the spot-on Michael Jackson impression when I noticed she was screaming and crying while her date was hitting her in the head with his hands and a napkin in a desperate attempt to put out the conflagration. By the time I got there with a glass of water she looked a little stressed out and more boyish than before, but uninjured.
In my experience the best hot pot is the small table hot pot, although this may have been more a function of the people around said small table, not to mention their relative lack of dietary restrictions. Apparently there is spin on the hot pot, whereby all the stuff to throw in the pot whizzes by on a conveyor belt while diners frantically grab items with chopsticks. With this invention the hot pot restaurateurs have come very close to completely automating the restaurant.
Mukul fell hard for Chinese Hot Pot
For those restaurants still employing people, ordering in China can be a challenge for those of us who barely even know how to count in Chinese. A key tool in this process is the translated menu. I had heard many stories and seen many pictures of menu translations gone horribly wrong in small town China, so I was looking forward to this aspect of the experience with great enthusiasm. Besides a few gems, such as “Trumpet She’ll Flesh,” Shijiazhuang mostly underdelivered for me. Thankfully, during our Shanghai trip we found a restaurant just off of Nanjing Road with a menu that nearly made up for it all. In addition to the famous Shanghai steamed dumplings, or xiao long bao, people dined on such dishes as “Trick Not Cut Jobs,” “Chicken Curry Piece of Land,” and that traditional favorite, “Hot Face in Three Other.” Everything we ordered was good, and when Duli didn’t die we found out that none of what we ordered had shrimp in it, either.
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The Hamburglar sees a growth opportunity in China, too
Must have been what the girl with the burning hair ordered.
If you could read this you definitely would laugh
Editor's note: the fact that this blog doesn't have an ending is meant to be symbolic given that Chinese meals didn't really seem to have a very obvious ending, either. Actually, I'm proud I came up with that because in truth I sort of ran out of steam writing this one.
Dan, pls remember that 'burglary noodle' was noodle soup with fish! Tom
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