Journal The Fun Guy's Journal: 192? What did I have for lunch? 4
For lunch today, I went to an authentic local place with some colleagues from a research center here in Beijing. It would appear that the hotel and conference food has been somewhat adapted to Western tastes. In a real Chinese hot pot lunch, the three of us had:
Beef stomach
Bone marrow
Blood tofu (thick-cut slices from a block of coagulated duck's blood)
White tofu
Frozen tofu
Clear tofu
Tubers
Lamb
Beef
Spinach, lettuce, cabbage
Potato starch noodles
Vegetable dumplings (fried)
All of the above (except the dumplings) were boiled for varying lengths of time in either !!SPICY!! pepper water or in mushroom soy
water, then dipped in a mushroom-peanut sauce.
The beef stomach was quite unpleasant, and there was way too much of it on the serving platter. All of the rest, even the coagulated duck's blood, was quite tasty.
To drink, I decided to turn down the corn juice and went with watermelon juice and a beer.
My host mentioned the fermented chicken feet as something I might like to try. Maybe next trip.
Similar story... (Score:2)
My brother had similar stories after a visit to China a couple of years ago, though apparently the marketing guys were *really* adventurous.
To me, it sounds like a rousing round of "see what crazy stuff we can get the foreigner to eat". :-)
Re: (Score:2)
In fairness, I asked for it. I said I was interested in having some authentic food, and was willing to try whatever they thought would make a good lunch. I made it clear that the only thing I could guarantee I didn't like was eggplant.
All of this stuff was on the menu, though, not in a special "crazy shit for foreigners" list. People must order it and eat it on a regular basis.
I don't think I'll be able to find blocks of coagulated duck blood back in Philadelphia, but OTOH, I've never looked for it before,
either or ether? (Score:1)
All of the above (except the dumplings) were boiled for varying lengths of time in either !!
Did you mean ether or am I just not parsing that sentence correctly?
Re: (Score:2)
All of the above (except the dumplings) were boiled for varying lengths of time in either !!SPICY!! pepper water or in mushroom soy water, then dipped in a mushroom-peanut sauce.
The exclamation points were meant for emphasis. The pepper water was really, really, REALLY fucking hot. The mushroom soy water wasn't so bad.