Dadong - Duck down, Beijing

Peking duck at Da Dong

According to my dad - back in 2010 or so - when in Beijing, we should skip the "classic" Quan Ju De and go to Dadong instead. That's a rule we (and I, when I've gone to BJ without him) have followed. This time, because I needed a baseline with which to compare Made in China, we found ourselves in Dadong again. Only this time, Dadong wasn't how we remembered it.

Peking Duck, Made in China - Beijing

Carving Peking duck. Argh, gloves.

Not long ago, I wrote that the best Peking duck I've ever had was at Kowloon Tang, in Hong Kong. With that memory fresh in my mind, I set off to Beijing to try the "real" thing. It's my 4th or 5th time in Beijing now, and we've had our favourites (see: my dad's Beijing tips), one of which has been Da Dong. I revisited DD this time as well - more in a future post - but we also went to Made in China, which has always been highly regarded for its pan-Chinese cuisine cooked before your eyes in their glassed-in kitchens, but also for its Peking duck.

Tea at The Fairmont Peace Hotel. Or, what not to do in Shanghai

This was from way back in the winter when I went for my xiaolongbao marathon and discovered the transcendence that was Sincere's hongshaorou. But as I was writing about tea at the InterContinental Hong Kong, I suddenly remembered this failure of an afternoon tea at Jasmine Lounge, on the ground level of the Fairmont Peace Hotel.

Best Chicken I've Ever Had - Chicken Village (Ji Cun) Panyu

Ji Cun's signature "crystal chicken"

I'd been here once before, two years ago, and in my mind, no chicken has topped this. Seriously, sometimes I wake up at night thinking about Ji Cun's "crystal chicken".

Mission Chinese Food Event in Shenzhen

I seldom write about one-off events, as I try to make this blog as useful as possible, but this one-night-only pop-up event in Shenzhen by Mission Chinese Food triggered some pretty interesting things that made me think more about where modern Asian/Chinese food is going.

If you're a foodlover from the States, or are kind of crazy and read about food way too much, you've probably already heard of MCF, or even been. They went from Mission Street Food to Mission Chinese Food, doing fusion-y Asian American within an actual Chinese American restaurant in the Mission district of San Francisco. I'd never eaten there, but from what I could gather from the interwebs it's boldly flavoured, nouveau soul Asian - which I would really have liked to eat at this event in Shenzhen, but at the same time I thought it might be a little odd - bringing soul-Asian back to Asia*.

Aside from the food itself, I want to talk about what this meal by Mission Chinese Food (hereafter MCF because I'm lazy) meant to me.

I didn't really know what to expect, but luckily there are adventurous folks like Gary and HK Epicurus, who were more than willing to come along, so across the border we went.

Clam/geoduck sashimi/carpaccio

The first thing that came out were slices of giant clam (though I think it was geoduck) on vinegared(?) melon in tomato essence, dotted with parsley oil and shiso. It was a clean, elegantly presented dish served to us in individual portions - so we pretty much knew for sure we weren't going family style.

Shanghai - If You Only Eat 3 Things...

If you only eat 3 things in Shanghai, at least take home a fourth - frozen Jia Jia xlb, anyone?

How crazy would you be if you went to Shanghai and could only eat three things? Well, you wouldn't need a proton pump inhibitor, that's for sure (if you don't know what a PPI is, lucky you), but you'd be missing out on a lot. These are, aside from the xiaolongbao, just the top three things I had when I went this time round. The first was new to me too - always nice to make new discoveries - the other two are old faves.

Wuhan & The Curious Case of the Hand-Pulled Noodle

It seems like hand-pulled noodles are all the rage in the US at the moment. Even for us in Hong Kong it's always been a spectacle, available for viewing only at fancy/kitsch restaurants like Peking Garden (I don't think they even do it customarily anymore, only on special request). When I went to Wuhan late last year, I found that in some parts of China, hand-pulled noodles aren't "special" at all. It's just the way they, ahem, roll. (In fact they roll nothing, just thought it would be a funny dough-related giggle. Anyway, didn't quite pull it off, did I? Ok, I'll stop, I'll stop.)

Shanghai - The Xiaolongbao

Lin Long Fang

Just after Christmas, I did an annual holiday/food vacation with my two bestest friends (I sound so high school - wait - we did meet in high school) to Suzhou and Shanghai. We ate lots, of course, but let's begin with the elephant in the city - xiaolongbao. These little mounds of pork steamed in a basic flour-water veil of dough sound like the easiest thing in the world to put make, but as with all things deceptively simple, they can drive people crazy in trying to perfect them, taking over the world with them (hello, Din Tai Fung), or in our case, trying to taste them all.

It's all in the family - My dad's Beijing tips

While I was stuffing my face and consequently trying to work it off on a bike in Taichung (<< click on Taichung for more on that...), my dad and one of my uncles joined Facebook and both decided to add me. I guess that's what long weekends do to people.

So finally today I checked out my dad's profile page. He actually posted status updates... about food! One of which I shall post here - I'm sure he's happy to share...

Guangzhou & Panyu Part II

nb. reposted from old blog, visited in May 2008

I was going to go to the deservedly famous Ngan Gei in Guangzhou the second morning, but alas, we were staying too far out to warrant the drive for me alone, so I settled for hotel brekkie, which was very surprisingly ok - they actually made decent 'western' breads like brioche and wholeweat loaves, unlike the usual yellowy, sweet, custard-powder-contaminated affair you get in China.

Lunch was at a place called Ji Cun (literally Chicken Village) in Panyu. One comment: The best chicken I've had in a long, long time. Their 'crystal steamed chicken', which is just, well, steamed chicken, was excellent - incredibly tasty and juicy. The bird is tiny compared to the frozen/chilled (whatever, they are both evil on the poultry-lover's scale) variety we get in HK, or heaven forbid Australia (ever tried chicken that tastes like water? Go to Australia...). Though to Oz's credit, this kind of chicken isn't exactly fleshy - Cantonese people in general like bones, we think it gives the flesh more flavour (prob due to proximity to marrow, or just for want of texture...)

Another highlight was the panfried stuffed beancurd - they make the beancurd on site, and while it wasn't the silkiest, it had the richness of freshly ground soybeans.

beancurd stuffed with fish paste; stir-fried congealed pig's blood; roasted fish fillets; the bowl in which the signature steamed chicken was in; excellent pork belly in bean paste (Chinese miso) topped with large shards of pickled ginger; pork bone and turnip soup; fish steamed with chicken; entrance to Ji Cun

Ji Cun 鸡村
550-575 Ying Bin Lu
Panyu City
Guangzhou
China
广东省广州市番禺区市桥迎宾路550号至575号
+86 02084661010

Guangzhou & Panyu Part I

nb. reposted from old blog, visited in May 2008

Tagged along with my parents to China for their property trawl and found that I can't even afford to buy a decent apartment in China these days. *sigh*

I did, however, come by some good Chinese food...

Our first meal was at the Grand Hyatt at Songshan Lake, which was by far the most expensive and almost predictably, the least spectacular... The dim sum menu was teeny - I ordered a char siu so (BBQ pork pastries) and it came out like freezer puff pastry hastily folded around a miniscule bit of badly made pork. The other dishes were decent though, like the thinly-sliced poached pork with minced garlic (suan ni bai rou). Still, it was grossly overpriced for mainland standards. Didn't help that the staff kept breaking plates right behind us and that our private washroom (we were in a private dining room) was finished with extremely sub-par fittings.

That afternoon we got to our hotel in Panyu, which is twenty minutes away from Tianhe district in Guangzhou, and proceeded to have dinner at Shichu (Private Kitchen/Chef), the 'premium' outlet of Guangzhou fave Bing Sheng. The only difference between the two, imo, was that Shichu is made up of a series of private rooms, while in Bing Shengyou sit in a conventional restaurant dining room. Bing Sheng junior is fairly decent decor-wise, and considering that the food wasn't much different, I'd probably just go to Bing Sheng next time. The champion of this meal was the braised duck with taro. Actually, it was the taro that really shone. It was steamed and cut into large chunks, but otherwise appeared to have undergone no further manipulation. The texture of the tuber itself was what won our hearts. In Cantonese cuisine we always look for 'fun' (powdery) taro - which means it's neither waxy nor mushy - it can be broken into clean cut pieces, but retains quite a bit of moisture, resulting in a 'powdery' texture. It's not so much a matter of season, but the way in which it was grown, and it takes a skilled chef or housewife to pick a good one. So anyway, this taro was exactly that, thus the evening was mostly spent with me hogging the taro and smothering it in the remainder of the duck's thickened dark soy sauce. The other standout dish was the slow cooked pig's trotter with sweet potatoes. Again, it was the starch component that won me over - soft, sweet and full of meaty flavours as a result of its duration in the claypot.

After dinner we went looking for dessert and ended up at another Guangzhou stalwart, Kai Ji (or Hoi Gei in Cantonese). They're famous for Canto sweet soups, but I didn't find them that interesting...

Anyway, yum yum yum. Day Two to come...

Shichu (by Bing Sheng)
178 Tianhe Dong Lu
+86 20 8757 5699

Kai Ji
889 Longjin Dong Lu

Hunan Part II

Between Zhangjiajie (see Hunan Part I) and Disney-fied ancient town Fenghuang lies another town named Furong (芙蓉), less crowded, and less "glam", but still touristy. But among the tacky silver and machine embroidered purses they try to pass off as hand-embroidered, there's a good reason for stopping by, and that's for their not-so-humbly named restaurant, which I'll go on about below. But for now, here are some street snacks we had...

Hunan Part I

At Zhangjiajie

I'm not a huge fan of travelling in China, but given my geographical proximity it's kind of hard (not to mention stupid) to avoid it.

Crossing Shenzhen

As you may or may not know, the vibrant city of Shenzhen ("vibrant" is a very polite way of saying loud, crowded, with not much regard for the law by 99% of its inhabitants) is a short train ride away from Hong Kong. I go quite often, not to join my fellow womenfolk to buy replica handbags, but to eat.

Shenzhen is a peculiar place, thirty years ago it was just another scruffy village, but now, it's been crowned a "Special Economic Zone" which basically means it's been flooded with all kinds of business and has a bubbling, gushing economy, fueled as much by multinationals as sketchy massage parlours.

Wages here are much higher, so restaurants have been able to attract excellent chefs from all over the country, meaning you can pretty much find very decent food from any province in China.

This weekend, we tried a place serving Chao Zhou (or Chiu Chow) food. Chao Zhou is in Southern China, close to a river (Pearl River?) so there's lots of seafood (or shall I say, river-food?). They're famous for their cold/room-temp tapas-like dishes that we call 打冷 (da2 leng3) in Chinese, such as cold crab. As with most Chao Zhou restaurants, they had a counter up front to display/serve these small dishes, as well as 'samples' of hot pot dishes. They also have a small menu for staples (e.g. rice, noodles) and vegetables.

As you can see, presentation isn't exactly their forte.

Stir fried gai larn (aka Chinese broccolli) with salt-preserved fish. The vegies were more thinly sliced than usual, allowing the stalks to cook at around the same time as the leaves. So crisp you can feel the fierceness of the wok (in Chinese it's called 鍋氣).

Lamb hot pot with dried herbs. Lamb and these medicinal herbs are supposed to have a warming effect on the body, hence perfect for winter. Dishes like these make me wonder what kind of lamb they use - because these little morcels get simmered and simmered and simmered and yet remain tender and juicy all the way.

The much less appetizing interiors

The next morning, we went and had yum cha at the notorious Dan Gui Xuan in Lo Wu Commercial Centre (huge, shabby mall, replicas galore). It's almost impossible to get a seat here without waiting and hassling the servicepeople for at least half an hour. The food is pretty good - not excellent, but it's the best bet by far if you've got a shopping day planned in this maze of a mall. Service is sloppy, but their taro (purple) and egg yolk & custard buns (white) can probably help calm you down when the tea just fails to arrive hot.

   

Manga Wine and Muslim Food - Xinjiang Yisilan Fanzhuang

Fans of the comic Les Gouttes de Dieu / Kami no Shizuku (神の水滴 / 神之水滴): Do you recognise this wine? It's talked about in the 8th book

And I had it! Wahaha! I think it's probably the least expensive wine in the whole series. I'm no wine expert (I don't think I'd even count as an amateur) but I think it'd be safe to say that Lou Lan isn't a very interesting wine, but at least it's not foul, like some overpriced Great Walls out there. They didn't specify which grape varieties they used, opting instead for a generic 'dry red wine' title, like many Chinese reds.

I went on a five-day trip to Beijing recently, and this place where I found the Lou Lan was our first dinner stop. The food of every province (or at least almost every) is represented in Beijing, being the capital of China, particularly cuisines from the north-eastern parts of the country, i.e. neighbours of Beijing. Food in this part of the country is often heavier in salt, herbs, oils and fats due to colder, longer winters and generally harsher conditions. Subtlety and finesse is more of a southern thing - Northerners, stereotypically, are more down-to-earth, rough n' ready kinds of people who need to consume more because of the climate and their labour-intensive work, whereas Southerners, especially those along the coast, are known to be good businesspeople and live on more arable lands, hence they tend to be more picky about food and the finer things in life.

Back to this first restaurant. It serves food from Xinjiang province (or maybe it's a Special Economic Zone? I'm not too sure) and is right behind the Xinjiang Hotel and next to official Xinjiang office in Beijing, hence often frequented by officials. We were assured that we were getting authentic food.

Lamb is the main attraction here, as it is the most commonly consumed meat in Xinjiang. Also, as many Xinjiang people are Muslim, pork isn't regularly served. We had ribs, soup, and probably a stir-fry kind of thing, but I've forgotten and forgot to take photos of it - so it must have been pretty good.

L-R: Sheep's milk yogurt; a snap of our brightly-coloured room; naan-like bread (unfortunately served at room-temp), lamb soup with carrots and herbs, absolutely fabulous roasted lamb ribs with finely-diced bell peppers.

Xinjiang Yisilan Fanzhuang
新疆伊斯蘭飯莊
海淀区三里河路7号新疆驻京办院内
7 San Li He Road
Kai Ding District
Beijing
China
Tel: +8610 8683 2666