Japan is full of wonderful things, many food-related — among them, okonomiyaki pancakes, conveyor belt sushi and convenience-store food of the highest order. But nothing screamed out to be written about here until last night, when we discovered Kyoto’s truly weird “Sweets Paradise.”
We were trolling the streets of Kyoto in search of something sweet when [...]
The Huogongdian (火宫殿) restaurant is one of Changsha’s most famous eateries, but it took me more than a year to find a reason to go there. But on Saturday night, we braved the cold and headed over to the east side of the river to check it out.
We were surprised to find that it is [...]
Until you’ve lived in China, it’s hard to understand the speed with which everything changes: restaurants, neighborhoods, government regulations, you name it. This is an occupational hazard of travel writing here, since the expiration date on your recommendations can pass in the blink of an eye. You might recommend a neighborhood for shaokao, only to [...]
Another entry in the annals of strange Chinese interpretations of Western foods, spotted on the streets of Nanchang:
The filling was an orange-dyed processed chicken patty; the bread a tempura-battered hamburger bun. We saw them all over the city. I didn’t dare to eat one (a sniff was enough), but my companion pronounced them delicious.
Each morning, Malaysia’s kopitiams — coffee shops — are abuzz with clinking cups, rustling newspapers and the hum of voices speaking Malaysian and Chinese. Just one or two ringgit buys a small mug of rich, strong kopi, which comes with a healthy dose of condensed milk. (If you don’t want the milk, ask for a [...]
This is the third post of a weeklong series recapping my August trip to the western Chinese provinces of Gansu and Qinghai. See the first and second posts in the series.
Many of the foods we encountered in western China bore little, if any, resemblance to what one thinks of as “Chinese food”. Yes, we ate [...]
All over western China, you can find stalls selling 肉夹饼, pronounced roujiabing. At it’s most basic, a roujiabing is a seasoned chopped meat filling, stuffed inside a round pocket of bread. But not all roujiabing are created equal — and I’m not talking about quality. As we traveled around Gansu and Qinghai, every bite into [...]
One of my favorite things to do in a new city is to check out the grocery store or outdoor market — wherever the locals shop. I’m not interested in the touristified market packed with overpriced “delicacies.” In Bergen, Norway, the fish market now sells (admittedly delicious) smoked salmon for roughly four times the price [...]
On Monday, I wrote about a cooking class I took in Beijing last month. On Sunday night, I took a crack at preparing a couple of the dishes that we made in class. The main attraction was gongbao jiding, or “kung pao chicken.” (A bit of Googling suggests that the name means “Imperial Governor’s Diced [...]
This is the first of two posts about learning how to cook Chinese food. Come back Wednesday to read about when I tried it at home.
If I’m honest with myself, my love for Chinese food is at least part of why I signed up to move to China for two years. One of my original [...]
