One billion bites per second....

I know. I am terribly far behind in my writings. I've still yet to write about Italy, France, Berlin, and a few more on London, and yet I've already moved onto something and somewhere new.

China.

To be frank, I've never had any desire to visit China. Even when I was travelling all over SE Asia with a friend about five years ago, we were in Hong Kong, China was about as close, and easy to get to, as Seattle is to Vancouver, and I chose an extra day in Hong Kong over visiting Mr. Mao's country. Even when my plans for a trip to China began to solidify and take form a few months ago, my anticipation levels could be described as being rather...muted. It wasn't until a conversation in Rome with my friend J that I was given a real reason to be excited about my visit to China. How silly of me! Blind really! That I should have ever failed to realize that China would be an amazing experience for the palate! With over a billion people and counting, hundreds...maybe even thousands...of local specialties, food with a strong emphasis on flavour, flavour, flavour, food so good that how much you gain in weight is almost indicative of how good of time you had. If there is one thing that everyone can afford to do in China it is to eat and to eat well. A meal for two, with a generous spread of 4-5 dishes, beers, and tea can be had for a mere 50 yuan (approx. $6 CAD), even fine dining is well below what one would pay in North America. And so I packed my bags, a little nervous about my soon to be expanding waistline, but very eager to begin my explorations of true Chinese cuisine in one of its largest and most historical cities.

Having only just arrived in Beijing yesterday, I've had little time to research and ask around for local recommendations. However, by pure luck I managed to sample one of the biggest trends in Beijing restaurant/dining culture right now - Szechuan food.

So what is Szechuan food? I could tell you a little bit about the province, give you some background information, but the only thing you really need to know about Szechuan cuisine is that it is SPICY. Not the kind of spicy that puts a little heat in your mouth, or even the kind that clears your sinuses; this is the kind of spicy that has you pulling at your shirt collars, asking for more napkins not because you spilt your drink, but because you are sweating like a guilty man on trial from the furnace that used to be your mouth, the kind of spicy that bring grown men to tears, but it tastes so good you just can't seem to stop the self-torture. Some of you may scoff at this, thinking to yourself, "I've had Szechuan food before, it's not that spicy at all!" Well, I am willing to bet that either you are living and eating in some country other than China, or you were born with almost no taste buds in your mouth.

Just around the corner of the place I'm staying is a small restaurant of no more than 10 tables, each seating a maximum of 4-6 people. The decor is sparse, plastic/wooden tables with matching picnic bench seats, linoleum tiled flooring, a drink cooler in the middle of the room beside the server station, and the kitchen is hidden behind a small doorway draped with a cloth curtain. Yet, like anywhere in the world, one can generally tell if a restaurant is good by the size of the line outside and how consistently busy it is during the week. According to W the place was always busy and after walking by again on a Wednesday night, I can also confirm that a line up is generally present as well. Peering through the windows people were eating what appeared to be some type of large Hotpot, but without the soupy base, from which emanated a most deliciously smoky aroma.

Now, here is my personal predicament when dining out in any Chinese establishment.

I can't read Chinese.

It's terribly embarrassing sometimes, especially when you take into account the fact that I am every bit the Chinese-girl in appearance and can actually speak pretty fluent Mandarin. Thus, the minute I open my mouth it's generally assumed that I can also read and write. It is definitely something I am working on, but as far as I'm concerned at this present moment the character for "beef" might as well stand for "pudding."

So, back at this neighborly establishment I found myself faced with a menu full of choices, however, none of which I could decipher. So I flagged down their friendliest looking waiter, and explained my situation and placed our order completely in his hands. It turns out that the ordering method is very much like Hotpot, you order various types of sliced meats, select your vegetables, and maybe some tofu options. The waiter then brings out your order with the various ingredients placed on individual platters for your inspection. Unlike Hotpot where you basically do the cooking yourself, the waiter then takes your selection of meat and veggies back into the kitchen where the chef quickly stir fries it in a large metallic pan with hot red peppers and various Chinese spices, before returning the dish, still in the metal pan, onto a burner in the centre of your table which keeps it warm for the duration of your meal.

Since W can not handle spicy foods at all, I did my best in asking the waiter to make it as mild as possible. However, what arrived at our table looked about as spicy as it gets, with large hot red chilies appearing the be the dominant flavouring in our dish. We had ordered sliced pork, beef, as well as lotus root, tofu skins, and sliced winter melon. Our meal was accompanied by a bowl of white rice, and a few cans of "Wang Lao Jin," a type of Chinese iced tea, to help wash the spicy food down. While I didn't find it too bad, poor W was sweating buckets from the heavy handed spices. The beef was tender and almost falling apart, I found the pork a little tough to chew, and the vegetables soaked up the flavours nicely. There was so much food it could have easily been shared amongst 4-5 people, and in fact many of our neighboring tables were doing just that. We left the restaurant feeling very much satisfied and our bellies nice and round. And the best part of the meal? The bill. After everything it came out to around 120 yuan, approximately $15 CAD, and had we gone with more friends it would've been an even better bargain.

I'm hoping to try out the famous Szechuan Hotpot sometime this weekend or next week. It's a craze that's swept throughout China and can now be found creeping into North America. Fortunes have been made, built on Hotpot empires. So even though I doubt I'll get the chance to gain in such fortunes myself, there is no reason why I cannot at least indulge in the flavours from which they were made.

London - Oh Yum Dim Sum!

I love dim sum.

To me its always been associated with lazy weekend afternoons, sleeping in, talking as loud and expressively as you want, lots of wild hand gesturing, ordering ridiculous amounts of perfectly bite sized, and very pretty if not weird looking, food, eating aforementioned ridiculous amounts of food, having the push-cart ladies convince you to order more food when you can’t even finish what’s on the table, and large family gatherings where someone inevitably says something wrong, resulting in one (or more) person storming out of the restaurant, an awkward silence and then a sudden mad rush to settle the bill.

Okay, so maybe that last association wasn’t exactly picturesque, but hey – family is family. It is understandable then that it was rather difficult having a “dim sum” restaurant directly across from where I was working in London and not immediately run over and gorge myself silly. So, why the quotation marks around the words dim sum? And why didn’t I make a mad dash over?

It was too pretty.

Seriously.

I’m used to walking up dark narrow staircases to reach dim florescent-lit rooms with disgruntled looking middle aged women practically yelling their offerings to you; or overtly bright rooms where one finds painted gold dragons upon the wall, red signage inscribed with Chinese calligraphy, imitation scroll paintings, fish tanks, or all of the above. Even at the more upscale dim sum locations, such as Kirin in downtown Vancouver, there is still that typical white tablecloth Chinese restaurant vibe. Ping Pong is none of those things.

Ping Pong is a successful chain of restaurants in London, with several locations in prime areas all about the city, serving up “little steamed parcels of deliciousness.” I dined at the original Ping Pong located in Soho, right on Great Marlborough Street just around the corner from the fashionable Carnaby Street. Designed by architect David Marquardt, the restaurant is stunning; the place looks and feels like a study in minimalistic, Asian, feng shui design. From the front of the restaurant where large open windows let natural light into the entire front dining area, dominated by a large, curved, sushi-bar like counter, behind which stand the chefs working in billowing clouds of steam, preparing your meal; to the interior of the restaurant with its fluid, airy open design, glossy black lacquered tables, and suspended diffused lighting. The most impressive focal point of the room, however, is a glass enclosed square in the middle of the dining room that, on the gorgeous spring day we were there, filled the room with so much sun, one could’ve easily forgotten they were indoors.



Strangely missing from Ping Pong are the Chinese people, there basically aren’t any. Usually, that’s a very, very bad sign when it comes to Asian dining; but I figured this is London, there just aren’t that many of us, and Ping Pong never did say anything about authenticity. Gone are the rude, loud, ladies and their pushcarts, instead your bamboo baskets of steamed goodies arrive on the well balanced tray of good looking, indifferent, accented French waiters dressed in chic black head to toe. The décor is, in my opinion, more Japanese in essence than Chinese, and yelling or wild hand gesturing is a definite social no-no. The menu is collection of fairly standard dim sum items, some reinterpreted and redone “eurostyle.” There are no chicken feet or various animal digestive parts to be found here, they don’t even have egg tarts. Blasphemy! At least that’s probably what most of you dim sum lovers out there are thinking. I was curious though. How do you westernize dim sum? Well, let me be the one to tell you, it’s actually not half bad.

Firstly, order the jasmine tea. Yes, it’s an exorbitant price to pay for tea that tastes like the free stuff they serve in any other Chinese restaurant. However, those teas come in a disposable tea bag, dunked into a cracked tea pot that never pours properly; the Jasmine tea at Ping Pong comes in a tall clear glass, the “tea leaf” is an entire blossom head dried perfectly round that gradually “blooms” as it soaks in the hot water. I know. I’m a total sucker for aesthetics. Then I would strongly recommend going with one of the set meals as they are a good deal – each includes a baked puff, sticky rice, several types of dumplings, and dessert. Of course, you can always just order off the a la carte menu and share amongst yourselves…but I would really only do that only with a minimum party of four so you can try a larger range of items from the menu. I ordered the mixed menu that came with 2 baked puffs, 2 each of the following dumplings: Chive, Spicy Pork, Seafood, and Crystal, sticky rice and two scoops of ice cream.



With lunch around £20 per person, you’re definitely paying a little extra for the location and ambiance. I felt that the food definately fell short of expectations- the flavors underdeveloped in several dishes and non-existent in others; but I was pleasantly surprised by the nice balance that was struck in a few of the items, such as the Chive dumplings and Seafood tortellini. Both items benefiting greatly from the fusion of Western/European forms and elements with traditional dim sum ingredients and flavors. Authentic it is not, for that I would head over to Royal China in Canary Wharf, but in keeping with what I said in my review of Amaya, sometimes a little innovation is good thing, and Ping Pong wins me over in both concept and design, but fails to deliver with its cuisine.

Ping Pong (Original Location)

45 Great Marlborough Street, Soho

London, W1F 7JL
Tel 020 7851 6969

Tube Station: Oxford Circus

She returns.

Four weeks, four countries, five major cities, three minor cities and lots and lots of food. Some good, some bad, some very very bad, but there were a few highlights worth mentioning and that I plan on happily sharing with you all here. So for those of you who've been nice enough to drop by while I was gone, I thank you for your patience and promise that I will post up stories from my travels very soon along with pictures, of course.

In the meantime, I won't leave you with nothing, I'd like to introduce you to a very talented pastry chef by the name of Blair Fukumura. He is based in Toronto and, though I've not had the good fortune of sampling any of it, I absolutely love his work. It's witty, clever, funny, and doesn't take itself too seriously. However, don't be mistaken, the guy is a master in his art, everything he makes is undeniably impressive and well...awesome. Here is a link to the pilot episode of A Piece of Cake, a show featuring him and what he does best, that was being shopped to the Canadian Food Network. Unfortunately, the network's apparently on the fence about the show, so if you're like me and think it'd make an amazing show then I encourage you to take the time to send them a quick email encouraging them to add it to their lineup next season.

That's all for today, but do drop by again soon as I'll be adding more updates very soon!