Northern rice
(Chinese lunch at ‘rice and noodle’ café: Glasgow, Scotland)
Yet another ‘not particularly well taken photograph’, I’m afraid, but I think it communicates all the major points of the meal. My friend, Susan has been talking about going to this place for a few weeks since she discovered that the chefs come from what she calls her hometown, but is really a massive metropolis of several million inhabitants. She comes from the far North of China, whereas most British Chinese restaurants (the ones that serve anything remotely authentic) serve Cantonese (Southern) or Sichuan (central) Chinese food. I’ve never eaten any Northern dishes until last weekend when I tried some signature dishes.
The red chilli garnished dish closest to the camera was beef boiled in spiced oil; it was rich, very peppery, the meat was tender and the whole dish was delicious. The bowl next to that is salty fried prawns, very salty, but tasty nonetheless. And the last one – in the middle of the shot, I’m not sure about. Susan called it an ‘aubergine sandwich’ and it consisted of pork meat stuffed between two slices of aubergine, then deep fried in batter. Not my favourite by any means, but the other two dishes were winners, along with the cup of seaweed and egg soup we were all provided with. We asked for a dish of green vegetables (don’t worry about our roughage levels, we’re very health conscious) but they had run out or reached another complication with the dish. Susan conducted our entire order in Mandarin, so Ben and I were left to glean what we could from the conversation with our limited grasp of Chinese. To my utter astonishment, Susan had eaten there before, decided the rice wasn’t up to her standard and asked if she could bring her own next time. I was aghast at her brazenness but even more flabbergasted at their acquiescence. They didn’t seem to mind at all that we sauntered in with a Tupperware box of cooked rice. That’s like bringing bread to a sandwich shop!
Afterwards, we spoke about the double menus and Susan had a long discussion with the proprietor about this common issue of having two menus; one in English and a much more extensive, more exciting and basically better menu provided only in Chinese. This has caused me much upset since returning here from China since none of the dishes on the English menus in restaurants are particularly appealing or very Chinese (as I’ve experienced it). At the risk of sounding ungracious, I felt his rationale for the double menu was rather weak. His excuse was that the names of the dishes are difficult to translate. I imagine that to be true, yet, a description should be easy, after all, most Chinese connoisseurs are familiar with the term ‘century egg’, an egg that has been left for an almost unreasonable length of time in a liquid* bath, has fermented somewhat, become translucently gelatinous and turned black. That’s not so difficult to explain. Weird, to a westerner, but not difficult to comprehend. Anyway, the discussion then became larger with other customers (Chinese speaking) joining in and defending the man behind the counter. Susan later revealed that she almost suggested he should allow Ben and I to sample the entire menu and write our own descriptions in English, but thankfully her audacity does have boundaries.
The aquarium shop being closed for a half day today thwarted my dreams of acquiring a few goldfish this afternoon. I even called beforehand to check they had fish in stock, but perhaps I failed to ask if they would be open all day – an error on my part. Tomorrow!
* This liquid which at one time was horse urine, is now some form of chemical to achieve a similar effect – so I hear.
– Today Rosie really is getting some new roommates from a pet shop in Glasgow, Scotland –
