My New Favourite Chinese Restaurant!

We have a new Chinese restaurant in Arusha, near Shoppers, the grocery store we go to all the time.  I know this might not seem that exciting, but we don't have that many options here of different cuisines.  There's a Chinese restaurants at AIM mall, but it's not very authentic, and there's one on the other side of town, but not easy to get to on a regular basis.  This one is right in the area we always go to, and it's really good!  Definitely the most authentic Chinese food I've had since moving here!  Today I got spicy cauliflower (that is actually spicy!) and Sichuan chicken.  It made me miss by days in Wuhan a bit. :) 

On the way home, we had a beautiful sunset!  

 

Chinese Food for Valentine's Day!

On Monday night, I left work a bit early to go to Arusha with Beth and Tizo. I really needed groceries, and due to other stuff going on throughout the week it didn't look likely that there would be another chance.  While in town, we were supposed to meet some friends of Tizo for dinner at an Indian restaurant, but it turned out that the friends couldn't make it and the Indian restaurant wasn't open.  So, instead, we went to a Chinese restaurant that they like to go to for special occasions, since it was Valentine's Day.  I hadn't been to it, and I love Chinese food, so it was a fun outing.   

Emmy was so cute that day with her hair in puff balls!  She's getting so big! 

Below: sizzling chicken!  One of the things that I don't like about life in Monduli is the limited restaurants in a small town; the few we have are only Tanzanian food.  Previous to this, I've lived in big cities for all of my adult life, and even Columbia has quite a variety (Mexican, Chinese, Italian, etc.), so I miss having a variety of places nearby.  Arusha has quite a few options, so I really enjoy it when I get to try a new place there! 

Spring Rolls!

Beth is the best! She made spring rolls today, and she made enough to send a boda boda (motorcycle taxi; usually they are for having them take you somewhere, but you can also get them to run some errands) over to me with some!  They were wonderful and made a great dinner. :) :) :) 

 

Spicy Bullfrog

A quick way to get Lu Wei excited is to bring up spicy food.  As a native of Hubei province, he is something of a connoisseur.  He's used to his foreign friends and his wife having much weaker palates--I think you really have to be born there to appreciate some of the local specialities.  However, when some of us expressed a willingness to be adventurous, he quickly organized a meet-up at one of his favorite places.

I took a taxi to Jiedaokou and from there the subway a few stops to a part of town closer to the river (getting anywhere takes some time in a city the size of Wuhan).  Just outside the subway exit, I met up with Luwei, Angela, and their son Levi, and Micah and Bonnie, who were coming from another direction. We made our way down an ordinary street of shops and restaurants in an area where the locals seemed a bit surprised to see so many foreigners.

Along with few other dishes, Lu Wei ordered a gigantic bowl of spicy bullfrog, a Hubei specialty.  You can even buy live bullfrogs at Walmart in the seafood area, next to the eels.  (Where would you categorize bullfrogs?)  The meat tasted fairly generic; I'm trying to think of something to compare it to.  I would say it was somewhat similar to eel meat, but I don't think that would help most of my readers out much.  Rather slippery and smooth, the meat had more the appearance and texture of fat, but was solid and definitely meat.  I'm not making it sound appetizing, but really, it was just fine.  I can't really say much to the natural taste of frog, as this was marinated in a spicy broth that would cover up any gaminess and fishiness or what have you.

It didn't seem just terribly spicy at first, not as bad as we'd expected.  But the more I ate, the spicier it seemed to get.  About half way through the meal I started dispersing my bites of frog between longer and longer breaks of eating the side dishes.  As we arrived further down in the dish, it quickly became so uncomfortably spicy that we foreigners just picked at it and then gave up entirely.  Lu Wei would ask solicitously, "Did you have enough? Is it alright?" while throwing down prodigious amounts himself.

Somewhere around this point, we began discussing how spicy bullfrog was ordered in this restaurant.  There are five levels of spiciness, and you tell the waitress your preference, from the least spicy, 1, to insanity, 5.  I would have estimated our current dish to be a three or so, but Lu Wei told us it was only a one.  Only a one??? And it was already so spicy that we could only eat about half of a normal serving!!  When Lu Wei is alone or with like-minded Chinese friends, he normally orders a three!

The One

Finally, after a few weeks of randomly stopping in whichever of the little one-room restaurants along the street outside the gate, choosing whichever one looked like it had a free table and a proprietor who would take the time to listen to a foreigner mispronounce their food, I have found The One. 

One of my favorite vegetables here in China is lotus root (ou in Chinese); it was available at any restaurant in Jingzhou.  Here, I kept trying to order it, but kept getting mei you (don't have) as a response.  I knew they probably all had it, but I didn't know the full name of any dishes it was in, and I probably was yet again pronouncing it badly, and it's easier to say 'don't have it' than take the time to figure out what on earth this illiterate foreigner wants.  In Jingzhou, they were always happy to see a foreigner and fusses over us, treating us like the children we were.  We'd squeak out, "Carrots!"  or "Cabbage!"  and they'd just smile at us and fix us whichever dish with that ingredient in it they thought appropriate for us.  And it always was.  I think we only really learned how to say the name of one full dish--tong su li ji, sweet and sour pork.  Here, foreigners are not that special, and they expect you to behave like an adult and tell them the dish you want.  If I just go in and say "Carrot!" they will look at me like I'm a little off my rocker and burst out a spiel of Chinese that I assume translates to something like, "Carrot what?  There are five dishes with carrots in it.  How do you want your carrots?  Learn to read and write already!" 

But this place...I couldn't find ou on the menu here either, but I pointed out the characters in a little dictionary I had, and the woman just said (translated): "Lotus root.  Okay.  Chao?"  I just nodded, and off she went.  (I later figured out that chao means stir-fried).  It was exactly what I wanted, and easily the best stir-fried lotus root I've ever had.  I pointed to something random on the menu--I could read the characters for shredded pork, but I hadn't figured out the vegetable it was mixed with--and it turned out to be pork and onions, which was also wonderful.  Another day I went back and managed to figure out pork and bell pepper, and again, it was the best version of that dish that I've ever had, by far.  Now, I've also been trying that old favorite, sweet and sour pork, at various places along the strip, and been dissapointed each time.  One place, it was bland with no flavor at all.  Another place it was soggy and also rather bland.  Another place it was the right level of crispiness, but the sauce had a weird aftertaste to it.  This place had so far exceeded all my expectations; would this finally be the one place to get decent tong su li ji?  

I finally ordered it for lunch today.  And....I've found it at last! The right level of crispiness, sauce with the right flavor, and friendly service.  

I've been to the little place about four times now; they now recognize me.  The grandmother smiles at me and shows me to a table, but she doesn't dare try to communicate with me just yet.  The daughter leaves me alone at my table to rifle through my pocket dictionary and try to unscramble the menu until I finally call her over to order.  The grandmother normally picks up the menu as soon as the person has ordered, but she leaves it on my table until I get my food, because she sees that I want to keep studying it and try to figure out more dishes while I'm waiting.  The son, a chubby child of about ten, often tries to start conversations with me, and has given both my pocket dictionary and my kindle (which I often read while eating) a thorough, curious inspection before his mother calls for him to get back to the table by the door and finish the page in his homework he'd wandered off from. 

And so, I've found my new favorite.  Today, I took pictures of the menu, so that I can work on learning to recognize more dishes to speed up the process a bit.  I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of my favorites there!

The Great Hot Pot Experiment

When I lived in Jingzhou, we got very attached to our local Hot Pot restaurant.  I’d never heard of hot pot before Janice, one of our waiban (Foreign Affairs Office employee whose job it is to deal with foreign teachers), took us there, but after that we hardly went a week without going back.  I’ve talked about hot pot in this post.  

Just before I left China, Jordan, one of my Chinese friends, helped me find some packages mix to make the boiling spicy soup to do hot pot at home; I intended to have a party once I got back to the states for my family and friends to try it.  However, I couldn’t find lotus root, bean sprouts, mahua, rice cakes, or the right kind of mushrooms in my home town (not exactly a world-culture sort of place); I’d have to go to one of the international stores in Nashville.  Every time I was in Nashville, it was too late at night, or I was too busy, and I didn’t want to spend the gas just for that, and you know how it goes…a year and a half later, the mix is still in a bag in my closet, and I’m a week away from going back to China.  It was now or never.  

Mom and I made a trip up to Nashville to a place on Charlotte Pike after work one day; we picked Hayden up on the way.  I figured I might find one or two of the things I wanted, but to my surprise I found all of them quickly.  Saturday night, Doug and Sue came over, and I tried my best to recreate the hot pot restaurant experience.  

 

We used a fry cooker and an electric skillet to get the soup boiling on the table; Mom and I spent half the morning chopping things to go in it.  We fixed everything I could remember liking in it, just to try it all: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, lotus root, bean sprouts, mushrooms, rice cakes (not the crunchy kind health nuts like; these are more like little round rubbery pasta), chicken, beef, shrimp, and mahua (twisted crackers).  We completely covered the table, even though it was extended with a leaf.  

I was so afraid that it wouldn’t taste the same, and that we would waste all that food, and that no one would like it even if it did taste right.  I’d waited a year and a half for this, and talked it up for so long—I didn’t want to be disappointed.  Fortunately, the Chinese seem to be quite adept as packaging food in plastic—it was just as I’d remembered it.  Hot enough that I drank two cans of Pepsi during the meal, and with that unique flavor I’ve never found anywhere else.  Mom and Dad and Doug and Sue got into it, and learned quickly to just keep dumping things in.  While I don’t believe it will become their new favorite meal out as it was for me, as Sue said, it was “a meal I won’t forget.” I’m glad I got to share a little bit of my China experience with them.  

For a full slideshow of the pictures, go to my photo blog, Foreverfreebird Fotografia.