No more hunger

This story was posted under the categories: Big Asia Trip, China, Food & Drinks

 After Guiyang our culinary exploits became limited to very classic dishes such as boiled chicken and stirfried vegetables, not much worth mentioning. Our next stop however, had been labelled “the best place to sample Cantonese cuisine”. That place is Guangzhou, capital of the Gu    izhou province and home to some 3 million Chinese.

Our first night, we splurged and headed for a fancy restaurant on Shamian Island. The menu featured such typical culinary delights as Hayfin, Bird’s Nest and Abalone. Next to that, it offered what i would call Chinese Nouvelle Cuisine: frozen tomatoes, double cooked meat balls, soup dummplings etc. We settled for a Hayfin with Chicken soup dumpling (notice how you first drink the soup out from the dumpling using a straw), roasted duck with special secret sauce and ramen (some sort of noodles) with braised chicken. Very yummy! In fact, it was so good that it left us longing for more and after a moment of hesitation we dived into the dessert menu. The fact already that there was such a thing, goes to show that the restaurant had indeed western influences, as regular Chinese restaurants make no distinction between normal dishes and desserts. or dessert, we had a Traditional Chinese Birthday Dumpling and Steamed Eggfoam Wth Bean Custard. Not so bad, knowing that i actually had a bad stomach from the Beer Fish (mmm i should write about that too) the night before

The next day, we indulged in another more typical restaurant and surrounded by Chinese families we were inspired to order way too much from the enormous menu: stuffed green peppers, hayfin soup, spicy shrimps, honey and black pepper spareribs (mjam!) and beef with pumpkin. Yep it was time to strap the belt again and stop the splurges.

The next morning, we settled for an Al Fresco breakfast with yoghurt and fruit in the park. The Chinese do all sorts of crazy things in their parks, but somehow, we got a lot of attention by simply eating there…

We arrived at our last day in China. This meant that we had to get rid of all our Yen. We went into a supermarket and shopped until our wallets were empty. That evening we had hotelroom diner with Great Wall red wine (2003, nice soft wine, try it some time) brown bread with cheese (very hard to find in China), a bowl of noodles and a chocolate bar. Yep, after the MacDonalds from that noon, this surely proofed that it was time for us to leave China…