A day of food

Last Thursday I ate out many times, lunch with a friend, a cake from a roadside stall, dinner from a Peking Duck restaurant and tea from a tea house.

At lunchtime we ended up at one of the small local restaurants near the college.  We chose our ingredients, vegetables, tofu or meat from a refrigerator, put them in a small basket and handed it over. They were then added to individual bowls of hot broth and served at the table.  We could have chosen additional ingredients had we wanted.   I found it quite good but my friend had no difficulty telling the cook that it was too salty.  

Other forms of hotpot involve a boiling bowl of broth at the table into which you dunk your ingredients.  Bowls may be individual or shared depending on the establishment.

My friend decided that I needed to try something else she’d been told was available nearby so she nipped out and soon returned with something like a rolled cut up pancake.  It contained some garlic, onions and some sort of sauce of which there are several kinds.  They are brushed over many  different kinds of buns or pancakes to provide additional flavour and nutrition.  While it didn’t look particularly interesting  it tasted good while still hot.  However it was rather difficult to eat with chopsticks.

 

On returning to college I spied the “cake man” on the footpath just outside the gate.  He’s there occasionally and I’ve bought the odd individual plain cake from him. The ones I buy have a couple of sunflower seeds on the top.  Sunflower seeds are an exceptionally popular snack item in China and people cracking open sunflowe seeds are a common sight.  He has other kinds but they don’t appeal.   He mixes and cooks on site.

 

The mixing area.

The truck and oven.  It’s possible that I have a better photo from before but this is the one I took on Thursday.

It was the new teacher’s birthday so we went to out to dinner.   I discovered it was in an area I had visited  back in May and photographed some of the unusual buildings.  It is where the antique/old wares market is located so I imagine it is an area with some history.

I think the first one is the tea house and the restaurant is a couple of shops along.

We went to a restaurant specializing in Peking Duck.  I’d never had it before so I was keen to try.We were escorted upstairs to a private room which is the norm except in cheap restaurants.  We also ordered many other dishes, not all of which were photographed.  It was pretty good and worked out quite economical.

Some sort of vegetable dish.

Another one.  Its unusual to see such dishes around here so we really went for them.

 

Kidneys.  I’m told it was tasty.

A fish dish.  It tasted good but was too spicy and boney to attract  much of my interest.

The duck

The duck having some skin removed by a chef at a table in the hallway.

Duck skin to eat as served.

Each of us had individual containers of a thick dipping sauce and shallots.  The idea was to place some duck meat, cucumber, shallot and sauce on a crepe, roll it up and eat.   It was quite good with the fresh vegetables offsetting the oily duck. 

The remains of the duck was transformed into soup which was quite good.

After dinner we adjourned to a nearby establishment to have Chinese tea.  Again we were escorted upstairs and sat around a small table at with a staff member presided.  She boiled water, rinsed tiny cups, made tea and then served it.  We were offered snacks of seeds and packets of some sort of fruit wafer.

The downstairs shop in the teahouse.

The stairs.

Some of the decorations in the room.

Our tea hostess and her equipment.  There is a real culture to tea drinking quite beyond the what westerners consider when we make a cup or pot of tea.

My cup on its small wooden saucer.

We neither saw nor heard any other customers at the restaurant or teahouse.