Hope everyone enjoyed 11/11! Did you make a wish at 11/11/11 11:11 am or pm? ^_^
As the chill starts to settle in the Bay Area, comfort foods and the holiday spirit make me all the more merrier! Last Friday, the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco hosted a winter fireworks show and a "Disney on Ice: Toy Story 3" performance! Unfortunately, we missed both events when we arrived at the scene (heard the fireworks while trying to find parking), but we were able to catch a glimpse of the Toy Story characters and take a good look around the Embarcadero Center's Christmas decor. The neighbor Hyatt Regency hosted a Christmas music celebration as well!
The Embarcadero Center buildings light up for the winter holidays 2011!
The Disney on Ice Toy Story 3 cast posing for the cameras... wish they were posing for me! =p
Crowded in Hyatt. One of the perks of being petite is not being able to see over everyone's heads =p
After leaving Embarcadero, we headed to Fort Mason for the final 2011 Off the Grid food truck party! :) I was so excited to finally attend this event, because I usually have to work during fun events like this! With 20 or so food trucks/vendors, there were so many different yummy foods to try!!
1st stop: Sataysified
And were we sataysified! They displayed their combo specialties on their front table, which looked very appetizing! We ordered the pork combo plate, which is two pork satay skewers drizzled with peanut sauce, salad and jasmine rice. The satay was very savory, juicy, meaty and tender! The grilled crust with the complementary robust peanut sauce was the icing on the cake; we couldn't help but savor the combination of sweet and savory tastes as we bit off the skewers! The salad dressing was also very earthy and tasted similar to tamarind sauce, which tasted great while eating the satay. And of course, jasmine rice was provided to bland out your tastebuds from the savory items! I was only disappointed in the rice, but that's because I'm a picky rice eater =p!
2nd stop: Creme Brulee Cart
When we saw the Creme Brulee Cart, we quickly got in line while eating our satay to order creme brulee to go! Creme brulee is by far my absolutely favoritest dessert (notice the "test" in favoritest? I've tested many! haha), so I was excited to try their traditional vanilla bean and their "yes please," which is nutella and strawberries creme brulee. We brought them home to try, and they maintained their shape and freshness pretty well! I enjoy cracking the caramelized sugar layer, and its crispy sugar and creamy custard combination is very palatable and delicious! I was surprised to taste the mildly sweet taste of the "yes please," because I was afraid that it might be overly sugary in taste. I was very wrong; it tasted just like what Nutella should taste like with small bits of strawberries! A great sweet and tart combination!
3rd stop: KoJa Kitchen
Beauty of the KoJa we ate :) in all its digital picture glory!
Love the wrapping, ready to chomp down! :)
This food truck was love at first sight. Their menu featured 3 different types of Koja (bbq beef w/ grilled onions, bbq chicken with grilled pineapple, and vegan patty w/ pineapple), which are gourmet bbq sliders with rice cakes, lettuce, sriracha and bbq sauces and topped with sesame seeds! This was a 3-S item for sure, and I could not finish this by myself; it was definitely very tasty and filling!
Beautiful display of Kamikaze Fries; looks like a perfect appetizer
Clearly this picture doesn't do this food justice... you're just going to have to imagine how good it tastes!
Of course, you can't step away from KoJa Kitchen without trying their famed Kamikaze fries! Criss-cut fries have been my favorite fries since primary school, so I was excited to see this menu item! They're topped with Korean bbq beef, green onion and kimchi, their signature sauce and Japanese mayo! They were another 3-S item, and probably our most favorite item from the food truck party!
Warning: Eating both KoJa and Kamikaze fries is very very filling, so I recommend sharing or choosing one to eat instead! =p
4th stop: Senor Sisig
Lumpia makes me nostalgic of post-cross country race eating! After one of our Saturday invitationals, a couple friends and I would buy lumpia from a food stand. :) This lumpia tastes just like how it used to taste! Small crispy rolls with savory pork and cabbage filling inside, with a sweet chili sauce for dipping!
Thank you OTG for putting up a great food truck party! I look forward to future food truck parties in 2012!!!
For active Facebook users, you're probably invited to play or have played this game. If not, you're just not very popular.
Screenshot from the Restaurant City Facebook app
Kidding.
My restaurant's colorful storefront. How often can you find the Eiffel Tower, Cupid, kissing fish, Ariel, a baby chick, and a gingerbread man all welcoming you from one place? Exactly...
I was invited to add this app quite a couple times during my last quarter in college, but I refused to join until after I graduate. Why? Because I know I would love to play it every chance I got to be in front of the computer, and I procrastinate enough already. I saw my boyfriend play, and it was hard to tear myself off the screen. Instantly hooked.
If you ever wanted to design your very own restaurant, learn and level up recipes for your menu, and manage your cooks and waitstaff, look no further than Restaurant City. The perks of playing include being able to hire any of your Facebook friends as a cook, waiter, or janitor (optional bartender if applicable), designing your own restaurant, and choosing what recipes you would like to learn and level up. For Facebook apps like this, it's very easy to play when you have other Facebook friends who are playing with you, so you can help gift each other items (you can gift items and request items from your friends), visit each other's restaurants to give a friendly hand and possibly unlock a crate in which you share items (examples include getting rid of a sleeping bear, penguins, and skunks in the restaurant), and trade items. By having Facebook friends who also play Restaurant City, it makes it easier to learn recipes and complete the game's challenges.
Current restaurant set-up :)
The unique quality about Restaurant City is that unlike other restaurant games, you can "set it and forget it" (do you know where that comes from? lol)! Once you open the restaurant for customers, your employees do everything automatically, just like Sims! The restaurant can essentially be open for 24/7, the longer you set it to be opened, the higher your spending cost. So opening your restaurant for 1 hr is not as costly as opening your restaurant for 6 hrs, for example. After your restaurant completes the time, the exact same time also counts down for you to collect your 2000 gourmet points bonus (so if you open your restaurant for 1/2 hr, you also have a 1/2 hr time window after it ends to collect the bonus). Earning as many gourmet points as possible helps your restaurant level up! The current highest level a restaurant can be is 90.
There are many special stations that you can earn while playing Restaurant City. I currently use the Coffee Bar, Lounge Bar, Karaoke Bar, Gourmet BBQ Grill, and Sushi Bar! Other stations you can earn are their Smoothie Station, Pizzeria, and Bowling Alley. Their current newest station is their Candy Shop. Playing these stations require unlocking special recipes that help develop different parts of the station and/or include perks, like upgrading your popularity level or letting you hire another employee. There are also activity arcades you can buy for customers' self-use. I am currently using the cupcake icing arcade, cookie making arcade, golden harp, magic raincloud, solid gold wishing well, and the Independence picnic arcade. Both of these add more coins for your spending pleasure.
Another final tip: If you want to ensure that you have the highest popularity for your restaurant (the higher the popularity, the more customers will go into your restaurant, the more sales you'll gain), decrease the distance the waiters need to travel between the cooks/drinks stations and the customer! This works very well especially when you're just starting out the game, because you don't have that many employees you can hire (it adds on as you level up). I used to do island stations where my waiters would only need to move 1-4 spaces to serve the customers. Waiters need to not only serve the dishes to the customers, but they also need to clean up after them quickly for new customers!
This was so long ago, I can't believe it! This was before my restaurant needed to serve drinks :)
Have you tried playing RC before? What do you think of the game; any improvements do you think should be made? Personally, I wish that with their multi layout capability, they allow you to use your entire inventory (instead of needing to take stuff out of your first layout for your second layout). I also wish you could get rid of a tile (like how you press Crtl in Sims) instead of needing to replace the tile with another tile (it doesn't work out well, especially in the al fresco area).
Last week, I experienced my worst kind of food poisoning in my life... and it was from a hospital cafeteria. Having volunteered for the hospital for over a year and working almost a year in this hospital, I have eaten many breakfasts, lunches and snacks from the cafeteria. Unfortunately, I had extreme headaches, nausea, abdominal pain and vomiting during work, while resting in my car and in my bathroom. All from eating an egg/mushroom/onion cheese quesadilla for breakfast.
Foodborne illnesses occur so frequently (76 mil cases yearly!) either by poor hygiene, improper temperature/storage, cross-contamination, infected produce, undercooked poultry and meats, infected eggs and unpasteurized dairy products. If the bacteria overcomes your immune defense, the infection may potentially do more than just the common symptoms, even leading to death. Since I haven't heard of any cases from contaminated foods or foodborne illnesses from other cafeteria customers, the probability of poor hygiene as the reason for my illness is very high.
Fortunately, these factors may be prevented in the following ways (adapted from www.foodsafety.org):
1) Wash your hands.
Washing your hands is very important before handling foods, ready to eat or cook, and between dirty tasks (i.e. touching garbage, handling raw foods). Use hot, soapy water for 20 seconds (sing "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Unbirthday" twice), and be sure to wash thoroughly. If you're long-haired like me, I prefer tying my hair up so I don't find the need to brush my hair away from my face. Also, avoid touching your face, clothes or other items that are not clean cooking tools. Use clean towels to dry your hands, so be also sure to wash your towels often.
2) Wash your cooking tools and cooking surfaces.
Think of your cooking tools as your extra hands that handle foods, so they need to be pre-washed. If I haven't used the tools in awhile, it's always safe to wash them again just to make sure they're clean. Also, make sure that your pots, pans, cutting boards and counter-tops are clean. When your cooking environment and you are clean, the food will stay clean!
3) Use separate surfaces for produce and meats.
To prevent cross-contamination, use separate cutting boards when chopping your produce and raw meats. Or if you only have one cutting board, be sure to wash it in hot soapy water in between the foods. Of course, also use separate tools when handling the raw products (i.e. knives, spatulas). Other surfaces may be bowls or plates.
4) Cook food to appropriate temperatures.
Potential harmful microbes in foods do not survive when foods are cooked to the proper temperatures. The internal temperature of cooked foods vary, but the general temperature should be 165 F. I learned this sadly by eating a defrosted, unheated Costco Chicken Bake during college... never again. My hot food needs to have steam rising from the surface for me to feel safe to eat it now. :)
5) Refrigerate leftover food immediately to below 40 F.
Refrigerate leftover food within 2 hours of being made in order to avoid the food "danger zone" of possible microbe infection, 1 hour during summer weather. I learned this one by eating a spam musubi lunch box multiple times throughout the day while on my high school senior trip to Hawaii, in hot weather and without any refrigeration whatsoever. Nausea and vomiting ensued, and I couldn't touch spam for quite several years afterwards.
6) Pay attention to use-by dates.
Some foods have longer shelf life than others, so it's important to refer to the use-by dates to make sure that the foods are still safe to eat. It's an everyday challenge, but it's necessary to eat what you currently have, with shorter shelf life items being the higher priority in order to maximize your intake of foods you're buying, thus reducing food cost and waste.
By preventing foodborne illnesses, we save our appetite and maintain a healthy future. :)
For helping spread the word about the importance of home food safety, I was entered into a drawing for a $15 Starbucks gift card and an iPad through Summertime Food Smarts, a contest run by the American Dietetic Association and ConAgra Foods' Home Food Safety program. Home Food Safety is dedicated to raising consumer awareness about the seriousness of foodborne illness and providing solutions for easily and safely handling foods. Learn more at www.homefoodsafety.org.
Sounds complicated? Surprisingly, it has been the cheapest, least time consuming, easiest and most delicious (in the sweet and savory variety) meal to make!
While strolling around a local Safeway to grocery shop (one of my favorite hobbies), my boyfriend and I found Foster Farms Whole Young Chicken on sale for $4. Yes, four dollars for a whole chicken; cheaper than my favorite Subway's Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki sub, cheaper than my favorite Rigatoni's Chicken Pesto & Pine Nuts Fettucine, ... you get the idea. The back of the package showcased their Simmered Chinese Chicken recipe, which inspired my personal take on this recipe:
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken
Drizzle olive oil
Sauce:
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup balsamic vinaigrette
1/4 cup champagne
1 tbsp Trader Joe's 21 Seasoning Salute (Onion, Black Pepper, Celery Seed, Cayenne Pepper, Parsley, Basil, Marjoram, Bay Leaf, Oregano, Thyme, Savory, Rosemary, Cumin, Mustard, Coriander, Garlic, Carrot, Orange Peel, Tomato Granules, Lemon Juice Powder, Oil of Lemon, Citric Acid)
After braising in the sweet soy balsamic vinaigrette, the finished product, ta-da!~
1. Rinse chicken (remove giblets) & dry well.
2. Heat oil in a large & deep saute pan or stock pot; brown chicken evenly on all sides and corners. Time to dance the chicken! :)
3. Mix together the sauce ingredients to your tastebuds' liking. Pour the sauce over the chicken so that the sauce covers most of the chicken, about 3/4ths way. (I actually had to make double the sauce because we used a wok instead of a standard pot, so depending on what you use, you might need to make more sauce!)
4. Adjust the dial of your stovetop so that the sauce is simmering, and turn over the chicken as needed to make sure it cooks even and thoroughly.
5. After simmering for about 15-20 mins, test the doneness of the chicken (no translucent flesh, no leaky blood). When it has passed the test, the chicken is ready to be chopped and served! :)
Isn't my boyfriend a great butcher? :)
The simmered sauce left in the wok was also a great accompaniment to the braised, oh so juicy and tender chicken! The variety of flavors from the sauce were amazing; there was the sweet brown sugar, crisp champagne flavor, savory soy sauce, tart balsamic vinaigrette and spice medley of the 21 Seasoning Salute that created this delicious meal.
Give this dish a try and let me know what you think! Feel free to share your whole chicken recipes as well!
It's probably the only time you were amazed and not disgusted by a food enthusiast rat running the kitchen.
Does Remy capture the essence of every tourist looking at the Eiffel Tower? (link)
When Linguini discovers his fridge is stripped bare, Remy is preparing breakfast for two! (link)
At Linguini's new home after becoming the new chef owner at Gusteau's (link)
Of course, I'm referring to Remy, a young rat gifted by his highly sensitive senses of smell and taste. Inspired by his favorite idol, Chef Gusteau, he stumbles upon Paris to become Linguini's "little chef," making his famous Ratatouille dish that warmed even the coldest critic's heart in Anton. :)
Real life ratatouille in The French Laundry (link)
I have to admit, I haven't heard of ratatouille until watching this movie, but it definitely sparked my interest for it! According to Black Napkin, Chef Thomas Keller from The French Laundry was a valuable consultant for the movie and helped design the finished ratatouille dish. The layering and roasting of the veggies make this dish look very appetizing, and I hope that I can make a similar ratatouille someday!
I found this inspiring ratatouille recipe through Smitten Kitchen. Ratatouille can be eaten in different ways as well, such as over risotto, over pasta (I recommend fusilli for the complementary swirly design), in a crepe, in a salad, or even over crusty French bread! :) There are so many possibilities with how you eat it and the ingredients you put in the ratatouille as well. For my ratatouille, I would love to put in tomato, zucchini, yellow onion, yam or sweet potato, and apple.
I realized that milk was scarce in the area. On a random morning, I was craving for milk and a bun, which is normally what I eat for breakfast at home. My grandma bought me a small plastic pouch of milk that you poke a straw into to drink. (Milk carton vs. milk bag? I say carton for ease of carrying, bag for going green, tie for ease of opening.) My grandma says that it's common for Chinese to not drink milk due to lactose intolerance. Just a guess - maybe less milk drinking accounts for their smaller body frames? Milk is a staple that I cannot live without in my diet, so I missed drinking milk during my stay.
Nonetheless, a congee (粥: "juk") and rice noodle roll (腸粉: "chern fun") stand along the main road outside my grandparents' apartment invited us with fresh, hot comfort food. I remember needing to wake up around 6 to 7 in the morning to get there in time (they open until they run out of food for the morning, which is typically by 9 am). I'm not usually a morning person, but it was worth every minute.
It was my first experience seeing front-of-house cooking, literally. There were two cooking stations outside of the restaurant: 1) stoves for congee and stir fry; 2) rice noodle tray steamer. The back-of-house was the general seating area similar to a "dai pai dong" (open air food stall well known in Hong Kong) with foldable tables and plastic stools.
Yummy congee making with fresh ingredients on the side!
A really cool foodservice equip I haven't seen before. Each "drawer" is a sheet that steams a rice noodle sheet. As soon as the chef takes it out when it's ready, she sprinkles the ingredients on top and scrapes the noodle sheet to form the rice noodle rolls! Fresh and ready to eat!
Beef congee with crullers ("you tiu"), deep fried dough that you dip into congee. Similar concept to biscotti & coffee?
Beef & lettuce cherng fun (牛肉腸 "au yuk cherng") over sweetened soy sauce. Absolutely the thinnest rice noodle, freshest, & tastiest I ever had!
Dim sum (点心):
Restaurant tables are reserved as early as 6:00 in the morning. Frequent dim sum-goers are retired elderly who enjoy mingling with family and friends and reading the newspaper. My grandparents like to say that they'd like to return to Guangzhou permanently to do the same. Personally, I enjoy dim sum no matter where I go :)!
For the dim sum restaurants here, you are given a weak tea called clear tea (清茶: "cing cha" in Cantonese) as soon as you are seated to wash your tableware. Also, you serve your own tea. A waiter will ask you which tea you would like, and then provide you with a small plastic bag of loose leaf tea per person and a tea pot of boiling hot water over a candle. You pour your desired tea (mine is jasmine) into another tea pot to customize your own tea.
Ordering dim sum is through a menu checklist, where items are arranged by different price categories (small, med, lg, special). After checking off items on the list, the waiter collects the list and the checked items are delivered to your table. Moreover, dim sum carts are pushed around the tables to offer other menu selections you may be interested in. There was one dim sum restaurant where customers go directly to the dim sum preparation area to pick up items to bring back to the table. Some of my favorite dim sum include dumplings (ie. 蝦餃 "haa gow", 小籠包 "siu lung bao"), rice noodles, black bean spareribs (排骨 "pai gwaat"), chicken feet (鳳爪 "fung zao"), turnip cakes (蘿蔔糕 "lo baat gou"), mango pudding (芒果布甸 "mong guo bou din"), and silky tofu dessert (豆腐花 "dou fu fa").
Dim sum table setting at the famous White Swan Hotel's Banquet Hall International
Steamed jumbo shrimp dumpling (蝦餃 "haa gow")
These shrimp & yellow chives rice noodle rolls were light, delicate noodles enveloping crisp & succulent shrimp!
Snacks:
Snacks, sweet, savory, spicy, hot and cold are plentiful, and many Chinese like to eat afternoon and late night snacks from food vendors in busy shopping districts. I wish these snacks are available at home too..
Spicy squid on a stick was the most appealing and appetizing 3-S snack! The smell and sound of crackling squidded kebobs on a teppan averted my attention from shopping. My grandma caught me eyeing them, and offered to share them with me. Three sticks for 10 yuan, what a great deal!
Even after the squids are done sizzling with the spices, you are still given the option to roll them over add'l chili powder. Did I do it? Why of course!
Black sesame tong yun is one of my favorite hot dessert soups! Tong yun (湯圓) are glutinous rice balls that can be filled with sweet or savory fillings, like red bean paste, peanut paste and minced pork. I enjoy black sesame tong yun the most, because of its delicately sweet sesame taste. Plus, who doesn't like a black and white dessert?
Black sesame tong yun soup at one of my grandpa's favorite snack shops. The shop plays "Mai Tang Yuan" song non-stop at the storefront to lure customers in. It got us in :)
Shrimp & garlic chives dumplings ("gau choy gao") were pan fried to my grandpa's delight at another outdoor food stand, despite the pan oil popping in our faces. He told me that he enjoyed eating them freshly made for years. They were greasy, but they tasted very fresh and savory!
While I was in Hainan for about a week, my grandma ordered roasted little bird on a stick. The story is that the little birds are still in their nest homes while their mothers fly away to get food. They still don't know how to fly yet, but hunters climb trees to pick them up to be eaten. =( I was hesitant to try it, but I tried one taste. I was pleasantly surprised; it tasted like a cross between chicken and quail.
When I wanted a light lunch or dinner, I would head on to a noodle soup shop to eat wonton noodle soup (雲吞麵: "wen tun mein"). The wonton were delicately wrapped pork and shrimp medley, and the thin egg noodles were cooked al dente, soft yet chewy... I felt like Naruto slurping up ramen. It was my best comfort food during the cold and rainy days.
Shrimp & pork wonton noodle soup, best served with red vinegar & white pepper!
And that wraps up the final chapter of the Guangzhou series! :) Who wants to go to China now?
Compared to the standard 3 meals for Americans, Chinese have 5 meals per day, including breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and late night snacks. My grandma likes to say that they like to enjoy by eating small frequent meals. It definitely takes awhile to get used to though, because I felt like we were eating all the time…not like that is a bad thing. My justification is that I walk off most of the calories I eat, or at least I hope I did!
Guangzhou's trading port draws in a diverse array of imported foods and other fresh ingredients. Cantonese cuisine focuses on enhancing the natural sweetness of the main ingredient, be it a starch, meat or vegetable, not overpowering it. Thus, spices used are limited and herbs are often used as garnishes for fresh foods (and the reason for overpowering seafood with spices could be to recycle stale inventory...but that's a different story). Steaming and stir frying are the most common cooking methods, but braising and frying are also used.
The economy in Guangzhou thrives on small individual businesses, and restaurants are closing down and opening up everywhere. My grandparents travel to Guangzhou yearly, and they notice big changes every year. Their favorite restaurants may or may not be there anymore, and they get to experience new ones. My mother requested my grandparents to take me to a noodle shop that sells multicolored noodles that I enjoyed very much during my first trip, but the shop closed down years ago.
I posted up a cooking video in my previous post. CY got it correct, it's a noodle making video! A Northern Chinese style restaurant called Noodle King features a partial open kitchen for making dumplings and pulled noodles from scratch. Seeing the soft wheat noodles dance up and down into the huge boiling pot was simply magical flexibility. End result: fresh, bouncy, chewy, twist your fork-able (if you could, we were only provided chopsticks) noodles!
Noodle King ("lo mein deem" in Cantonese)
炸酱面 ("za jerng mein" in Cantonese): "fried sauce noodles" with stir fried ground pork, fermented soybean paste and spices
Steamed pork dumplings with black rice vinegar
My grandparents' apartment is along a busy road of small shops, supermarkets and restaurants. We went to this restaurant after I finished getting my hair straightened at a nearby barber shop (which I experienced the most relaxing scalp massage ever, and my cousin likes to call it "taan gan sai gai" (lit. meaning relaxing on earth)) for choy, steamed fish and rice.
Chinese mustard greens ("gai choy" in Cantonese), garlic braised and tender
Freshly steamed grass carp ("wan yu" in Cantonese) with filleted delicate fish slices and diced green onion
After paying respects to my great grandparents, we arrived to a hot pot (火鍋: "foh woh") restaurant for lunch. A large communal metal pot was placed in the middle of our table over firewood for simmering goose stew with purple taro root and garlic chives. Everyone stuck their chopsticks and spoons into the pot to pick up the sweet and savory hearty stew. While I was slowly savoring the stew, my grandma's younger sister sitting right next to me commented that I shouldn't eat "tai see man" (mannerly) and I need to eat faster. She has such a lively personality.
Hot pot style braised goose (鵝: "ngo") stew with purple taro root and sprinkling of garlic chives
Since goose isn't served in Chinese restaurants in my area, my grandma especially likes eating goose, roasted or stewed. It's similar to the taste of duck, but it has a greater gaming taste and tougher texture (which imo, may be due to less fat, less tenderizer). Even braised in stew, I still felt that it could be more tender (stews tend to taste better after several days anyway). My grandma argued that goose is a Chinese delicacy and duck is beggar's food, and thought I was crazy for my duck preference. I rather listen to my taste buds.
White cut chicken with diced garlic and onion on top of soy sauce
A food I frequently ate with my grandparents was white cut yellow feathered chicken (白切黃毛雞: "bak cherk wong mou gei"). "White cut" means that it is salt marinated and soaked in ginger chicken broth during cooking. Crispy skin chicken (炸子雞: "za zee gei") is also popular, due to the tender and juicy meat with its crisp, garlic skin. It's traditionally served with prawn crackers, but on the many occasions I've tried it, prawn crackers weren't given. Salt and pepper weren't given either. The replacement was sweet chili sauce, which pairs excellently!
Overall, my most memorable meal was homemade at my grandma's sister's house. Her husband is a great cook! He bought yellow feathered chicken and roasted goose from the market, and he prepared goose stew, fish balls and freshly steamed garlic infused prawns! He split the prawns halfway lengthwise and stuffed minced garlic to enhance their delicate and fragrant taste.
Freshly steamed garlic infused prawns
Rainbow colorful light up bridge on Pearl River
Their apartment was right next to Pearl River, so we got to see the colorful lights and tourist popular night cruises. The blue dotted line lights below the bridge actually move in one direction to depict water movement. It's peaceful to walk beside it with family, friends or a significant other, considering that the majority of rest of the city is very crowded and noisy.
Some interesting things to note:
- Be prepared to squat! Squat toilets are most commonly used everywhere, including restaurants. Bring your own tissue and hand sanitizer.
- Of course if you're expected to bring your own tissue, it's no surprise that you should bring your own napkins to the table when you eat. Some restaurants offer complimentary toilet paper in tissue holders.
- There is no complimentary water when you eat at restaurants. There is tea, which is complimentary or charged per person at your table.
- Your rice bowl is your "plate." It is held close to your face while you eat with chopsticks. My relatives thought I was weird for using a plate as my dining dish.
- If you have a small party, be prepared to possibly share a large table with another group if a small table is unavailable.
- For large parties, restaurants have private rooms available for reservation. Typically, there is one host treating the entire party. The host is in charge of choosing the menu, and makes a toast before everyone starts eating.
- When there is not a designated host, be prepared to witness a fight for who gets to pay for the bill. Many sayings of "you'll pay next time" or "you are being unfair" are exchanged back and forth while they both snatch for the bill from the waiter and quickly pay before the other party can say another word.
- Restaurants are not "no smoking" areas. I've experienced many times where I start to enjoy the whiff of my food, then the cigarette smoke tainted its smell.
- Cooked rice at restaurants were sub-par to home cooked rice, which was disappointing.
- Waiters in Guangzhou are predominantly Mandarin-speaking. As Guangzhou is a Cantonese city, my grandpa was frustrated that he couldn't communicate clearly with the waitstaff.
- Other specialty foods not mentioned: fresh lotus root, quail, pomelo and other fruits
Stay in touch for the third and last post: dim sum and snacks! I save the best for last. :)
Chili is a recent UC Davis graduate who studied Communication and Clinical Nutrition. She loves to dream, smell, and taste food. She wants to express and share her passion for good eats across cultures, as her lifetime dream is to travel around the world to sample ethnic cuisines.
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