This post if very important. Superbly important in fact. I have now been in China long enough to declare my favourite foods. My mind is set, I have found the most delicious foods.
Firstly, every Monday a group of us go out for noodles at the noodle shack. When I say shack I mean a shack. I wish I had taken a picture of the outside of it, perhaps I will post an updated post at another time. We refer to these noodles as "crack noodles" because you always want them, and when you have them you never want your bowl to end. They only cost 7 kuai, which is a dollar Canadian. You simply point to the noodle selection you want, choose some greens to go with, and if you want to add sticks of meat or mushrooms it is only an extra kuai. I have never bothered with adding the meat, because the noodle bowl is perfection all by itself. At first they would ask about how much spice we wanted, now they recognize us and just load it up. Although the place looks sketchy, and they do not even have a working fridge to offer you cold cola to wash down your spicy noodles (beverages should be bought at the chicken shack across the alley before coming for noodles), this place is amazing. As a bonus feature, you can also bag up an extra noodle bowl to take home for lunch the next day. The only bad part is that the broth gets soaked back into the noodles and they become extra spicy. I could eat these noodles every day and never tire of them.
A giant bowl a' crack noodles
Secondly, the restaurant we call Donkey Dumplings is prime. D.D. carries many of my favourite dishes, all in one convenient location (the third alley from the roundabout, that is). It is a hole in the wall, you have to request to have the tables washed, and at times during the meal you may be attacked by a mangy kitten or two....but it is the food of the gods. The restaurant is Hong Bei style, meaning it features the specialties of the area we live in. My top picks at D.D. are: Pineapple Sweet and Sour Pork (Gobaro, one of the few Mandarin words I have managed to memorize), Braised Greenbeans, Japanese Tofu and the Donkey Dumplings.
The Pineapple Gobaro is sweet and features large chunks of pineapple in tasty sauce (great to be mixed into rice as well). It is not overfried or undercooked, and has the perfect proportion of saucy goodness. Sweet and sour pork in Canada has nothing on this. The Greenbeans are loaded up on garlic and have tiny pieces of grilled beef mixed in. As my mom can attest, I don't eat beans in Canada. Or any type of bean-like vegetable. They are yucky. But they do something better here. I think the better may relate to the copious amounts of garlic, but either way I am eating my veggies, right? The Japanese Tofu is cooked in some way unknown to me. I think it may be fried because the inside is soft and mushy, while the outside is tough. They are almost impossible to chopstick, but are worth all of the trouble to load on to your plate. I am becoming a huge tofu fan in China, because they cook it in a thousand different ways. Plus it is the least sketchy protein product to buy in the market. Lastly, the Donkey Dumplings. I know people have qualms with eating an animal like the donkey, but I must tell you they are pretty tasty. In reality anything in dumpling form is going to be appealing to me. There are people who believe that the word donkey was just a poor translation, and it may be just another pork dish. Regardless of what it is, I order it every time. Plenty of dishes to share will add up to between 25 - 35 kuai, equalling about 4 - 6 bucks.
Two kinds of Gobaro (regular and pineapple), Greenbeans, Tofu at the top, and dumplings on the bottom right
Eating in China has definitely taken some getting used to, but it is always an adventure and it is so exciting to try new dishes and new restaurants. I hope you aren't too hungry after reading this!
Go out and order some Chinese for dinner tonight!
The classy atmosphere at D.D.
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