China 2015 Food Diary, Day 5

While strolling along the Bund in the morning, I saw a store with a Magnum sign across the front.  Like I was going to pass that by.  So as on Day 4 I had a breakfast appetizer of French fries, on Day 5 I had a breakfast appetizer of an ice cream bar.  Not just any ice cream bar, of course.  A Magnum.  All they had were ones with nuts, but I didn’t even care.  I was getting my Magnum bar.  (If you didn’t already know that I go mad for Magnum bars, now you do.)

Later in the morning, I did have something a little more breakfast appropriate.  I went to a coffee shop called Costa Coffee.  I had seen a lot of them around town.  I found out later it’s the Starbucks of Britain.  I figured they were probably a large international (non-Chinese) chain, but I bent my rules a little by going in.  Really, I wanted to use their WiFi.  I got a blueberry muffin and a Victoria plum lemonade.  A drink flavored with a fruit named after Queen Victoria.  Yes, it was British alright.

For lunch I went to a nice restaurant in a nice mall in Pudong.  I was so excited to finally get a good sit-down Chinese meal.  I started with an iced green orange tea and wonton soup (in other words, more dumplings).  The drink and the soup were both very tasty.  The thing with the soup was that it was enough for a family.  The serving doesn’t look so big in the picture, but note that there were 7 large wontons.  I ate most of it.

For the main course, I had a hard time deciding between a beef dish and a tenderloin dish.  The beef dish–sauteed beef with vermicelli in a spicy sauce–sounded better than the tenderloin dish, so I went with that.  There was one thing gnawing at me though.  Obviously, the beef in the tenderloin dish was tenderloin.  But what was the beef in the beef dish?  Good question, it turns out.  Answer:  it was nasty beef.  It had to be the cheapest cut, shredded to make it (barely) chewable.  I tried my best, but there was only so much I could take.  I ate enough nasty beef to get to the vermicelli underneath.  But eating the vermicelli just made me think of worms.  (You can see one of the worms sticking out just below the center of the bowl below.)  Okay now, isn’t Chinese supposed to be one of the world’s greatest cuisines?  Well, I was starting to determine that if you want really good Chinese food, go to Singapore!  In attempt to wash down my unpleasant dish, I ordered a papaya juice.  Mmmm, sounds yummy.  But it looked like someone had crushed up some papaya and dumped it in a glass of water.  It tasted like that too.

After that dining debacle, I needed something something quick to cheer up my taste buds.  I found just the thing at a dessert shop in the mall’s basement level.  It was a mango cup:  cake with gelatin and mango in a cup.  After another disappointing meal (following the unappealing fish dish I had had the night before), this was deeply satisfying.  (Not sure why the label was all in French.)

Strangely, I don’t have my dinner jotted down like I do my other meals.  But I’d remember it even without the picture.  This one was memorable for good reasons.  At the airport, waiting for my flight to Beijing, I had fried rice with bacon, sprinkled with lots of pepper.  It was delicious.  This was the second time I had gotten fried rice on my trip.  I was beginning to think that fried rice was as good as it got for Chinese food in China.  I could certainly live on fried rice, but that would be a very disappointing way to dine through China.  My waitress was the first of a string of extremely cute and sweet waitresses that served me during my trip.  (The waiters, including the one who had served me lunch, weren’t so great.)  She asked me if it was okay that the fried rice with bacon had pork in it.  Just the cutest thing.

I don’t know why I didn’t have the fried rice written down, but I do have a kumquat lemonade jotted down.  Thinking about it, I can just about taste it.  But I don’t remember where or when I had it.  According to my notes, I also had a “mango orange blended”.  This one I barely remember at all.  I probably got it at the airport.  But I’m sure it was good.  Both drinks worked to help erase the memory of the papaya water I had with lunch.

The good news was that I was on my way to Beijing, the imperial city.  And of course the cuisine of the emperors would be amazing. Right?

[Disclaimer:  Many people have heard me state that I don’t eat red meat.  However, I do eat red meat when I travel overseas.  This is for two reasons.  One, I don’t want to unnecessarily restrict myself when it comes to trying local dishes.  Two, sometime it’s hard to get something that doesn’t contain beef or pork when eating overseas.  This was especially true with all the dumplings I had in China, including the wontons in the soup I had with lunch.  You can count on them having been filled with pork.]