Chinese Food

I don’t know where to begin. 

This city revolves around food.  There is food everywhere.  People are selling food on nearly every corner.  There are restaurants after restaurant after restaurant.  Everything is delicious.  I can’t even begin to say what the best is because it is all so good.  On top of that I have been feasting constantly and have dropped at least 15 pounds since I have been out here.  Granted I have been walking everywhere and working out when I can, but with the amount of food I have been eating I can’t believe how much weight I am losing and how good I have been feeling.

In the past week I have eaten Bull Frog in a hot pot from a Szechuan place, I have eaten duck neck and intestine from a street vendor, hand-pulled noodles from a Muslim Chinese restaurant (only 6 RMB, or about 90 cents) and Malatang. There was a lot more I ate that I just can’t remember right now.  Out of all those though the malatang was the best.  My friend took me to this little hole in the wall in Pu Dong that was just bursting with people.  It was overwhelming  because of how busy it was, how small it was, how loud it was,  and the fact that nobody in there seemed to speak English.  If I hadn’t gone with two Chinese people I would have had no clue how to even get food. 

When you walk in to the restaurant there is a stack of baskets, and a couple of refrigerated shelves.  On the shelves are skewers of food, everything from tofu, to chicken, to cabbage, seaweed, beef, mushroom, and more.  Tons of choices.  Too many to even have a clue where to begin, and many of them unidentifiable to the western eye.  After you fill up your basket with meat and who knows what else, you give it to the cook and he makes it into a soup for you.  You tell the cook the level of spiciness that you would like and he fixes it up in just a few minutes.  I asked for mine extra spicy and that was exactly what I got.  It was so hot.  The spiciest dish I have had so far.  It numbed my lips for a solid hour after eating.  But it was really a wonderful dish.  Every random skewer that I had grabbed off the shelf turned out to be delicious once cooked up and put into soup, I had no idea what most of it was but it all turned out amazing. 

The price of the soup depends on the number of skewers you pick up and the type of product on the skewer.  I got a decent number of items, including meat items which are always more expensive, and my meal was only around 15 RMB.  Amazingly cheap and sooo good.  I am very much looking forward to going there again.