Experimenting with food

My first meal outside of our apartment was quite memorable. Laura’s sister was in town, and the three of us went to a restaurant around the corner from our place. We sat down, and we quickly realized that no one there spoke a word of English, and we forgot our phrasebooks at home. The menu had photos, and the waiter kept pointing to one particular photo. We looked at each other. We nodded, and decided to give it a shot. We quickly figure out that they served us frog legs along with some potato and vegetables that we couldn’t discern. I was excited to try something new, but quickly realized that it was way too spicy for me. I attempted to communicate to the waiter using gestures that it was too spicy thinking that I would order something else from the menu. Instead, he brought me a container of hot water. He then used gestured to indicate that the water was to wash off the spice. This approach was unsuccessful. Since this was my introduction to Chinese cuisine, I became very concerned that I would starve for the rest of the trip.

Fortunately, I have since found many restaurants that serve tasty food, and I am still open to trying new things (up to a point). For example, I’ve enjoyed Hot Pot, Dim Sum, Peking Duck, and Shabu-Shabu. Carlo, Laura and I are also big fans of bubble tea. I recently learned that there are 8 styles of cuisine: Chuan, Yue, Lu, Huai Yang, Zhe, Ming, Xiang, Hui. By the way, the dumplings here are AMAZING. Shanghai is known for dumplings that are made with soup inside them. You bite a small hole at the top to let out the steam, carefully drink the soup that's inside, and eat the dumpling. My chopsticks skills have improved greatly in a short amount of time since I usually have no other choice for a utensil.

I had the fortune of having dinner with a journalist who works for Time Out magazine in Shanghai. She is responsible for the food section, and she explained that most people my age in China do not know how to cook because their parents considered cooking a distraction. People are also not into cooking because there are so many restaurants and because a good meal can cost about the same as if you cooked at home. Despite this, Laura and I are looking into taking a cooking class while we are here.