Food in China — Best Consumed with Family & Friends
It’s that time again for a post dedicated to food. This time it’s about the food we tried, loved, and overate in China. The best meals in China were eaten with company; the best times we had involved sitting down at huge round tables with spinning centers and at least 10 other people, lounging in a restaurant for an entire day (and I mean long enough to have several meals) with Alex’s family, eating ridiculously spicy hotpot with our local Szeuchuan foodie Jacky who swears pig brain is the best thing ever, and discovering a restaurant with such good food we’d go back there three more times — with 2 friends we met on a train.
Category 1 — Meals with friends and family. Because these are the best kinds of meals, I’ve put these photos first. Never did we feel so unconditionally welcome until we met all these Chinese families and friends who kept offering us food and insisting on paying for everything.
Top left — hot pot and other stir-fry goodies at Alex’s relative’s restaurant as a ‘midnight’ meal a few hours after a humongous dinner. We couldn’t eat very much.
Top right — from Alex’s favorite noodle place in Yibin, Alex’s hometown.
Bottom right — a meal from the restaurant downstairs in Michael’s apartment complex in Chengdu
Bottom left — Our first Szechuan meal in Chengdu with Jacky (our host) at a restaurant that many tourists are taken to
Top left — fish soup at a restaurant we went to 3 times in Dali with 2 ladies we met on a train, one of whom spoke excellent English.
Top right — more noodle soup from Alex’s favorite noodle place in Yibin.
Bottom right — Spicy Szechuan dish Annie and us had in Chengdu.
Bottom left — Another takeout meal in Chengdu.
Top left — chicken takeout dish in Chengdu.
Top right — Spicy noodle soup in Chengdu with Jacky (our host) at a restaurant that many tourists are taken to
Bottom right — another great chicken takeout dish in Chengdu
Bottom left — Dry spicy noodles in Chengdu, and “bin fun” — dessert with brown sugar and jelly
We spent most of a day in this private room at a restaurant in Yibin, where Alex’s mom’s relatives and friends congregated for drinking, toasting, eating, and welcoming us visitors. The dishes you see here aren’t even all of it; I don’t think I even got to try all of them. All the dishes were delicious, and just kept coming and coming. There was much talking and laughing at the table, which got more magnified when everyone had a few drinks down (there was constant toasting with liquor before beer).
Top left — Awesome Szechuan food that wasn’t too spicy — we thought we were handling the spice really well until we later found out that Jacky had been telling the waiters to keep it “very mild”…
Top right and bottom left — Our first dinner in Lijiang, where we had the company of the host at our hotel (who also showed us around the ancient town and tried to treat us)
Bottom right — another “light” lunch with Alex’s family after our visit to the Bamboo Sea in Yibin
These are some more meals we had in Chengdu — green beans, eggplant, tofu, etc…. mmm.
Top left and right — Chengdu meals.
Bottom right — Peking duck in Dali
Bottom left — a little bun where you scoop an assortment of meat and veggies into the middle (Yibin)
Category 2 — Meals that Keenan and I ordered when we were by ourselves. We picked restaurants that had photos on the walls and in the menus; we used Keenan’s dictionary and translator app on his phone; we called up friends to help us. It was a challenge to order meals in restaurants in China by ourselves, but we did it!!
Category 3 — Hot pot. This is a big thing in Szechuan and below are photos of a meal we had with Jacky. This is nothing like the hot pot in Vancouver, and the meat ingredients include organs like kidneys, liver, tendons, brains, etc. The first photo in the second collage below is one of pig brain — I couldn’t muster the effort to try it out but Keenan did….he called it “jellylike” and crossed it off on his list of things to have tried but will not eat again :P
Category 4 — Street food. Surprisingly, we didn’t find much street food in the cities we went to in China. I think it’s partly because we didn’t know of all the places to go to, and also smaller towns we went to weren’t really famous for their markets or street food, which isn’t as readily available. We were a bit disappointed by this and maybe the next time we check out a bigger city we’ll find more :)
Street food in Lijiang, Shuhe and Dali
Street food in Lijiang and Dali
Category 5 — Snacks, sweets and dessert… one of the best parts about Asia, these things come in all sorts of varieties and sizes…
Top left — huge Chinese cup noodles…mmm.
Top right — doughy pastry thing we ate at Michael’s place in Chengdu after Jacky steamed it for our late night snack :)
Bottom right — for all the people who thought Oreos came in one flavor.
Bottom left — hot, soft and crunchy chocolate bun in Lijiang
These photos were taken during our Nine Valley tour. These places are dedicated to dried flavored beef snacks…there were enough samples to fill us up for almost a full meal.
Desserts from Chengdu, Yibin and Lijiang
…and they have awesome cakes too… I regret missing out on this stuff.
Category 6 — Drinks (alcoholic and nonalcoholic…). “Liquor before beer, never fear; beer before liquor, never sicker” — words to live by from Keenan.
All these photos were taken in Yibin. The 2 glasses with clear liquid in them contain >50% alcohol (yes it burned). Alex was a champ and downed tons of liquor to satisfy his relatives’ enthusiastic cheers and toasting (and had to make several nauseous visits to the washroom, but let’s not talk about that).
Clockwise from top left: tea with friends in Dali, fruity jelly drink in Lijiang, Wang lao ji (Chinese herbal tea in red cans), and mango bubble tea in Dali
Here are some photos of the general atmosphere of Chinese restaurants…
Top left and bottom left — a restaurant along a waterway in Lijiang old town.
Top right and bottom left — an upper-end restaurant outside the Lijiang old town, where the host from our hotel took us for a delicious meal
Top left — Alex’s family’s favorite noodle place in Yibin
Top right — cafe in Lijiang old town
Bottom right — yay we found a restaurant with pictures on the walls!
Bottom left — Keenan looks at an electronic menu from a tablet, a restaurant in Dali. So cool!
AND lastly, a few photos to ponder about:
Uh, what is this?
The guy who stole the baked goods?
I wonder where the street vendors wash their fruit?
