Another hard
week at work done and we were all hungry teachers and needed some sustenance,
we were all fading fast. Luckily we had all organised to go to a north-eastern
Chinese restaurant that one of my workmates knew. Off we went, up Bin He lu for
the ten minute walk to the restaurant, whose name escapes me right now,
although I’m sure I’ll go there again at some point, so check back for an
update if you happen to be in Suzhou. The restaurant had a family feel, it was
medium sized and the space was shared by the family that lived there, we had a
sweet chubby cheeked little baby keeping us company on the adjacent table.
In any case, we
sat down and perused the biblical picture menu. You need to be pretty good at
choosing things when you’re eating in China because the menu is inevitably about
half an inch thick and full of things you want. This is partly because they are
almost always picture menus (pleasing for us westerners) and partly just
because they seem to love food in China more than anywhere else I’ve been in
the world. Perhaps you’re starting to see why I like living here. Dongbei is
the area of China bordering Russia in the north east, think of places like
Changchun (长春) and Harbin (哈尔滨), think of temperatures like -30C
in the winter. The food here is of a hearty, meaty and often more wheat laden
character; it involves lots of dumplings, hunks of meat and, to my absolute
delight, stews. It’s very different from the sweet, fragrant Chinese fare we
are used to in England, some of it is actually a lot more like northern
European food. We ordered a lot of things, (hen duo dongxi-很多东西) of
which I can remember a reasonable selection. The most notable dish was a simple
dish of beef joints that Cliff (my Bahaman workmate in China-more confusing
globalisation) suggested, seemingly knowing quite a bit about 东北餐. Now
I don’t mean a joint as in a roasting joint, oh no. In China they bring you a
pile of bone joints with plastic gloves so that you can gnaw them like a
famished beast. As you can imagine I was in some sort of gluttonous ecstasy at
this point.
After this we
were presented with a dish of spicy wild mushrooms that were fried in plenty of
oil, a prodigious quantity of chopped chillies nestling therein. There was a
steaming plate of curious lemon chicken cutlets fried in batter, some
incredibly spicy (chou la-抽啦) fried cabbage and enough dumplings
（jiaozi-饺子）to
feed a small army or a few hungry teachers. A dish of real note was the beef
stew-lumps of beef with no bones, which is somewhat of a rarity in China, and
potatoes in a delicious beefy stock, this dish is enough to make anyone who
misses northern European food well up with pure joy. Finally they brought us a
fried rice dish with a twist-it had bacon in it, well any savoury dish (and
some sweet ones) is improved by bacon, so I was most approving. As a side order
we had a pile of sweet corn fritters and some delicious thick pancakes. These
sweet corn fritters seem to be available in almost all Chinese eateries of a
certain stature, and this time they came covered in a dusting of sugar and sprinkles
of the hundreds and thousands type. I know that sounds strange, but it works
really well with the sweetness of the corn and the oily batter.
It
is no inconsiderable compliment to the quantity of food served that I could not
finish it. Yes, I was defeated by this meal, I was incredibly satisfied and, as
I write this the next morning, I’m still not very hungry. The whole thing came
to 320RMB (about £34), but thanks to some financial wrangling by our Chinese workmate
Tiana we got it for 300RMB, or 50RMB each (so about £5.50). I asked her about
how she got the discount and she told me she said we didn’t need a stamp (they
always stamp receipts here), so I came to the conclusion we were probably
involved in the kind of shady tax evasion that helps cash businesses thrive the
world over. But who was I to argue? They had just stuffed me to the gills with
delightfully hearty Dongbei food for a bargain price. All that remained was to
go home and enjoy my food lull.
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