Disney in October

In China, there's only one "Cheesecake Factory" restaurant, and it is located right outside of Shanghai Disney in a shopping area known as Disney Town.

In Disney Town, everything has ears! I'm not into Halloween, but this is kind of cute.

I did not visit Disney's park. I have arthritis and an enlarged bone joint in my right big toe. It doesn't bend anymore. It hurts to walk, and just by going to the restaurant, I thought my foot would fall off. No way I could have walked through the park too!

Restaurant

I just thought I'd show you the inside of a restaurant I went to the other day. I went during non-peak hours, as is the norm for me when dining alone. I think it's beautiful inside with somewhat unexpected decor. This restaurant's specialty is Chinese Sichuan (also known as Szechuan) food, which is spicy and YUM! 

Lunch at my Chinese diner

I have a new go-to place for lunch. It's in my neighborhood, but too far to get to by foot. I go by e-bike. I try to go early before the big lunch crowd arrives. I don't even have to speak when I go in anymore. They already know what I want to eat.

Hot and sour shredded potatoes. It's hard to make at home. It is the most delicious dish on the face of the planet, right up there with chips and salsa. This dish costs less than $2. Most people get it as a side dish to go along with meat and a bowl of rice. But I don't need rice or meat or anything else. I just need me some "swan-lah-too-doe-suh." 

Grocery shopping

I shop for American style groceries at this Euro-Mart.

Euro-Mart is inside the block, away from the street. Cars can't drive up to it, but most people don't have cars anyway, so it doesn't matter. I can park my e-bike next to the building. 

Grocery shopping in the Middle Kingdom is not easy, but it easier than it used to be.

I remember when I first moved to this country, I made a wild guess that grocery stores would arrive in this country by 2050. Fortunately for me, I was 50 years off. They arrived in the year 2000. Before that, you had to buy your groceries at the open market, stand in line as butcher carved pieces off a dead pig, or did bad things to a chicken.

Large grocery stores on the scale of Super Wal-Mart exist now. You can't get canned goods, and you can't get most packaged goods that you can get in the U.S. (no cake mixes, for example).

These large stores, RT-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, etc. sell fresh fruits and veggies, packaged meat, ramen noodles, soy sauce, vinegar, mayonnaise, rice, frozen dumplings, milk, eggs, row after row of sugary drinks, cleaning supplies and cheap household goods (the quality is very low; makes Super Wal-Mart look like Neiman Marcus in comparison).

In my city, we used to have quite a selection of import grocery stores. Some have closed down and we have very few now.

We can get American goods but can't afford them in large quantities due to prices that are up to 4-5 times the price you pay in America. Who really wants a small can of Campbell tomato soup that costs over $5?

But sometimes a can of green beans, a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and a bag of tortilla chips makes you feel like a human being. I can buy paper towels, Betty Crocker cake mix, salsa, refried beans, and lettuce.

Euro-Mart, an import grocery store, is 30 minutes away from where I live, by e-bike, through the worst traffic in town. I can't go unless I am calm and alert enough to handle the traffic. I can make there about once every two weeks.

Euro-Mart has a bakery, but I don't eat bread. It has a dining area both indoors and outdoors. It is two-stories high, so I start upstairs with an empty basket and carry it downstairs to finish shopping before checking out. They take my American credit card so I don't have to carry cash there.

Euro-Mart has another location in town that is further away from me, and it is larger and only has one floor.

At Euro-Mart, I buy enough to fill four re-usable shopping bags and carry them back on my bike. Two stack on top of each other on my floorboard, then one each hangs over the sides of the two handlebars.

When I get home, I drop the bags by my front door, temporarily park my e-bike near the door, then scoot them over to the elevator so I can get them up to the 8th floor where I live. I'm so very thankful for my elevator.

I'm also very grateful that I didn't have to wait until 2050 to see the arrival of grocery stores here.

It's south of some border

Hola. I just had lunch at Miguel's Cafe in Chiang Mai. I described it to my parents as better Mexican food than Dallas has, but not quite as good as Ben's Spanish Inn in Pecos had. That means Miguel's is really quite a wonderful place with delicious food. It's cheap too. I had a taco salad.

Maybe it seems odd that Thailand would have good Mexican food. Once I found authentic Mexican food in Calgary. I guess it is not the location, but the skill of the chef that makes the difference.

By the way, if the top photo has a green tint, it is because I was sitting in the outdoor patio and it had a green plastic roof. I tried to change the tint of the photo so the taco shell would look less green, and now it just looks odd in other ways.

Adios for now!

Eating out

Seoul is full of interesting shops and restaurants (even though I did my own cooking while I was in Seoul). Above is Taco Bell and below is Krispy Kreme. (China has neither of these. There used to be Krispy Kreme in Shanghai, but the one I knew about closed down.) Seoul also had other western restaurants like On the Border, Outback Steakhouse, Dunkin Donuts, all the fast food giants, etc. The supreme tacos at Taco Bell cost $5 each. Nothing is really cheap in Seoul.

A shout out to home cooking

The tall young waiter balanced the serving tray in his right hand. Steam could be seen rising from the delicious looking stir-fried green bean dish. I wished I had ordered that. 

He was walking from the direction of the kitchen to the dining area when it happened. He sneezed. All over the green beans. No look of sorrow, repentance or embarrassment crossed his face. To him, this was normal, a non-event.

He passed my table, rounded a corner, and served the dish to the unsuspecting customers who, thanks to a wall that had obscured their view, had not witnessed the event. I'm sure they ate it all.

I want to eat at home from now on.

Fruits as deadly weapons

Do you recognize this fruit? It is durian. If you have ever been near one, you'd probably remember it. It stinks horribly. When I walk into a grocery store and my gag reflexes activate, it is usually because they have durian for sale. Many hotels in this country have signs that ban guests from carrying durian into their hotel rooms. It is that bad. Slicing one open looks to be a dangerous pursuit. I avoid them. The above photo? That's the closest I've ever come to one in 18 years of living in Asia. And I did it just for you.

In related news,* I saw with my own eyes a small porcupine in my apartment complex last week. For context, there are no wild animals in this country, at least not in the superbly overpopulated eastern half of the country. You have to travel to the countryside to see pigs. I saw cows on a riverbank once (I was on a boat). There are not even cockroaches. And I live pretty much smack-dab in the middle of a city of about 8 million people. So how the heck did a porcupine get here? It's a mystery.

*What? Can't you see the resemblance between a durian and a porcupine? Makes sense to me. :-)

It's bad to be a bird

I went to a restaurant for lunch, and they were not serving any chicken dishes off of their extensive menu. Maybe this is because the live bird markets have been closed down due to bird flu. Apparently KFC is having trouble keeping its doors open now too. (I bet none of you go to KFC, but in China they have a better menu in my opinion, it is clean and modern, and it is usually packed with middle and upper-income patrons. So for it to be suffering from business is certainly big news in these parts.)

It's not much better to be a pig in China, not unless you're a pig who knows how to swim.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say you haven't been keeping up with the news lately. Which is okay. :-) Google pigs river China to find out.

Cooking Lesson

My once-a-week house helper, above, taught me to make baozi (bow-zuh) yesterday. Baozi is steamed bread with meat and vegetable filling. She told me it would be easy. But when I found out it wasn't easy, I stopped paying attention. Not much chance of me ever making these from scratch. Mimi was kind of paying attention though.

When I realized that the dough is made with yeast and is basically the same dough recipe you'd make for, say, cinnamon rolls, I wanted to bring this cooking lesson to an abrupt halt and make breakfast instead. Because if you're going to go to that much trouble to make something, it ought to be something mouth-watering.

I can buy baozi on the street for about 30 cents each, so that's what I'll be doing next time I want to eat one.

It looks vaguely familiar

Why is it that Chinese restaurants in America, run by Chinese people, serve food that tastes absolutely NOTHING like Chinese restaurant food in China? It is a mystery, a travesty, a shame. Chinese food in China is awesomely delicious. In America it tastes like cardboard.

This is not just my opinion, but every American I know who has ever spent a considerable chunk of time in China will tell you the exact same thing. It is not just one restaurant in America that fails the flavor test, they ALL do, regardless of what city or state it is in. It's as if these Chinese people moved to America to open restaurants and were told that Americans won't eat the real thing were they to cook it. So they are handed a recipe book of tasteless concoctions that resemble Chinese food (by sight) and are told to make the substitute recipes instead. That's what I imagine happens anyway. I don't know what really happens. 

See the above meal? Well, the spring rolls were pretty good, but then again I've never seen a spring roll in China, so I'm not sure where the whole concept of spring rolls comes from. There are no fortune cookies in China either. Or metal utensils.

The rice was bad. The "kung pao chicken" was bad. Even I, a so-so cook, can make tasty versions of both of those in my own kitchen, so why is it that these restaurants can't master the skill?

And look at those pretty British-style dishes. They don't use those in China either. You'll never see a tea cup in a real Chinese restaurant with a handle on it. You'll never see a big plate either.

Yeah, yeah, I'm being picky. But that's because this is a REVIEW! And I'm giving a major thumb's down.

But I do thank God that even though my taste buds were not impressed, I had food to fill my stomach that day, and good company at the restaurant with me. 

When in America, I recommend that you stick to hamburgers joints. When you want good Chinese food, get on an airplane.

The restaurant being reviewed is not named in order to save the restaurant embarrassment. Some "reviewer" I am, huh?