And What About Food?

Have you ever ordered your lunch or dinner blindly? Well, before coming to China, I never did, but now, I’m kinda getting use to that! In fact, in most places menus are only in Chinese… If you’re lucky enough you’ll have the pictures, which is helping a lot, and sometimes, you’ll have an English translation, however, you can always expect either the best or the worst.

So yes, ordering Chinese food can be a struggle because:

• You’re never sure of what you’ll have,
• You don’t even know if it’s what you ordered,
• You don’t know what is your meal is made of,
• You don’t know how spicy it is,
• You won’t understand any explainations from the waiter as most of them don’t speak any English.

I know it’s a lot, but personally I didn’t have any “bad” surprise about the food I ordered so far, and remember that the aspect as nothing to do with the taste. It can look super weird, but taste amazingly good! It’s actually the case most of the time.

So, I’ve been to several places since I arrived last month, and basically, in “touristic”  places, you’ll find the menu translated, as well as the place where students use to go, near the uni, otherwise, get prepared for everything! I’ve had lunch couple of days ago with my Chinese buddy, which makes every thing easier, and here are the pictures of what we ordered:

Spicy chicken feet with red pepper

Honestly I wasn’t sure I wanted to try, but after signing a kind of “YOLO pact” 😆 for the exchange I tried, and at the end it’s pretty good! I wouldn’t say excellent, but it’s OK, the texture is a bit like jelly, and you have to be careful because of the bones inside. The first bite is the spiciest, then it’s fine.

Egg tarts

This is so good! Seriously, it’s the first time I’m having pastries here (and I kinda missed it), so of course there is nothing comparable with French pastries, but it tastes good!

I cannot help by giving the name of these….

This is made of rice noodles, vegetables and beef. It looks like cannellonis or lasagna, and tastes very good, I’d totally recommend it! Even if you’re not super hungry, it’s amazing!

Jelly cakes

These cakes are made out of various kind of nuts, it’s very jellish and the aspect isn’t very reinsurring, but it’s OK! It’s very nice for dessert, however extremely sweet.

Sweet bread w/ meat

These little sweet bread (3 on the picture) have beef meat inside. The mix is stange because of the extreme sweetness of the bread and the marinade of the meat. To be honest, I wasn’t convinced at all when she told me that, but at the end it’s very good!

Sweet breads

These breads are the same basis as the previous ones (but not open – look like a brioche) and it can be filled by sweet or salt things. This ones were filled by a cream made of eggs and sugar, and most probably other things but I can’t say why, I’ve no idea. It honestly taste amazing, but very (a bit too much) sugary.

So this is the kind of things you can order for the “traditional cantonese breakfast” which is like a brunch. And doing that with a Chinese is always good, because you can exactly, are almost, know what you’ll eat. If you’re coming to Guangzhou or any other place, try some, or all, of these. It’s traditional food, and even if it looks weird, it might taste crazy!

One last picture to show you a blind order we had with Esmée (check out her trumblr here):

Cold noodles, green noodles with eggs and soup, chinese hamburger

So the menu was only in Chinese, and no pictures available, so we asked for noodles, not spicy and chinese hamburger, because it’s soooooo good! And we received these green noodles… “Surprise”!!! It was super good, I guess it was made out of vegetables.

I’ll publish sometimes soon about Western food, because after a while, I’m telling you, you’ll miss a lot Western food, and kind of “normal food” 😜

I hope you enjoyed this post, see you on the next one, and don’t hesitate to let your comments down here! xx

Héloïse