The first night of the conference, we had a wonderful dinner at the Hong Kong Jockey Club overlooking the horse race course that comes alive every Wednesday night with races and gambling. Things were a bit quieter on a Monday. The meal consisted of ten courses, mostly a large dish shared among the ten diners at our table. In addition to the local staples – roast chicken, duck, pork stomach, shrimp, fried rice, soup, we also had the chance to get our lips around the goose web – basically the foot of a duck. I’ve had chicken feet before and this is fairly similar – like eating a chicken wing with no meat on the bones.
The next night a few of us headed out in the city for some local surprises. We first ducked into a small tea shop and shared a few cups of extremely potent 24 grain tea and turtle shell jelly. Both of these have medicinal properties that I understand to A. help your love life or B. help your body overcome the ‘heat’ caused by too much spicy food and alcohol.
Next on the menu came street meat. These little stands are a very popular snacking destination throughout the city and we sampled the grilled fish paste balls.
I mentioned to my co-worker Alan the one with light meat with an orangish outside looked pretty good. His reply, “Sure, that’s pig intestine.” So we dutifully got a skewer and each tried a bite, none of use really enjoying it. The texture was pretty bad and the taste wasn’t much to speak of. Alan also chose to tell us at this point, “You’re lucky, that’s pretty good quality intestine. Sometimes the cheaper stuff hasn’t yet been ‘cleaned out’. Awesome.
Eventually we ate an amazingly filling and tasty dinner at a Shanghai dumpling restaurant then were eager for more culinary adventure.
Throughout the trip, we had been talking about Durian, the most pungent of fruits found mainly in Southeast Asia. I have often had the chance to eat it, but have never mounted the required courage. The thing about Durian is that it smells…terrible. I’d say it’s a cross between old sweaty laundry and a not so recently dead animal. We located a stand in one of the many surrounding shopping malls that offered ‘Durian Pancake’. With three forks and the pancake in hand (of course the only local, Alan, was having no part of this), we sat down. I was the first to take a bite and replied that it wasn’t so bad, although I admittedly got mostly the cream topping in my spoonful. Justin and Mike tried it, grimacing and nearly gagging but finally washing it down with some Coke. I went in for a second bite, this time sure to get more of the fruit. It was indeed horrible, with the gag reflex kicking in. It is rather unfortunate that I did manage to keep it down, as we headed to some local drinking establishments after that and the inevitable hours of Durian flavored belches and aftertaste was not an enjoyable experience.
The last night in Hong Kong, we went to a Sichuan Hot Pot restaurant with a good group of co-workers. You have a large circular table where they then place two boiling pots in the middle: one a lighter chicken flavored bullion and the other terrifyingly red with chilis and peppers floating in the heavily spiced liquid. We then proceeded to order dozens of small plates of different kinds of meats, vegetables and noodles to place into your desired soup mixture, boil briefly then consume the goodness. Our meat selection included beef, lamb, chicken, eel, emu (exquisite!), beef tongue, beef tendon.
One highlight was watching Alan bravely eat a gelatinous tendon then had been sitting at the bottom of the hottest soup for the last hour then watching him turn various shades of red and sweat out 90% of his body’s fluids.
Say what you will about the spiciness, it is indeed a great way to get customers to drink a lot of your beer in a futile attempt to extinguish the fire on their tongues.
