Hotels are kind of strange when it comes to food. Especially business hotels in Asia. They always try to cater to the business visitor and have some choices that are Western. They almost always have a breakfast buffet and some of the items strike me as a little odd. I have been known to eat some things not considered breakfast food for breakfast: such as a pork chop and steamed broccoli, or rib-eye steak with sauteed peppers and onions.
Some of the stranger things that I found for breakfast on this recent trip to China are:
Spaghetti along side hashed brown potatoes. The potatoes look good with the peppers and onions added.
Macaroni and cheese along side yams.
Some of the items are a little more regional: such as the Taiwan Sausage or the Morning Tea Sausage. I don't know which is which but they were both pretty good.
Sometimes there is what I would consider bar food for breakfast such as pumpkin pie. But it is not traditional USA variety pumpkin pie. This is deep fried pumpkin pie along side deep fried radish cakes. I did not try these. I am not a huge fan of traditional pumpkin pie due to getting an upset stomach after eating too much (all the pie except one piece - with extra whipped topping, of course).
I also found another use for a coffee mug tree. Note the use of the first versus the use of the second at the breakfast buffet at the hotel.
Sometimes I eat some strange things. My philosophy is I will eat it if others at the table also eat it. If it is something odd and I'm not sure how to eat it, I always let someone else eat first. This is somewhat easier with Chinese style dining since many different dishes are placed on the table and you can take what you like from each one. That gives some time to watch others eat a particular dish before you try it yourself. The other difficulty comes from dining utensils. I don't like to look like a n00b from the USA, even though it is inevitable, but I always use chop sticks. I'm not too bad using them but I'm nowhere near as good as a "native."
This trip showed me two new items, one beverage and one main dish. The beverage is baijiu. It is a distilled liquor. The version we were drinking was 55% alcohol or 110 proof. It is pretty strong stuff. The way you drink it is by putting it into a small pitcher, maybe a third or a quarter of a cup of liquid. Then you pour it into a small miniature shot glass. The small shot glasses are about one fifth the size of a normal USA shot glass. This is good because it spreads out the alchoholic goodness and prevents severe drunkenness.
The second thing I ate that was new to me was the following. Do you know what it is?
It is duck tongue. Shown are at least 6 duck tongues. They were kind of pickled and had a bit of spice to them. There was also a nice piece of cartilage down the middle of the tongue. You ate the softer part off the outside. It wasn't too bad. I ate three or four of them before the night was over. While I was eating them I was wondering if the duck could taste me too.
If you look at the top right hand corner of the picture with the duck tongue, you can see the pitcher used to hold and pour the baijiu into the small shot glass.
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On an unrelated note... Happy Birthday to Ashley on Sunday... she asked for it.
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