Eating Local

As I'm a bit "laid up," I have some time to share some travel stories. Or at least one for now.

This afternoon for lunch I decided to go for one of the local Chinese restaurants instead of the safe-bet-English-menu places. Dali has a lot of cafes that serve excellent Western and Chinese food, but they are pricey by Chinese standards. Usually I revert to these places because I enjoy the comfort of actually knowing what I am ordering, butI had seen a number of little places with oodles of fresh vegetables displayed outside for the picking, and was having visions of delicious $2 stir fry running through my head all morning. So I found a nice little place, picked about 5 different veggies from the sidewalk display (eggplant, bok choy, mushrooms, cauliflower and bitter melon), and sat down to wait. From the gestures of the cook, I figured it would be about 6 yuan, the equivalent of less that one dollar.

So here I am, sitting and awaiting what I thought would be a plate of stir-fry that would mix all of the things I had picked into one yummy dish. That's the way I do it at home when I make stir fry. But then, out came the first plate. It was just the bok choy, a whole dish of it. That's when it dawned on me, aided by a memory of a local eatery meal 2 weeks ago in Beijing, that each veggie you chose is cooked up separately. A whole plate of it. And so they came, 5 full plates of stir fried vegetables, along with a gigantic bowl of white rice. And here I am, the blonde foreigner, with enough food for an entire family sitting in front of me, laughing. I can only imagine what the restaurant staff what thinking. They hadn't blinked an eye when I had ordered that much, maybe they thought I was just really hungry, or that I wanted to sample a bit of everything.

The upshot was that the food was delicious. I understand now why they cook them separatetly, with only some garlic, ginger or chili thrown in for accent -- the idea is to retain the flavor of each vegetable. And each dish I had did exactly that. So many Americans grow up despising veggies, and I think it's largely because American cooking does not do justice to vegetables. Frozen, from a can, boiled, even steamed....this is not the best way to eat them. But the Chinese...ah the Chinese method of cooking -- a quick stir fry in some extremely hot oil -- it actually brings out the flavor instead of masking it. Believe it or not, cauilflower is delicious, if its only cooked right. Even the bitter melon, which I tried before and was not crazy about -- my chopsticks kept making their way back to that plate and I found myself loving the strange pungent flavor.

But as delicious as it was, I stuffed myself full and still could not finish everything. Fortunately there is a not a food shortage around here, as Dali is in a valley of abundant farmland, and I suspect that what I didn't eat was only a fraction of what is thrown on the local compost heap every night.

The shocker though, was the bill -- what was intended to be a cheap eat turned out to be one of the more spendy meals I've had, only because my mistaken assumptions led me to order enough for 5 people. As it turns out, it was 6 yuan per veggie, which somehow totalled up to 33 yuan. Now those of you at home get ready to think I am a cheapskate -- that's only about 4 U.S. dollars! It's hard to get edible food for that price back home. But by Chinese food standards, that's sort of high for one person's meal. Just to give a point of reference, I am only paying 20 yuan per night for my hotel. The overpriced Western places charge anywhere from 10-50 per meal, and the local places should never cost you more than 10. So 33 when you are expecting 6.....wow...that's damn spendy.

Anyways, live and learn. And don't forget to enjoy the food along the way.