Tagged: chinese
It’s all about the company
It’s all about the company, our gracious hostess said, as I ooohed and aaaahed over our meal. We’d been invited out for dinner, and I just love it when someone else cooks for me. Having been a chef and a critic, some people has expressed a discomfort or unwillingness in preparing a meal for me, a trepidation that somehow, whatever they offer will not “be up to standards”. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s precisely because I was a professional cook that I enjoy so much when someone else cooks, and I don’t care what it is. Grilled cheese? Yum! Canned soup? Spoon please! Sh*t on a shingle? May I have some more? As far as being a critic, that’s too much work when I’m eating recreationally.
I have to say that on this particular evening, I was completely blown away. Our hostess had chosen to prepare a Chinese dinner, having perfected her skills out of necessity. Originally from the West Coast, she had problems finding the style that she was used to on our side of the country. We started with a platter of shrimp toasts and fried filled wontons, made from scratch (as was all the meal), and throwing restraint to the wind we scarfed down far more than was polite. (I thought that not pulling the plate right onto my lap showed at least some manners.)
Now, I love to host dinners, and I always have a theme around which I build the menu, but holy cow, this woman put my careful planning and preparations to shame! The table was set beautifully with Chinese dishes, chopsticks at the ready, and with each setting there was a gorgeous Chinese art envelope with a coin inside, and a Chinese New Year stamp (a symbol of good luck and prosperity, I think she told us). There was a large pot of real Chinese tea (as in, a friend had brought her tea from China, that’s how real it was) and a large ‘lazy susan’ upon which all of the dishes were served, family-style. No detail was left undone, certainly to the eye.
And it quickly turned out that what we tasted lived up to what we saw–an incredible array of expertly cooked pork, salmon, noodles, scallops….the list goes on.
It was the most incredible dinner experience I’ve ever had in someone’s home, and I was quick to tell my hostess this.
At the end of the evening, we waddled out to the vehicle, sated in body and mind, giddy with the pleasure of both the table and the company. (And no, we were not hungry again in a hour).
I’m really going to have my work cut out for me when it’s our turn to have them for dinner…
critic on the critics thursdays
HeraldSpurr reviews a golf club restaurant–c’mon Bill, how many of your readers will eat there? You’re not getting lazy are you? Whilst over at the Coast, Craig Pinhey writes about Canada’s antiquated border booze laws that restrict consumer choice and put us at the whim of the NSLC.
Which kind of fits right in with Halifax, in general. I live here because I must, but as I get older and crankier, I have less and less patience with the small town mentality that’s so rampant (especially in the mayoral office, currently).
I moved here from Newfoundland years ago; all starry eyed and full of excitement about moving to a “mainland city”. After all, the closer you are to Toronto, the more progressive and advanced the city, right? And there was nowhere more east than NL, so surely moving anywhere to the west would bring one closer to a more cosmopolitan culture, right?
Yeah, not so much. When I moved here, you couldn’t shop on Sunday–or on Monday, Tuesday and Saturday nights (unless you headed over the bridge to Dartmouth). No beer in the corner stores, and good luck finding an open gas station on Sunday. More confusing was the inability to get both a beer and a mixed drink at most drinking establishments, and the early hour at which everything downtown closed.
But one area in which Halifax has managed to excel has been in the fantastic culinary culture. Nothing small town about the array of restaurants and the global tastes the city offers; we do all right for a city this size. Without thinking too hard, I can come up with Indian, Iranian, Italian (the “I’s” have it). South Asia is well represented with Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese and of course Chinese. Greek, Mexican, Turkish. Ethiopian. And so it goes.
So while the liquor regulations are archaic, at least we have freedom of food!
