Pechluck's Food Adventures

In Suzhou: I've always loved bento boxes, where everything has its place.

In Nanjing: I love duck, though eating meat off the bone while also using chopsticks always challenges the line of how to eat in a lady-like fashion

Ditto for challenging eating in a polite tableside manner with ribs and chopsticks in Shenzhen, though these ribs were quite tasty

I prefer them like in this fashion in Hong Kong: this crispy pork and peking duck is much easier to eat, though I won't mention how much fat I had at this meal. I know crispy pork looks terrible for you (and it is) but it is so richly melt in your mouth.

I was actually thrilled when this was ordered by the Chinese co-worker in Shenzhen,  since I was suffering from severe lack of greens in my diet. These were stir-fried with garlic and unidentified little black caper-like things.

How can you make tofu taste better? Deep fry it and stuff pork in the middle. These tofu "bricks" were incredibly tasty with the mix of the firm tofu, the flavorfully seasoned pork inside, and the sauce outside was a mix of sweet and sour in a way that is not like traditional sweet&sour sauce- it was less thick in texture and had a lighter taste, definite improvements on sweet and sour sauce.

Hotel Breakfasts: those hash browns were at *every* hotel I went to. They must be making lots of money. Generally, I could not resist those damn things, as well as the cheese and the rest of my meal was usually very traditional Chinese offerings. I was surprised to see the cheese: most Chinese don't eat it, but that's what they offer anyway for the tourists who stay in the hotels it seems. The New Jin Jiang hotel in Shanghai actually had a cheese dome whose offerings included blue cheese, which I know for sure most are not a fan of. Oddly, my ability to get cheese is what allowed me to keep my daily interest in Chinese food, because cheese is usually the first thing I miss.

Street Food:
Nanjing's little pan fried rice square

Egg Tart Custard in Hong Kong

A 7-11 Breakfast in Hong Kong of a little bit of iced coffee and a egg and corn bun. There's something about the bread in Asia which is so soft, buttery goodness not found in the US.

Mos Burger, which is a rice burger- instead of buns there are "patties" of rice (the rice is just formed into that shape, it's not actually a patty at all). This is a interesting Japanese chain that also has locations in Taiwan. I could totally see a branch of this doing well in Portland or LA, as it's combination of "burger" with well-marinated meats is not too far off from the Korean taco trucks

Other street food in Taiwan, from the night markets:
like fresh dumplings at the Linjiang market

or these at the famous Shilin market


(yes that's a potato topping "bar" cart" which was wildly popular with long lines)
My quest: giant fried chicken steak

or at the Jiu Fen shopping area all I did was snack, including the area's famous taro dumplings.

My favorite were the ice cream/nut shavings wrapped treat, which i had twice. One person of the two-person team uses a big knife to scrape off shavings of peanut into each of those lil thin rice pancakes, puts in two lil scoops of ice cream, and wrap.

Honeymoon Dessert, one of the few times I had dessert (though in this case, I had it as a "snack" before going up to the Big Buddha. This is a mango pancake with cream. Their setting and offerings reminded me a bit like Finale, a famous dessert chain in the Boston area.

Finally….

Why supersize your meal when you can overload it!?? Awesome… or just go to a place offering a liquid dinner.