The Soup Calderon - A very local dinner in China

My dinner plans caused a little commotion tonight.

As you may have read in my earlier blog post (http://vonfeldt.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-lake-in-middle-of-china.html ), I am in China. I have been working in Shanghai for the last ten days. Before leaving back to the US on Monday, I decided to take a small excursion to a smaller city outside of Shanghai.

(For those of you that may have received a few earlier blogs, I notice some of the pictures did not come through. Be sure to look for revised versions at: http://vonfeldt.blogspot.com

I boarded one of China's new bullet trains, and with a speed of over 300 km per hour, I found myself in Hangzhou 90 minutes later.

As I mentioned in my earlier blog, I spent a couple of hours waking along the path of the shoreline of the famous lake in the middle of the town. By the time I was ready to stop, it had become dark. I returned to the hotel, and realized it was already 10:00.

Dinner plans in nice restaurants don't happen after 10:00 here. I asked the concierge for the name of a place in the area that served local food. He scribbled some Chinese characters down on a Hyatt business card, gave me directions, and then finally said, "tell them I sent you."

In the travel smarts world, that is code word for, "If you go there, and you tell them I sent you, then I will also be rewarded later." Travel instinct warning.

I went to the restaurant, about two blocks from the hotel. It was indeed open. And there were lots of fish and critters swimming in the window. But no one was in the restaurant.

That is a nervous sign, that either the food is not good, not popular or is overpriced.

I decided to continue to walk a 3-4 block perimeter of the hotel to see what else might exist. My rule of looking for the hotel where it is busy and filled with locals was my goal.

Walking down a side street, I could tell many locals were going to this restaurant. That was my sign.

However, this restaurant was local. Very local. They didn't speak English. I didn't speak Mandarin. And further, this was not the kind of restaurant that encouraged visitors.

The restaurant is a soup place. Sort of. Out front, the restaurant has a counter, and a large cooler in front of the counter. You are given a 12 inch x 9 inch basket, and asked to place your items into the basket. Inside of the cooler were at least 15-20 various versions of meats in various states. On top of the cooler was a table that had dozens of types of greens and tofu.

After looking in the cooler, I opted for a pretty vegetarian bowl. I did add one skewer of small pigeon eggs, and some fish balls (think meatball, but made with fish).

These were some of the items in the cooler - various meats on a stick.
The bowl however was extra special. It was the brain of some animal. I didn't ask. I couldn't ask.

The rest of my basket was filled with bundles of sprouts, leaves, skewer and twisted types of tofu and beancurd.

I also pointed at a Coke in the nearby cooler.

They motioned me in to the back of their counter into a small room with four tables. They would be taking my basket, and adding it to an ongoing cauldron of water that had continued to be flavored all day long.

Here is the view from my table in the back of the restaurant. Out front is where I ordered the food and others stood in line.

After the soup was done, I was given the bowl, and was pointed to bowls of garlic, cilantro, vinegar and spices.

As I sat there waiting for my soup, I could tell everyone outside of the restaurants were looking into the window to see the white guy. As well, the folks inside of the restaurant, all 6 of them, were also relatively quiet, probably wondering if I understood Mandarin.

In the end, the soup was delicious. I slurped and pulled and tore apart my vegetables, eggs and various forms of tofu.

I love adventures like this. And if I can do it via food, all the more better yet!