liuzhou

This thingy.

@Anna N Coincidentally, I was eyeing up a black thingy like that today, "thingy" being the official Chinese term. There may be a more colloquial expression.

Wasn't that hungry tonight. I don't know why. Took a duck breast and skinned and sliced thinly (reserving said skin). Marinated in Shaoxing wine with garlic, ginger, chilli and dried tangerine peel. Stir fried with shiitake and fresh ramen noodles. Finished with Chinese chives and coriander leaf/cilantro.

窝窝头 (wō wō tóu) steamed buns with spicy wild shrimp.

That one was from Chile, but we also get them from Peru. This is a relatively new thing. Ten years ago, no one knew what they were and even today, most people don't know what they are.

Blodplättar. I've eaten that, but in Norway. No forest fires there, either. It's all beginning to make sense!

Avocado with flying fish roe (Chinese: 飞鱼籽 (fēi yú zǐ); Japanese: tobiko ( とびこ )); olive oil and rice wine vinaigrette; Vietnamese sea salt and black pepper. Toast on the side.

I have seen them being used on street food stalls in northern China to spread pancake batter evenly. I'd call it a pancake spreader, but the notable lack of forest fires in northern China proves it's efficacy as a rake. Pancake experts, being able to pour evenly, don't need to use rakes, but then government regulations make sure they never operate in forest areas. Does Finland have pancakes? I'm sure they must.

Yes. It's sold as a "pancake rake" and as far as I'm concerned crêpes are pancakes - or vice-versa! Here it is "assembled".

Please tell me that the white isn't Kewpie!

from the menu of The White Moose Café, Dublin, Ireland

Pork cutlets, blood sausage, buttery baked potato and spinach. Simple.

I recommend the cheese flavoured ones!

These might be as common as muck, but it's new to me. The handle (actually a bamboo chopstick) is 24 cm/9½ inches long and the blade is 13x3.5 cm/5¼x1¾, also bamboo. Obviously, it could be used for many purposes, but was sold with a specific one in the description.

Chinese restaurants are loud, sometimes cacophonous. This is seen as a good thing. There is even a term for it, which restaurants will use on their advertising. 热闹 (rè nào) literally means 'hot noisy', colloquially meaning lively; bustling with noise and excitement; have a joyful time; a scene of bustle and excitement; thrilling. "Morning tea' or 'yum cha' is particularly noisy. Retired people get together to drink tea, eat dim sum and have a good shout at each other.

Linguine with clams steamed in Shaoxing wine, with garlic, ginger and two types of chilli. I intended to include fermented black beans but when I got there, the cupboard was bare and I was too lazy to go out to buy some. I will remedy that tomorrow. I have never run out of salt fermented black beans before in all my 23 years in China. Always a first for everything.

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

I'm going to agree with your local critic. Some, but certainly not all restaurants will give you a glass of tea (or hot water) on arrival, but it is almost never served with food. I often eat in Chinese family homes. They never offer tea with meals. Other times, yes. I've eaten in five restaurants in China in the last 24 hours and none offered tea, although to be fair, we didn't ask for any. It wouldn't occur to us to want it. Yes, dim sum is different. Dim sum refers only the side dishes that are served at morning tea, and the tea comes first. The event is called 饮茶/飲茶 (Mand: yǐn chá; Cant: yam2 cha4) meaning 'drink tea' . No one ever says "Let's go for dim sum." They go for 'yum cha'. But dim sum or yum cha is mainly a Cantonese thing. Not Sichuan cuisine. Tea houses are very popular there, but are different from restaurants. More like temples to the divinity of tea. Serious stuff. As your critic also says, Sichuan cuisine would overpower any tea. Sacrilege! However the relatively bland tastes of Cantonese food works well with tea, but as a complement to the tea, rather than the other way round.

Don't worry. All my senses were on full corn alert! To my great astonishment none turned up. Obviously the restaurant didn't get the email pointing out that western people put corn in every single dish.

Suitably fermented liquid grapes, I hope.

After a torturous disgrace of a dinner last night, today I was marched at gunpoint to another restaurant to have lunch with one of last night's companions and two other young women I know, but rarely see. One of the women ordered and we ate family style. This restaurant is odd. It thinks it's serving Western food, which it certainly isn't, but unlike most such places, it still manages to mostly serve tasty, agreeable grub. Four of us ate: Grilled oysters with minced garlic and chilli One bite salmon and crab roe in a crisp pastry shell - almost but not like Filo/Phyllo. Squid and scallops in a thin tomato flavoured sauce. Strange but good. Beef with pretty veg. As ever, the beef was overcooked. Rice with clams, mussels and shrimp. Chilli, green olives and black olives. With a spiral squirt of Kewpie mayo. These are revolting. Baked oysters with plastic "cheese". Fruit salad with more Kewpie Mayo Another bite sized attempt. Potato chips/crisps hide the mystery ingredient. It rests on a purée of purple sweet potato. The mystery centre turns out to be a lump of overcooked, gristly, inedible pork. Not dish of the day. I have no idea what this is. I didn't go there. It looked like de-constructed cream puffs with blueberries and mango. Another cut of overcooked beef. Tasty, but needed some pink. The Chinese don't do pink beef. And red scares them. With three types of mushrooms. Spicy sea snails. My favourite. So, some albeit odd successes and a couple of failures. Tonight, for dinner, I'm going to curl up at home with a nice cheese and misanthropy sandwich and a beer or five and get away from the indignity of having to eat nice food with lovely women friends. It's been a stressful couple of days.

As @heidih notes, people here get through astonishing amounts of fruit.

Tragic.

Yes, it had coconut milk. Tom yam kathi ( ต้มยำกะทิ) style. In my experience tom yum soups are usually opaque, but then then are many kinds.