liuzhou

That's a bit on the cool side round here, even in May. I too had a chicken thigh for dinner, but no avo. Braised with garlic and shiitake and served with rice and baby spinach. No pictures. Too hungry.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems you want to take canned tomatoes, sauce them, then can them? Why not do what you usually do with half the cans then store the ones you didn't order until next time? Canned tomatoes have a long shelf life.

Here is a similar meal, but they've cut out the shovel and instead tip the food straight from the wok onto what looks like a parchmment or greaseproof paper lined sheet pan. The end result is the same.

They put that in everything!

I am mystified as to what is "disgusting" or "gross". This is not significantly different from taking a dish from a commercial wok with a large wok scoop and plating it. All that is going on is that they plate it in front of you and the scoop is a little bigger. It is also normal for most Asians to eat family style. Food is rarely served as individual meals for each diner. No troughs involved.

They're always looking for a new gimmick, to stand out from the competition. I don't think it's so bad and anyway, it's the taste that counts. It will pass, as did the Bareheaded Sichuan restaurant where the wait staff, male and female all shaved their heads.

A recent trend in some restaurants In China involves not you shoveling up your dinner, but the wait staff shoveling it at you. It only seems to apply to seafood restaurants, as far as I can see but would work with other things, I guess. Here are a few cell phone shots. Does this happen anywhere else?

Lovely. But a slice or two of black pudding would elevate it into perfection. 😆

What I know about Mexican cuisine could be wriiten in one perforation hole on the edge of a postage stamp. but I thought someone might be interested. Seems some taco stand in Mexico city has been given a Michelin star, for possibly the shortest Michelin worthy menu ever. Ici, as they don't say in Mexico.

Quite possibly. Wherever it goes, it doesn't solve the problem; it just moves it on. As i recall, China was being paid to take some trash for 'recycling' but I think they stopped that a good few years back. Or said they did. Some they did pay for, especially plastics, but that has supposedly stopped too. My oil is collected separately from other trash, but what happens next, I don't know for sure, either.

That's what I was concerned about.

What does the city do with it?

I guessed that was probably the case.

Yes and, at least in the UK, of all the non-Cantonese regional foods, Sichuan is the most popular (without being dumbed down).

This sounds like an ill-considered step back to me. Just as more and more authentic regional Chinese cuisines are becoming more available in the West and proving popular, he is advocating a return to the old habit of westernising Chinese dishes to suit someone Chinese's perception of western tastes. Rather than "one step toward the world stage", it’s a great leap backward. He complains on one hand that a Mapo Tofu he ate 30 years ago was inauthentic while on the other hand proposing a radically altered twice-cooked pork dish to suit American tastes! And he is wrong when he writes that Chinese cuisine is the most popular restaurant food in the UK, for instance, and its popularity has increased since regional cuisine was introduced around the turn of the century. It is no longer only Cantonese cuisine as it was in the past.

Cod with blood sausage, olives, capers and garlic. Herby fried rice.

I don't think I said anything about anyone eating soup wrong. I don't care how people eat anything. What I, and most people here, do care about is when literally 6 million people turn up in a city of 5 million over one week, bringing the place to a grinding halt. No one could move or go about their business. And for what? It was nothing to do with food, but about getting their precious 'look at me; aren't I so amazing' videos on Douyin, the Chinese version of Tik Tok. They were all filming themselves 'eating' malatang or luosifen, except few really were. There have been numerous reports from restaurateurs saying people were standing in line for over four or five hours, ordering these dishes, filming themselves beside it (maybe taking one bite) then leaving with the dish uneaten. Mission accomplished. On to the next vacuous venture. In the meantime, the good people of Liuzhou were going hungry as they couldn't get to the markets to get their food.

There are some things I like to put in my mouth that aren't available in my local markets or supermarkets but I can order for delivery. Today, among other things I ordered some portobello mushrooms (rare here) and one of my favourite black boletes (one is more than enough for a meal for me - they're large). Within minutes of placing my order my phone rang. Portobello Mushrooms "Hello, this is Ms. Li from Xincai (name of delivery company). I'm sorry but we're out of portobellos. Can we send you an extra black bolete instead?" Of course, she said it in the local dialect of Chinese that being what most of them speak around here for some reason. Wishing to be agreeable, I agreed. I said "OK" in Universal Language. 30 minutes later my order turned up. Two black boletes, and an unordered or paid for pack of essentials for Chinese cooking and a couple of eggs. Obviously the essentials and eggs were gifts, but given that the extra black bolete costs double what the portobellos would have, I'm considering that a partial gift, too. Essentials

The United Steaks of America

Pork marinated with garlic, sand ginger (kencur), facing heaven chilli, soy sauce. Stir fried with black boletes and served with rice and stir-fried pumpkin shoots and garlic, which I forgot to photograph.

Food for thought.

About a week ago, Liuzhou Government held a meeting and officialy declared that they are finally doing something I've been telling them to do for 25 years! They decided that from now on the only permitted offical English translation of 螺蛳粉 as used on restaurant signs and the packaging of the inferior 'instant' type is to be "Liuzhou Luosifen'. This will replace some of the ridiculous translations I see such as "Liuzhou River Snail Luosi Rice Noodles" or "Liuzhou Screw Powder" or worse. For some reason, they conceded that well-known Chinese dishes in western countries often use at least parts of the Chinese name: mapo tofu, kungpo chicken, egg foo-yung etc. It also helped when I reminded them that they shouldn't bow to the imperialist, capitalist running dogs and take some pride in their own language - they like that sort of rhetoric. Now I'm going to work on them changing "Grandma's Fragrant Fluttering Bones". I'll post the results in another 25 years.

I agree but there is more than kind of hot and sour soup in China and none traditionally use chili for the heat. Instead white pepper is used as it was before chili even reached beyond the Americas. Fun fact: the direct translation of the Chinese name(s) is 'sour and hot'. Packaged ínstant Luosifen is available from Amazon (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) in the USA. There is one restaurant I know of, north of you in Seattle. But to taste the real taste you got to come to Liuzhou. Just avoid Chinese public holidays. They are mayhem.

Slightly off-topic, though you could have it for with dinner, when I was living in Soviet Russia, I was introduced to chilli vodka. Perfect for colds. Cleared up sinuses and everything else while ensuring a good night's coma sleep. Actually, thinking back, I may have had it for dinner more than once. Luosifen or Laziji are now my go-tos.

三鲜馄饨 (sān xiān hún tun) - Three delicacy wontons (shrimp, pork, shiitake) with a soy, vinegar, chilli dip.