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Here is how I would do it (I think it would work): Use cheese (or egg) wire slicer to cut the tofu but keep them together as a block. Place 2 or more blocks of tofu on the plate, then fan them off like a deck of thick cards. But how they heat it would be interesting. They can heat the tofu first (the block) and then plate it, but hot tofu may be hard to deal with. Thanks for the additional pictures, sheetz! Interesting! Looks like the dishes offered at New Concept match their restaurant name. The platings are very nicely done.

Cooking sea cucumbers are quite easy. Usually the markets have them re-constituted and cleaned. I probably have 2 pictorial recipies featuring sea cucumbers. How interesting! Taiwanese serve siu mai as part of the dinner banquet?

i c. no i never thought of food coloring. i thought you made them with water melons (red), catelope (orange) and honeydews (green). u have the exotic tastes, u know! yes the tang yuens i have seen were all boring white.

Who did the ordering in your group?

Has anybody had horseshoe crabs before? I haven't and am wondering how they can be cooked.

SG: fyi Saigon (Richmond) is closed. it doesn't look like they are coming back. shame. i do like their dim sum. looks like Asian Pearl is taking over, 500 yards away. HK East Ocean (Emeryville) degraded. my last visit was 2 months ago. dim sum down a notch from what it used to be. unlikely that i would go back for a while. i had written off HK Flower Lounge (Milbrae) about 2 years ago - my last visit. dim sum tasted so... so-so. no waiting Saturday at 12:00 pm. imagine that. "high end" Chinese restaurant... i am not sure what that is, sad to say. the best service i had received in Chinese restaurants in SoCal: Panda Inn. they have 5 locations. we had tried the ones in San Diego (Horton Plaza), Pasadena and La Palma. services are all good (better than most other Chinese restaurants). food is not bad. not the best for my taste but not bad overall. note that they target for non-asian patronage. that's where i took my former coworkers to and they all loved it. and i presume the abalone dish is the most pricy dish in your dinner at new concept?

i don't think there is any issue with posting about eating strange or exotic animals. we even have postings about eating dogs. the concern from some of the participants are on "endangered species". if you are not eating Great White Sharks, you are okay.

Hi nakji! What is the etiquette of using the fresh herb and, particularly, the fresh lettuce leaves with pho tai? When I have pho or bun hoi, the waitstaff always provide a plateful of lettuce leaves, bean sprouts and fresh herbs (cilantro, Thai basil and another one that I don't know the name of). I pour the bean sprouts into the soup, along with cilantro and Thai basil. Does one usually grab a herb leaf together with a piece of barbequed meat slices with a pair of chopsticks to eat and not put it in the soup? I use the lettuce leaves to roll up bun hoi but don't know how to eat it with pho. Was the 26,000 VND all in paper bills? Or there were some coins involved? What is the smallest Vietnamese bill? 1 VND?

Bruce: did you use the American (thick) leeks? Or Chinese leeks (much thinner)? I have seen Chinese leeks occassionally in my neighborhood Asian markets. The flavor seems stronger. They look like big green onions.

hong kong? cleanest? spacious? lavishly decorated bathrooms????? oh yeah, i m sorry, i m not the first-class and five-star kind of guy.

for giant conch and geoduck clams, the best Cantonese style is cutting them into very thin slices, then "white boiled" and eat with the diluted light soy sauce + chili as a dip. the turtle in question i think sounds like farm-raised turtles, not wild-catched.

As with other "drunkun something" Chinese dishes - it's easier to get the eaters drunken with the liquor used than the animals... so they can imagine whatever the animals would do when drunken in their head.

You will find similar experience getting around in Hong Kong and Singapore using the subways. Especially in Singapore where English is an official language. (One of the four official languages.) When I was there, it was stations that have English names which were (perhaps) phoenetically translated from Malay that gave me hard times. But then... similar situations exist in Hong Kong. For non-Chinese speaking visitors, it would be hard to remember stations like Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, Tsuen Wan, etc.. (or perhaps a tad easier than Malay? )

If you change the water, that's better. If you have soaked some dried mushrooms but have a last minute change of plan, you can drain the water and keep the rest in a Tupperware [yes I get kick back from them for mentioning] in the refrigerator. This is so true! Reminds me of my in-laws (Toisanese). They never throw away *anything*! That goes for food and non-food items! "Who knows? Just *someday* you may be able to use it!".

Fascinating! Thank you Sunny Simmons Steincamp! One more follow-up: To recap: you just slices raw meat (e.g. beef), marinate it the way you want, then get the meat slices go through this drying process. No cooking involved. Is that correct? I would really like to try this. Thank you for the detail explanations!

The "hollow stem vegetable" is called Ong Choy in Cantonese. Tung Cai in Mandarin. If you like the bakery items in Taiwan, you are going to love the bakery items in Hong Kong. From my experiences in the USA, or perhaps they just didn't do it very well, the Taiwanese bakery items are not up to par. I am always disappointed. The breads are too dry, to hard, or something. Hopefully what you had in Taipei is better than those from the Taiwanese bakeries in the States. That's what I am used to also: cakes that are not overly sweet. The cakes made in the US, in my taste, is way too sweet.

Absolutely correct observation. I grew up in Hong Kong and had never seen a sour dough or French baguette until I came to the USA. Bread in HK, Taiwan, Mainland China are mostly soft crust.

Back in my days working as a waiter in Chinese restaurants: There was absolutely no hope of getting any break of any kind working on New Year Eve. From 5pm to 1am - 8 hours of mad rush, the whole place was jam-packed. The waiting list will scare the would-be customers away ("2 hour minimum waiting"). The other day is... Valentine's Day. Christmas Eve is easier, as a good majority of patrons dine at home.

With hand-pulled noodles, I wonder how they can control the noodle to come out as wide and flat? I would think when they pull the noodles by hand, the noodle will naturally form a round shape - law of physics.

The price is great too! RMB2.00 = US $0.30 for one Jian Bing...

I have always thought the Taiwanese have done a superb job in making pork/beef jerkies (plus other snacks). They look really great!

That's very interesting. I haven't seen that particular Alton Brown show. Can you tell us a little more? A box fan usually stands on the floor on its side. Do you keep that, or you lay the box fan flat horizontally? Does the air blows upward or downward? Where do you place the HVAC filter? On top of the fan (blowing up or down?)? Where do you place the jerky slices? On top of the HVAC filter?

Back in the old days, people use the dried mushroom stems for making soups. They do carry some mushroom fragrance. These days, as the price of good dried Japanese Shittake mushrooms have come down so much, I don't bother with that any more. That depends. The sticky rice itself, even after fully cooked, can be kept for a long time in the fridge. But it's the "meat" that would go bad first. If "meatless", can be for one to two weeks. If "meat-ful", I don't trust it any more than a few days. Unless you put it in the freezer. If the rice is cooked with Laap Cheung (preserved meat), then it could be longer. The rice tends to dry up over time, though.

Reading with intense interest. Thank you Nishla! Look forward to reading more installments.

Thank you for such a wonderful blog, Suzy! I always wished to see you blog from Hawaii. Last Christmas my wish came true! Looks like in Hawaii, you get a little bit of A LOT of things!