Makan King

My family sandwiches a slice of neen gao between a slice of sweet potato and a slice of yam, then dips the sandwich in light batter and fries it. Delicious! I love the soft sweetness oozing from the crisp exterior! p.s Many Chinese couples are getting married before this coming year of the rooster, not because the year of the rooster brings bad luck, but because for this year, the traditional start of spring occurs before the start of the year of the rooster. They believe that since the coming year of the rooster does not begin with spring, it is a barren year. Even pregnant women have been known to induce labor to conceive before the start of the coming new year! This phenomenon (when the traditional start of spring occurs before the beginning of the next lunar new year) occurs every three years or so.

I would suggest going traditional for the CNY banquet. Most of the dishes aren't really all that unusual, and actually feaure familiar ingredients. It would be interesting for your guests for you to explain the cultural significance of each dish as it arrives. Have you had the sea cucumber at the restaurant where you are hosting this dinner? Sea cucumber is not an easy ingredient to handle. I love sea cucumber (especially braised with pork belly and black mushroom in a rich soya sauce gravy) and would recommend it. But, if the restaurant doesn't do it well, then I would suggest giving it a miss. You can actually combine the sea cucumber with the soup dish. At home, my mom and grandmother makes an incredible soup every CNY that we all drain to the very last drop (and there are literally vats of it too). A home-made chicken stock is filled with dried scallops, fish balls, home-made pork and crabmeat balls, fish maw, sea cucumber, cabbage, as well as the stock from tinned abalone. It is light, yet rich and full-bodied. I love it! In chaozhou (teochew) tradition, leeks are also a must for the CNY table, since it's name in chaozhou sounds the same as the word for counting (as in counting money). A nice touch would be to place two mandarin oranges at each place setting, as a good luck token for your guests as they take their seats. Happy New Year everyone! May the year of the rooster bring an abundance of good health, good fortune and much happiness.

Toro, Sake, Hamachi, Kampachi and Uni (but only at a small shack of a sushi bar in Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo; I did not like Uni until I tried it at this place - it was out of this world).

When you discuss your next meal while still half-way through your current one. When, living abroad, you arrive home for a vacation and insist on driving straight from the airport to your favorite eating place, luggage and all, so that you can sample your favorite dish that you've been dreaming of for months in anticipation of going home. When you actually seriously considered flying six hours just because friends had an unexpected cancellation for their reservation at the French Laundry. And when you finally did mobilize a crew of friends and workers to work the French Laundry reservation line and did fly six hours to have lunch at the French Laundry.

I have lived in New York and Singapore, and I would reluctantly rate New York ahead of Singapore (this despite having grown up in Singapore!). As a qualification, when I think of New York City, I think of the whole of New York City, and not just Manhattan; this includes the whole swathe of Brooklyn, Queens the Bronx and Staten Island. The breadth and depth of cuisine in New York City, both in terms of geographical reach and socio-economic range, is breathtaking. The foods of Asia, Central America, South America, Africa, Europe (and American, of course) are amply represented in all their variety. There are so many ethnic communities in New York City that have contributed their culinary heritage to our dining delight. Many of these can be found outside of Manhattan, but still within New York City. Excellent eating can be quite easily found at every level, from street food to haute cuisine. The dining scene is simply vibrant. Okay, I will admit that the Chinese dining scene is not as refined or sophisticated as that in Hong Kong or even Singapore, but it is still bustling with good food and good variety (after all, there is a Chinatown in each of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn). We still talking about one out of dozens (maybe hundreds) of other cuisines available in New York City. I love eating in Singapore, and wonderful eats are abundantly available. But Singapore simply does not have the breadth and depth of New York. The range of cuisines in Singapore is definitely more limited, for one thing. You would be hard pressed to find any South American restaurants, except for the Brazilian churascaria that is now almost ubiquitous in any big city, for example. Greek, Ukranian, Afghan and Spanish restaurants are not easy to come by. And given it's location, there isn't even a comprehensive representation of South East Asian or regional Chinese cuisines in Singapore (I had better Vietnamese food in New York, for example, and I don't know if there is any Burmese restaurants in Singapore). There isn't a good range of regional Chinese cuisines in Singapore either. There isn't a Xinjiang or Uighur restaurant in Singapore to my knowledge, nor are there many (if any) good Sichuan, Hebei or Dongbei restuarants. There are also not many good high-end restaurants in Singapore. Most of the new aspirants all lack something, whether it is in terms of food quality, service or ambience. And they are not cheap either. There just aren't the various levels of dining experiences available in Singapore as there are in New York. The best eating in Singapore, for me, is mostly found in the humble hawker centres and coffee shops. At this level of dining, I think that Singapore is almost impossible to beat. The sheer variety of cheap, freshly prepared, tasty dishes available in these eating places is astonishing and I have many favorites - laksa, chinese rice, fried guotiao, roasted pork rice, fishball noodles, nasi lemak, hokkien prawn noodles, popiah, pork rib soup, barbequed seafood, etc etc. And I adore peranakan cuisine, which is a fusion of chinese and malay cuisines. So I think Singapore and New York are both great world food cities, but I will have to give the nod to New York on balance.

Sante Fe, New Mexico. It's small enough that you can explore the city at a leisurely pace in several days. Spend a couple of days at the Ten Thousand Waves Spa - I had the best spa treatments of my life there. Get the master massage and the herbal wrap. Book a private open-air hot tub and luxuriate; snuggling in the warm water amidst the lush greenery and looming mountains (and stars, if said snuggling occurs at night) is therapeutic. They have a few zen-like guestrooms if you wish to stay there. Then spend a couple of days strolling along Canyon Road and browzing among the hundreds of art galleries lining the road. In summer, the open-air opera is wonderful. There's great eating too. Cafe Pascual, the Bobcat Green Chili Cheeseburger etc!

The Chinese restaurants in good hotels are all pretty good. In particular, Hua Ting at the Orchard Hotel, Wan Hao at the Marriot Hotel, the restaurant at the Four Seasons (can't recall the name) and the Summer Pavilion in the Ritz-Carlton. If it's lunch, Hai Tien Lo at the Pan Pacific is a good choice as it balances decent food with stunning views of the city (the restaurant is right at the top of the hotel). I don't think there is really any great Western high-end restaurants in Singapore, other than perhaps Au Jardin Les Amis and L'aigle Dor. The rest of the possibilities all lack something (either in terms of food quality, ambience, or service) to qualify as high-end, even if they are pretty expensive. Of the lot of mid-level Western restaurants, I do like Ember very much. I enjoyed Broth and Cusine Spontanae too. Da Paolo (especially the outlets at Neil Road and at Cluny Road, where the decor is more elegant) is also pretty decent.

Hey, if you are still in Beijing, perhaps you can check out Laohanzi Kejiacai, which serves Hakka cuisine (or kejiacai). There is one in Sanlitun and another in the Shichahai area. The Hakkas are from the southern part of China, and have traditionally been nomadic in nature. The food is pretty hearty. Two typical dishes are stuffed toufu and chicken stewed with red wine lees. At Laohanzi, do try the meicai kourou (stewed pork belly with preserved vegetables), the 'paper wrapped' fish (a whole fish that is first deep-fried and then braised in tin foil) and the eggplant stewed in claypot. If you like dumplings, Tianjin Baijiaoyuan is a great place to sample many different types of dumplings. The name of the restaurant says it all - a garden of a hundred dumplings. It's located in an alley immediately opposite the Marco Polo hotel. My favorite is the pork with lotus root.