Dinner tonight turned out to be very strange. Not the food perhaps, but the circumstances.
I had arranged to meet two former colleagues, one male, one female at a nearby mall. It has several popular and busy restaurants in addition to a load of over-priced fashion shops in which I never see any customers.
As soon as we met, I could feel there was something wrong. We headed upstairs to their restaurant of choice - a grilled fish place I'd considered many times but had never visited. We took our seats and ordered, but I still felt something was less than right.
After a few minutes the female colleague excused herself and disappeared. Male and I made some idle chitchat then his cell phone rang. He also excused himself.
I sat there for a good fifteen minutes as the food arrived, then got a text message to say that, when they had been waiting for me, the female (who lives with her aunt and uncle) had spotted her uncle in another restaurant, tête-à-tête with a woman who definitely wasn't her aunt. Not only that, but uncle had claimed to be out of town for the night on business. My female colleague not only challenged him, but called her aunt, who had come racing across town to confront her errant husband. Apparently, another Chinese civil war was launched.
The male colleague promised to be back soon. I did what any good e-gulleteer would have done and got stuck into the food by myself. Male did come back to collect female's left behind belongings and take them to the war zone which I'm told was several floors below, then returned to join in eating the little food I hadn't already scarfed. The female never returned.
But you don't want to hear all that. You want to know what I ate.
Chongqing Grilled Fish with Soft Tofu (重庆豆花烤鱼 chóng qìng dòu huā kǎo yú )
Tofu in the corners of the 18" x 10" dish which is sitting on a hotpot burner. In the centre a fish is buried under a mound of cabbage, onion and a ton of red chillies and Sichuan peppercorns. Oh, and a sprig of mint.
For no good reason, here is another pic.
The fish is a bone-in, head-on* ocean sunfish or mola. A first for me, but I'd definitely go there again.
*Actually the fish is nearly all head. See image in the link.
The "numb and hot (麻辣 má là)" tastes were powerful, but did not overwhelm the delicate taste of the fish. We also had a bowl containing potato, lotus root, enoki mushrooms and kelp for us to cook in the remaining stock once we had done justice to the fish and tofu.
And some spring rolls in a bucket. The Chinese is simple the name of the restaurant.
A weird evening, but good food.
(Chonqing was, until 1997, Sichuan's second city (after Chengdu, the provincial capital). In 1997 it came under direct administrative control of the central government in Beijing.
Gastronomically, however the huge city remains de facto Sichuanese in style. In fact, many of the famous 'Sichuan' dishes originated in Chongqing. It is particularly noted for hot pots.)
