The first Chinese restaurant we went to Dumpling Kitchen in the Sunset area. My aunt actually seemed to like the restaurant well enough but was very put off by what we ordered. I decided to get the shen jian bao, which is basically xiaolongbao (a type of Shanghai soup dumpling made famous by Taiwanese restaurant chain Ding Tai Fung) but fried, which was something I've never had before. The second dish we got was lion's head, a dish I wanted to try mainly because of its unique name, and also because according to Wikipedia, it is one of the notable dishes of Huaiyang cuisine. And no, lion's head does not have lion's meat in it, just as no bunnies are harmed in the making of bunny chow (a South African curry dish), or there being any dog meat in a hot dog.
Lion's head
Lion's head is basically a Chinese version of meatballs, so named because it supposedly resembles the head of a Chinese guardian lion. When the lion's head came, my aunt was utterly disgusted by the sight of it. "It looks horrible. Why are they so big? Just looking at it makes me feel full," she complained. "They are supposed to be as big as you can make them," I tried to explain to no avail.
A Chinese guardian lion
"What meat is in this?" she accosted one of the hapless waiters, who mumbled that there was only pork meat in it.
The lion's head was pretty heavily-seasoned with Chinese five-spice. I am not sure how authentic that was. My friend wasn't a fan. Edible was how she described it, and not something she would order again in the future. It tasted alright, but I wasn't too fond of it either.
The next dish that came was the shen jian bao. It was decent, and according to my friend, the best shen jian bao she ever had. The previous versions she had actually still had soup in the filling, whereas there wasn't any in this version. The dumpling skin was pleasantly chewy and the meat filling nicely flavored. Adding vinegar sauce to the dumplings greatly enhanced the taste, which both of us did liberally. My aunt nibbled a piece and declared that she liked the xiaolongbao at Yank Sing (a posh dim sum place located downtown) better.
Shen Jian Bao
She refused to order anything for herself and spent all evening covetously sneaking glances at the other tables where people ordered Chinese dishes that she was accustomed to eating. She vowed that if we ever went back to dine there again, she would get carte blanche on ordering the food.
"Look, every table is ordering the shen jian bao we ordered," I said, trying to placate her. "Yes, but I haven't seen a single table order this disgusting lion's head dish," she retorted.
In all honesty, the lion's head wasn't all that great, but in my mind it was worth ordering the dish, if only because my friend and I had the biggest laugh we had in ages from witnessing my aunt's very visceral reaction to it.
The next time we ended up at a Chinese restaurant again, only this time it was just my aunt and I. We had gone to the North Beach Festival in downtown San Francisco, and on the way back, had stumbled upon Spicy King, a Szechuan restaurant in Chinatown. I wanted to dine there because the restaurant had this dish named Crossing The Bridge noodles, which was something I had always wanted to try ever since I heard someone mention it as their favorite Chinese dish.
"Why would you want to get such a boring-looking dish?" my aunt asked. I told her that I wanted to get it because of the interesting history behind the dish. She couldn't fathom why anyone would want to order a dish simply because it had an interesting backstory. "Wife biscuits have an interesting origin story too, and I happen to like eating them as well," I said, but she clearly wasn't interested.
When the dish came, she was very baffled. "Why is the meat served raw?" she asked the server. "That's why it's called Crossing The Bridge Noodles," I tried to explain, as the server started pushing a plate of raw beef slices, quail eggs, shrimp and vegetables into a steaming bowl of broth and noodles, before covering the bowl with the plate. "Give it a few minutes for the food to cook before you start eating," she explained, before leaving us to our meal.
Crossing The Bridge Noodles
The story behind the origin of this dish is thus: a wife, whose husband was studying on an island for the Chinese imperial exams, found that by the time she crossed the bridge to bring him his meals, the soup would be cold and the noodles soggy. One day, she decided to keep the noodles and other ingredients in a separate container from the soup, while adding a layer of oil on top of the broth to keep it hot. When she got to the island, she was able to mix the ingredients together so she could serve her husband a hot meal. Apparently, it is one of Yunnan's cuisine most iconic dishes.
My aunt did unbend enough to try the food, and her only complaint was that it reminded her of Vietnamese pho (which is not surprising, seeing as Yunnan shares a border with Vietnam), and that the dishes that the other customers had ordered looked far more appetizing.
True, the dish turned out to be nothing special, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. The chicken broth was comforting, the mixian noodles (a type of rice noodle from the Yunnan province) nicely al dente, and the restaurant was quite generous with the meat. The only odd ingredient in it was spam, which I am pretty sure never existed in the original version. Then again, I was having an iconic Yunnan dish at a Szechaun restaurant, so the odds of it being 100% authentic was minimal at best.
Still, I now know better than to try and take my aunt to dine at Chinese restaurants if I am not going to order dishes that she is familiar with. What are we going to do if she decides to tag along with us the next time we venture out on our exotic food crawl? I'm sure we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
