You will all be disappointed to find out that my first meal in China was at Starbucks.  I would like to think that I was dragged, jetlagged and bleary-eyed, against my will, but that was not entirely the case.  Seeing that most restaurants on the Island weren’t open for breakfast at 8am Monday morning, and I wasn’t quite ready to brave the hole-in-the-wall joints across the bridge, I opted for a lovely turkey croissant and a Grande drip coffee.  So sue me.

That night, though, I was ready for some real Chinese food.  The DiploMan decided to take me right across the river (about a 5 minute ferry ride from our house) to Red Bull Hot Pot (紅牛火鍋) Restaurant.  Because it was only the two of us, we decided to forgo hot pot and ordered off the menu instead.

As we walked up the steps to the restaurant, the DiploMan mentioned that this was a ChongQing restaurant.  ChongQing, part of the Sichuan (or Szechwan) Province, means only one thing to me when it comes to food: SPICY.  See all those chilies? Back home, when I’ve ordered that same dry friend green bean dish on the left, it usually comes ground pork and a few chilies for a bit of heat.  The dish is more brown in color than anything else.  Here, they there was equal parts dry red chilies to green beans, food joy for my eyes!  And forget us not the lovely Sichuan peppercorns, which give the food of the region its famous spiciness.  The Sichuan spice-factor, in chinese, is described quite appropriately as “mala”, which directly translates into “numbing spiciness”.  Eating a dish with these peppercorns and chilies will induce a tingling sensation throughout your entire mouth followed my a burning heat.  Really, they should also add the character for sweaty, because that’s what happens when you eat these dishes.

In all, we ordered pickled cucumbers 涼伴黃瓜, mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐, dry fried green beans 干 煸四季豆, and twice cooked pork 回鍋肉 .  Plus a bottle of beer, which we drank out of little bowls because the restaurant ran out of glasses…thus perfectly epitomizing the chinese dining experience.  Truthfully, I couldn’t tell if my mouth was numb from the peppercorns or from the MSG.  But I could care less, it was a salty spicy sweaty thrill.

Red Bull Hot Pot, 小紅牛白鵝火鍋
Guangzhou Bai’etan Bar Street
Liwan, Guangzhou
广州市荔湾区芳村长堤街白鹅潭风情
酒吧街B段06号

Starbucks, Shamian Island
on Shamian Main Street (Shamian Da Jie)
广州市荔湾区沙面大街50-52号