Yunnan 101

One of the reasons I love Yunnan Rainbow restaurant in Causeway Bay is that the head waitress critiques my choice of dishes.

The dish above -- Mixed Vegetable with Yunnan Sauce -- she told us at the end of the meal was not so hou sik (good eating).

The dish below -- Sauteed Chicken in Sesame Sauce -- was very hou sik.



Mind you, I chose the first dish while she stridently intervened in my ordering to recommend the second. All of this is took place in our tiny shared language of the 20 Chinese words I know and the 20 English words she knows, plus lots of eyebrow-raising and gesturing.

Ordering a Chinese meal is serious business. You need to take into account so many things: the weather (claypot rice in July, for example, is totally weird), a balance of hot and cold dishes, soup or no, noodles or no, a balance of meats (actually in Cantonese, the word "meat" is often used in lieu of "beef" so let's just say animal protein), the health and preferences of other diners... And forget about symbolic foods like noodles for longevity on your birthday!

This intro on banqueting (another class of dining in and of itself) from Scott Seligman's Chinese Business Etiquette gives you a sense of how complicated ordering can get:

"After the cold platter come two to four stir-fried dishes, followed by a soup and then three or four larger, hot dishes that are considered the main courses. Look for considerable variety in ingredients, methods of preparation, and tastes in these courses. Likely as not there will be some red meat, some poultry, some fish, and some vegetables; something steamed, something roasted, something stewed, and something deep-fried; and something sweet, salty, sour, and spicy."

Then...

"The signal that the meal is coming to an end is usually the presentation of a whole fish, the last of the main courses. This is sometimes followed by a starch, either rice -- a symbolic gesture, since people are seldom hungry for it at this point -- or noodles or buns."

Yikes, definitely advanced topics for me. Back to the not-so-hou-sik dish... It was salty and brine-y and intense. E thought it tasted like olives and seaweed. For him, yuk. For me, yum.

Meanwhile the hou-sik chicken was so hou sik that E, who generally boycotts bone-in dishes, piled up a small tower of bird parts on the edge of his dish. The chicken, in fact, was not sauteed. It was fried. But perfectly fried. Not at all greasy. The meat had a slightly tart flavor -- was this added in the cooking process or was it from a marinade? In any case, delicious. And contrary to indications, there was no sesame oil flavor at all, just a few sesame seeds tossed in for confetti-like visual appeal. Then a wonderful heap of green onion and coriander added a fresh, savory complement to the juicy meat. Hou hou sik.

We also ordered Cold Pork with Chili Sauce again. Thin slices of pork belly (I think), poached so the meat was very delicate, each slice looking like a cross-section of the earth: one stripe of fat, one stripe of meat, one stripe of fat. Back and forth. Intrigue for the tongue and teeth. E, who loves to dip, was excited by the large bowl of soy, coriander, green onion, vinegar, sugar, and who knows what other yummy things. A sauce to light up our taste buds while our teeth were occupied.



We should have been full at this point, but I had overzealously ordered Mushroom Dumpling with Rice Vermicelli.



Big, beautiful dumplings filled with little cubes of smoky black Chinese mushrooms and a whole variety of other vegetables. A fresh and chewy mouthful. There were also thin strips of beancurd sheet, which looked like the tortilla strips you find in tortilla soup. This is apparently distinctive of a Yunnan dish called Over-the-Bridge-Noodle. (Yunnan is famous for wild mushrooms, ham, and steampot chicken, among other things.)

Have you noticed how Vietnamese these dishes sound?

Here's why... Yunnan Province is one of the southernmost provinces in China, bordering on Vietnam, Burma, and Tibet. According to Lonely Planet, which I hope did its research, Yunnan is "home to a third of all China's ethnic minorities (nearly 50% of the province is non-Han)," which helps to explain why the food (and attitude?) is so different.