PaiGu

I’ve been eating extremely well in China, which isn’t difficult given that everything¹ here is better than anything I’ve had in Canada times ten.

Let’s walk through a typical day of eating for me in Nanjing.

Breakfast starts at 5am² and is usually at a xiao chi dian which is kind of like a dim sum stand with road-side aluminum furniture. Sketchy? Yes, a little. Delicious? Definitely. Luckily, I’m not someone with a sensitive stomach and I have never gotten sick from eating in China.

In the last four days, I’ve had quite a variety of breakfast items: plain steamed buns (man tou), veggie or pork-filling steamed buns (bao zi), glutinous rice buns (shao mai), fried dough sticks (you tiao), soy milk or tofu soup (dou jiang, dou nao), congee (xi fan).

Some xiao chi items can be repeated for lunch, such as steamed buns. Nanjing has the best xiao long bao in the country, many would argue.

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1. When I say ‘everything’, I’m mostly referring to all Chinese food. [↩]
2. Everyone gets up really early here because mid-day and early afternoon is too hot to function, so that’s usually nap-time. [↩]

Vienna is full of cafes, restaurants, and markets. Naschmarkt was my favourite market in all of Europe, a slice of gastronomic heaven in the middle of a lively city.

Our first night in Vienna was a Sunday night, so most stores and even restaurants were closed. We settled on going to a family-run Chinese restaurant with a very diverse (and questionable) menu that included: Chinese food, Thai food, Malay food, and Japanese food.

The next day, we walked through the oh-so-hip MuseumsQuartier, which had a post-modern installation of hot pink blocks that many young Viennese hipsters were sunbathing in, and decided to stop for coffee at one of its cafes.

I had a specialty Viennese coffee, which really didn’t taste any different from regular coffee.

We tried the Original Sacher Torte at the Sacher hotel restaurant. It looks just like a chocolate cake, but the difference is that there’s a layer of apricot jam in the middle that gives it a tang.
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Although I can’t review all the places I eat at in Europe, that doesn’t mean I can’t post tantalizing photos! That is what the “Eating Europe” posts will feature: food from different cities that I eat at! I’ve already reviewed Taller de Tapas of Barcelona, today’s post features our dinner in Narbonne, where our waiter did not speak a word of English.

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