The Bizarre Truth by Andrew Zimmern

Author:Andrew Zimmern [Zimmern, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-58922-4
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2009-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

Simple Foods

Noodle Houses of Guangzhou

y love of Chinese food borders on obsession. For the record, this Chinese food I speak of is not a plate of indistinguishable, fried hunks of meat, tossed in a wok and coated with a sticky corn starch-based sauce. That’s not Chinese food. That’s like calling Cracker Barrel authentic American cuisine. But for every fifty subpar Chinese restaurants serving buffet dinners yoked to the American way of eating, there are a surprising number of authentic restaurants doing that cuisine justice. You don’t need to travel to the People’s Republic to find authentic Chinese food. I’ve experienced some of the most authentic Sichuan food in St. Paul, Minnesota. All that is required is access to ingredients and a good skill set in the kitchen. Honesty and authenticity don’t have a lot to do with location, although it often helps.

Few people in the world have a more passionate relationship with food than the Chinese. Due to large-scale immigration from the southern province of Guangdong to the rest of the world, Cantonese cuisine is by far China’s best known. Cantonese cuisine originated in Canton, which is now called Guangzhou. With its fertile soil, perfect for growing all kinds of vegetables and raising healthy animals, as well as proximity to rivers, lakes, and oceans, every ingredient you could possibly want is within reach. And if these people can reach it, they’ll eat it. An old Cantonese adage says, If it walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven, it must be edible. Cantonese live by those words. They will eat anything and everything—not because they are obsessed with exotic foods; it’s just that if it tastes good, they’ll eat it.

The simply named Guangzhou Restaurant is the city’s most popular. Founded in 1935, this restaurant is the oldest operating restaurant in Guangzhou. You would think that with a country as storied and steeped in history there would be some form of eatery still in operation predating 1935 in this eater’s city, but there isn’t. Its original name was Xi Nan Restaurant, but when the People’s Republic was established, it changed its name to the nondescript, egalitarian name it has today. Despite the name change, the food remained the same. In fact, many dishes are just as famous today as they were at its inception, most notably their dim sum.

The restaurant is located on the busy merging of Wenchangnan Road and Shangxiajiu Street, one of the most famous intersections in the Li Wan District. Over the years, it’s expanded from just a restaurant on the first floor to a catering and banquet service, housed on the second and third floors. They feed as many as 10,000 people a day at that original location, also running affiliated branches from Hong Kong to Los Angeles. I’m sure you can eat a fine meal at any of their outposts, but you can’t beat a meal at the original.

The main dining room is all about classic Cantonese food served in a beautiful classic setting.

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