Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food

27:02Like English people traditionally are a bit sort of buttoned up, and you know, it's impolite to make noises when you eat, and it's not very proper to show too much exuberant delight in food, right? But in China, you see this absolute joy in eating in ancient poetry in the way people eat today. And I think part of that is feeling uninhibited about it as something physical. So like when you eat in China you can make little noises, you can put something like a duck's tongue that's grapple us and a bit bony and complicated to your lips and you can enjoy the game with your teeth and tongue. And that's all perfectly acceptable and enjoyed.

27:42I think perhaps when you don't mind a little noise and you're not shy of the physicality, then you can have things that are slithery and crunchy and require a bit of engagement when you eat them. Really makes you wonder about the English approach to sax. Yes, well, let's pass swiftly on this object. Lydia, please tell us about the new dish. Oh, we're having a jing -sum soup with what looks like tofu, but it's actually chicken. And the vegetarian version of it that Sam has, what can you tell us? Oh, unfortunately Sam, we don't have a vegetarian. Here it looks like tofu, it's actually not. And this is a classic Sichuan banquet dish, which goes back at least 100 years.

28:27It's sort of written about in a very famous text early 20th century. And it's just a reminder that Sichuan food is not all spicy. You know, like any other Chinese cuisine, it's about balance. So if you have very intensely flavored and hot dishes and oily dishes, you always have refreshing night things like this lovely broth. And this is Amish chicken, right? How and why is that different and better? Well, let's just say that the environment has a lot to do with how things are raised. And you know, it's when Dad first met the Amish community, he felt a strong tide to the way they leave. It reminded him a lot of the time, you know, he was raised as a boy in the village in China in the 60s.

29:10My grandmother was a farmer. She used to be the one that's earning all the credits and contribute that to the local, the village government. And in return, they don't really have a lot to eat on the table. So it's the humble life of the Amish community, reminded that a lot of nostalgia. Sam, do you have another question? Well, I was going to say Tyler recently told me that the third best chicken he ever had was an Amish chicken. Please, please, please me a lot because it implies you have an encyclopedic ranking of every chicken you've eaten. Yeah, I mean, to continue on the train of extremely speculative things, there's this famous or perhaps if misobservation about how whether areas of China engaged in mostly wheat -based their most e -rice -based agriculture has effects centuries later on various social outcomes, SAT scores, etc.

30:06And you know, think about Ireland where I'm from, even just beyond the famine, like it seems like there are many ways in which the presence of the potato, like, and the dominance of it, like effects culture and land -holdings and so on. How do you like think about the role of the staple crop in creating like the culture or cuisine at a certain place? Well, an easy question. And you thought I asked our ad ones. Well, I suppose, I mean, the China was a whole civilization that grew around the staple grain, which was originally millet, and all the rituals of the state, the ancient Chinese state, were about offering food to gods and ancestors, so wheat and alcohol, and so on, and roasted meats.

30:50Yeah, I mean I suppose what's interesting about that is that millet went on being the sacred grain right up until the end of you know the Chinese Imperial period in about 1911 but it had actually disappeared from people's daily diets so people in North China went on to eat wheat and noodles and breads but millet remained the safe staple grain so I guess there's a gulf between what people are actually eating and ideas about ritual and so on. What remains of a manchew cooking in Chinese food today? Well, I mean, there's a bit in the book about this idea that... I mean, one of the distinctive thing about Chinese cooking, going back about 2 ,000 years, is the habit of cutting food into small pieces and eating it with chopsticks.

31:34And yet, there are some dishes which are presented whole, like a Cantonese ceremonial suckling pig or peaking duck. And of course, they're cut up before they're served because you don't have knives at the Chinese dinner table. The manchews were sort of rugged northern nomads who liked eating huge chunks of sheet meat, which they would then cut apart with their own personal knives. And this was something that was still part of high level society in the Qing dynasty when China was ruled by manchews. And you can see these little eating sets that people slung onto their belts or tucked into their boots where you have a pair of chopsticks and a knife so that people could eat both Chinese and Manchu food.

32:16The whole roast meats, particularly in northern cuisine, may have been a legacy of this Manchu production for meat. There's a scholar Isaac Yeh, who I cited in the book, who looked at an 18th century Chinese banquet menu, and there were whole servings of what were clearly Chinese dishes with food cut up, very fine, and served in soups and stews. And then these whole services of real charred and roasted and boiled meats, which were manchew. And then also actually in Beijing cuisine, there is some legacy of the manchews in dairy foods. So, like, other nomads, they eat dairy foods. And so you have very fascinating something in Beijing Imperial cuisine called Nailao, junket, which is like a steamed custardy dessert made from milk, and also another very interesting dish when 9 hour can, when it's cooked at a very low heat that it turns to kind of fudge, a bit like dulce de leche, but it's all lit.

33:17So there are traces of manchu food in Chinese cooking, particularly in the north. Lydia, what is new on the table, please? It's our homemade pork dumpling, and we are mesh pork. Now maybe you can tell me all the differences. If you say why doesn't work in particular have a higher status in China? If Chinese eat so much of it, it's maybe the best pork in the world, right? The best pork dishes, but it's not the highest status food or close to it. Well, because it's popular in ubiquitous, pork is the celebratory food for anyone traditionally, but in China if you want to get to the really highest national ounce of gastronomy, you need rare and exotic and particular and sought after foods.

33:57So things like dear tendons, you know, these are imperial delicacies, camels hump, you know, Hashemar, the ovarian fat of the snow frog, all these unusual delicacies, and birds nest, wear and fabulously expensive. So these things are more prestigious in China, in China, because they're scarce and expensive and extreme luxuries. Does bearous poor actually taste good? Yeah. You better ask someone else. Because you've never had it. Yeah, you don't have bears core release of these days. It was it was it appears in cookbooks right until the 1980s You know even of state banquets but it's now something but you have lots of bears in America don't you?

34:35We do but I don't think you're allowed to eat bears farm. Not sure. Can you? I never trade out It seems awkward to eat at the very least right? Well, but I mean if you're Chinese that's no problem because you know people in China eat camels feet and and pigs' feet and they cook them to make the most of these gristly and gelatinous textures. So the fact that it's highly grappleous and not appealing to a Western palette is no problem at all. Fergus, do you have questions? Yeah, so as we sort of alluded to earlier, there's this regional divide in China, where in the north, we just sort of primarily grow rather than rice, which is obviously much the same as Europe.

35:13So what is the kind of explanatory factor that means that in China, people tend to make noodles rather than bread, obviously bread in Europe rather than noodles. Is there a kind of factor, a single factor that explains that? There's a very interesting book, A Cultural History of Chopsticks by Edward Q. Wang, who looks a bit at this. But it seems that the Chinese very early on, apart from eating food that was cut into small pieces, they really liked eating food that was plucked out of hot liquid. Right? And so the classic ancient Chinese dish, long before stir -fries, and the more sort of famous modern Chinese dishes, was the gung, which was a sort of soupy stew made from lots of ingredients that were cut into small pieces, floating around together in liquid.

35:56This sort of evolved with the use of chopsticks, which are very suited for eating that kind of dish. It seems like some early forms of pasta, appear to have been bits of dough dropped into hot liquid, and that would have fitted in to the way of eating that was already becoming a bit distinctively Chinese, you could say. And I think that's still the case that, wouldn't you say Lidia, that Chinese people really like liquids in their food more than Westerners? So a classic Chinese, you know, in England we say meat and two veg is like a basic standard meal. In Chinese it's a Tse -tang, four dishes out of the soup.

36:35And when I was living in Sichuan, you know, you never have a meal without soup. It might be really, really basic, but it's just going to be a light broth to cleanse the palette and sort of, you know, refresh you after the other dishes. So I think perhaps, you know, and in modern China, you know, Westerners much prefer Chow Mai and stir -fried noodles. Chinese is all super noodles, and fried noodles are much less common, really. So perhaps this is what why, and also just in China, until very recently, and still in most cases, Chinese people don't have ovens at home. They do not roast or bake. So everything was done on a stove top, a design that really hadn't changed much for 2000 years.

37:17You can still see in farmhouses in China these stoves with two openings for walks or steamers. And that's how you cook. And so bread in China traditionally is usually steamed and sometimes cooked on a kind of griddle, maybe with a lid like shelping. Yeah, the absence of ovens as a common kitchen implement and the love of hot liquid. Now you live in London. If I'm looking for good Chinese suit in London, conceptually, how should I go about it? Should I run to Chinatown? Should I go to the outer burrows? Or what's the right schema? The part for many particular plays you might recommend. Well, I mean, I would look at where Chinese students are eating partly.

37:57So then you'll get the sort of more recent trends in China. But how do I find that out? If I just ask Chachypt, it will it down me where the Chinese students are eating? No, you need someone who reads Chinese to go on social media and find what is being taught about. That would help. Maybe the abshahong shu is gonna... So shu, yes, it's too early. It's too early amount. Yeah, students. Fusha, how much kill men is too much for a don't -be barbecue? I mean, that's a matter of taste, right? I have no idea. Yes. Have you been assaulted by excessive amounts of cumin then? To me, it's very so much because sometimes I'd be cumin, it's just cumin flame, essentially.

38:43And then sometimes it's none of all. And like, at people, you know, how do you determine this? They say, well, guess taste, but it feels like I felt with something more than just I decided to be to put more cumin than not. It's very unstandard in that sense. Yes, I have no idea I'm afraid. Okay, a follow -up question. A very standard Caribbean dish is jerk chicken, and a very strong component of that is soy sauce. And people don't all see this as a Chinese influence, but of course it is. And I'm curious if if there are any other areas of standard dish across the world where it has very strong Chinese influence that people don't really realize it itself.

39:24Um, poor. Well, that's hard to say. I mean, I suppose that, I mean, all soy products is, you know, the influence of China, right? Because China domesticated the soy being very early on, and soy foods have been incredibly important. Also, you know, they came to Japan from China, right, making tofu and soy sauce. What did Mexican Malay be an example? Those original Krabler recipes from the 17th century. What came on the galleon from Philippines a lot of Chinese influence, brilliance. I have been told, speculatively. Yeah, I'm trying to think of examples. If a reader is using your recipes and they make a mistake, what's the most likely mistake for them to make?

40:09I mean, not paying attention to cutting things evenly with and stuff -fried food, maybe. And how does that influence the final taste or what goes wrong then? Well, it's just, if you're stir frying something that's cut into slivers or slices, the whole point of stir frying is meant to be very fast. And the reason that it's effective is that if the food is cut finally and evenly, then everything will be perfectly done at the same moment. And if the cutting is clunky and uneven, then some pieces of food will be overcoat, while others are still raw. So I think that's maybe something that people don't necessarily realize that it's not just aesthetically important, it's also technically important in Chinese food.

40:49Why might an older Chinese chef be reluctant to stir fry himself or herself? Well, that's, yeah, because, and this is something that several people have told me, that stir frying is perhaps the most difficult of all cooking methods in any cuisine, because it's so fast. There's no room for maneuver, there's no margin for error. So if you have food that's finally cut and that is sensitive to heat. So like I don't know if stuff like scallops for example. So if you overcook them it's a complete disaster. So you have to cook very quickly and you have to add your seasonings absolutely correctly because you can't start like making a holiday sauce when you can have a taste and then add a bit more lemon juice or whatever.

41:31You have to just have this instinct so it's like, well sure, it's like martial arts. You have to be on the top of your game and it's incredible seeing, you know, when you see a really accomplished chef with a professional cooker, stir frying. It is so fast and is so instinctive, there's no measured thought, they're just doing it correctly. And it's a kind of miracle when it turns out right. And yes, I found that sometimes when chefs have been explaining, even their own personal classic dishes to me, their preferred method is to stand by the wall and get a younger apprentice to cook. And people have said that's because, you know, the elder chefs have more management role.

42:09They're not cooking every day. So like a martial artist or a dancer, they're not, they don't have that fluidity and shop instinct that you have when you're doing it. So you may eat your dumpling. I have a question for Dan. Dan, you're a Canadian citizen. You've also spent plenty of time in China. How was Chinese food different in the United States versus Canada? I think Canada depends on where you go, but where I grew up in Ottawa. There wasn't a terribly great amount of Chinese cuisine, and I think there was a little bit more of the Cantonese influence. Something like 11 % of Canadians live abroad.

42:50I believe that is the highest ratio in the world, and that is because in the 90s, the Canadian government just offered extraordinary numbers of visas to Hong Kongers to basically escape Hong Kong before they returned to the mainland. And so that has a very big Cantonese influence. Now, I haven't really tested this, but people would say that Vancouver, at some point, had the best Chinese food in the world because of just the amount of influx there, but I haven't really tasted enough in Vancouver to say. I've only been there three times. My sense was they had first -rate Cantonese food, not quite as good as Hong Kong, but clearly the best in this atmosphere.

43:28But in the other areas, at least at the time, they were much weaker. Fergis and or Sam, do you have comments on Chinese food in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or anywhere else you've been? Yeah, I mean, I suppose Chinese food in Ireland is similarly not very developed like in Barbados. If there is any sort of non -generic Chinese restaurant in Ireland is probably such one. I'm interested in how did such one become, maybe this is not an accurate description, like prestige cuisine, like the one, if a first regional Chinese restaurant opens in a city as much like, is it going to be that one?

44:05How did that happen? Well, I think that such one these food travels really well. So there are some cuisines like the food of the Jiangnan region or Yunnan, we already said, there are so many really unique local ingredients that you can't get elsewhere. When you think about Yunnan food, you think about these extraordinary ingredients. But Sichuan food, the heart and soul of Sichuanese cooking, is in the the artful combination of flavours. So not just malar, numbing and hot, but also yu xiang, which is a bit of sweet and sour, pickle chili, ginger, garlic, spring onion. All these wonderful combinations of flavours.

44:43And I think that if you have, because the sort of identity of Sichuanese food is in the flavors, you can apply a citronees, you use young fish fragrant sauce to the kind of fish that you can get in England. It doesn't have to be a local car. It'll still feel like citronees cooking because the flavorings are the techniques are there. So I think that with, you know, a citronees cook just needs a sort of small battery of key ingredients, Szechuan pepper, dried chilies, pickled chilies, dill banjang, pickled chili paste, soy sauce, vinegar, and then you can cook whatever's to hand. So I think for that reason, it's quite accessible and transportable as a sort of concept and a practice.

45:27Levia, could you speak to the New Dish, please? Absolutely. So we have a seafood stew with crispy rice. And this is one of the typical dish that you think, oh, it's... you have a rice crispy on the top and cook everything so fast. But I will probably call this one of the goal food time because we homemade the fishball and that process on its own It's probably eight to ten hours You know you see some jumbo shrimp in their scallops and there are coats at different time for it to be at perfect condition And what region is that from? Well, this is something my dad is close very dear to his heart. The fishball we eat it back at home in Gube Yeah, this is a I would call this a hubei te.

46:13How do you think about not just any single dish, but how you put this meal together? The combination of dishes. What would you tell us? Well, I have to say if you go to any Chinese restaurant, it would probably take a mastermind to put a banquet menu like this. So either someone that's really knowledgeable in the ingredients, and the methods that are things are prepared. You get a good balance of something mild, something with soup, something crispy, different poetry. It's really like putting puzzles together. Chinese people eats pretty picky. So any end of the meal, I'm sure the guests will have something to say, oh, I didn't like this and that pair together.

46:59So it really takes a lot of skill to put a banquet menu on the table. So today's meal, Jupiter might not actually put everything. Great. Fergus, comment or question? Yeah, going back to the sort of exotic ingredients aspect. So I think we even mentioned, say, dear tendons earlier. And in the West, at least it's dear, typically wild. It's quite difficult to domesticate and farm them. So what is the kind of economy of accessing those ingredients in China looked like, presumably some are intensively farmed if possible, but presumably others are very difficult to get your hands on. Well, they're quite unusual, and some of them are imported as well, and some of them are wild, and then of course, one of the problems that China has is also with an illegal trade in wildlife.

47:45But that's under the table that's not in the open to you're unlikely to find these things on sale in markets. Yeah, most people would never eat any wild food because it's expensive and scarce. Yeah, so when I was saying about things like the dear tendons, I mean, that's a grand old imperial delicacy and not something common at all. And then some ingredients are imported. So like, well, bird's nest is farmed. A lot of it's farmed in Malaysia, right? Now, when I go to China, sometimes I'm disappointed when I see so many hot pot restaurants. They're typically pretty good, but they're a bit all the same.

48:20And maybe you'll go eat there once during a trip, but after that, it's just a kind of plague. What's your view on this? Why is this happening? I totally agree with you and I call it the hot potisation of the Chinese restaurant scene. And it's just, you know, hot pot is great fun. It's a really convivial, lively, inexpensive, it can be very inexpensive way to eat and you know, to share food with your friends. But in terms of cooking technique, it's definitely low skilled. So and that of course makes it hugely appealing for restauranters. I mean, you know how difficult it is to get good chefs, right?

48:53like walkshets especially, it's a nightmare because it's so difficult to do. With hot pot, you just need a good soup base. You can even buy it in. And then you just need staff to slice up bits of food and your customers cook it themselves. And so I think it's partly that hot pot is very popular and partly for economic reasons that it's actually just a lot easier from the point of view of the restaurant here, right? But yeah, it's a poor, particularly with Sichuan. I mean, such one has such amazingly diverse and exciting food and hot pot is a poor reflection of all that. It may add, I think hot pot restaurants are like the McDonald's in China.

49:31It's really considered as a fast, good thing. Yeah, a lot of them are, but they also have incredibly high -end. One is with seafood and... Adelang. Wait, yeah. So it's sort of, you find them at all levels of the market, but it is a bit of a plague, nice in moderation. By the way, I had to say the technique of this dish is fantastic. Explain please. Well, so you've got an assembly of all different ingredients, and as you said, they're cooked separately. So these fish balls have a lovely light delicate texture, but they're not completely flaccid, that have been livelyness to them, a bit of skull up in mind, sort of juiciness.

50:10The prawn is beautifully silky and also a bit crisp, and you have the vegetables that a crisp and not overcooked. So that shows you that they've all been cooked separately to the peak, then combined together, and then you have the lovely contrast between the crisp crunch of the gual bar, the rice crust, and the liquid. And so there's a lot that has gone into that. Technically, right? The new dish, please explain it. It's good. And tell us what you're doing. The clean chicken of this sort, on the bone and not on the bone. This is not chicken. We're having scallops today. Oh, okay. Yeah. We elevated it.

50:46Yes, you're right. Typically, we will serve this as las ngji, red chili pepper chicken, and some people would like to call it the treasure chicken, because you have to find the chicken among a pile of red peppers. And to elevate it, today we're eating wild scallops. That has to be to it. It's rather lovely. Do you see the garnish? These very, definitely, intricately cucumbers. And that's something that you hardly see these days. So it's a real sort of classic old school Chinese cooking, but it's labor intensive. Most people, did you bother doing it himself? He did it himself. And let me say about 40 years ago, he was actually in a national competition to just compete on the knife cutting skill.

51:30Really? Yeah. Because apart from the technical aspects of cutting, like you have to cut, I mean, the practical aspects, you have to cut to eat with chopsticks, the technical ones, evenness for stir frying. There's also the aesthetic aspects and there's this whole other thing like the French sugar art of completely frivolous artistry with a vegetable cutting. Dan, do you have a view on that part? I think it's terrible. What else is there to say? I think that hot pot is a great social activity, but it is never really my first choice to eat. But on the point about chains, one of the things I've observed over the last few years is that there has been a pretty growing scale of chain restaurants featuring basically slow casual cuisine.

52:17I'm thinking about Simei noodles. I'm thinking about the sour, crowd fish restaurant that is achieving remarkable consistency across all of these different restaurants, which is a pretty difficult thing to do, I understand. And I wonder, do you see that these restaurants can be something like Ding Tai Feng to become You know, major exports at some point or do you think that will be they can't quite figure out the international market? Well, I don't see why not. I think they'd be very popular if they could export and I think that this sort of technical innovation in Chinese food is something that's going to be more and more of like we mentioned You know the pre -prepared dishes, which is something that is not necessarily a good thing But also I met a very high -level chef in Beijing who was showing me a robot walk an electric walk, it was trying to automate the process of stir frying, which I'm sure is at the early stages.

53:12But yeah, I think if they can achieve the consistency and standardisation which they are doing in China, then yes. But one thing about Shebae, particularly this is a noodle restaurant that specialises in northwestern sort of country cooking, right? And in particular, Oatpasta, which is a specialty of Shanshi province. And when she bay opened the first branches in Beijing, they had all these people on tables outside doing incredible. It's a bit hard to describe, but they have a big lump of oat pasta in their hand with a little bit going between their fingers and they rub it onto the board and they get a tongue of pasta on the board.

53:52They whip it up into a tube and they stick it in a steamer and you end up with all these tubes of pasta together in a steamer, like a honeycomb, and then you steam them. But I have to say that when I've been recently, they don't have those people anymore. So I don't know whether they're dropping the real artisanal, high skilled aspects so that they can standardize and expand it. But that's a bit of a shame, because it was lovely when it started that they were showcasing one of the amazing sort of hand -crafting noodle lots of chanshi. Either fuchsia or d 'ane, you have an opinion on how good the Michelin Guide is for China.

54:26And I guess Shanghai in particular might be where you would use it. I guess I would have never tried to look at the Michelin Guide for anywhere. That's a large indicator. Yeah, in China. I guess I would look a little bit more just at the apps and look at the photos. Is Michelin Guide useful for you? Well, I think they do identify some of the very best restaurants in Shanghai and Chengdu. And it's helpful for people who don't know Chinese to have some kind of guide. But the downside is that I think, although, I mean, the classic Michelin methodology is to send a single inspector to a restaurant to have a meal.

55:02And that means that eating like this, which is more typical of many very excellent Chinese restaurants, is a little impractical. I did interview some of Michelin recently and they said that on occasion they do allow inspectors to go out in groups, which, But certainly with the early Michelin Guide to Shanghai, for example, they did pick lots of excellent restaurants but they missed some that were equally good but that did not have tasting menus suitable for individual diners. And I'm guessing that may be partly why. Places where you have to book a private room and have a big dinner. So I would say that's one issue with it.

55:40But they have got better also at recognising even small noodle shops in Chengdu and I think they're trying to be closer to the pulse of what people actually want to eat. But the downside is that I know a lot of Chinese chefs I know are a little bit preoccupied with Michelin. And I think that when, and it's the problem in the West too, but when people start aiming at Michelinine styles, then it has certain implications for Chinese cuisine like a sort of pushing people towards individual plating rather than this style, which there's nothing wrong with, but this is lovely eating like this too. So I sort of hope that it doesn't sort of distort the way that Chinese chefs are actually cooking and presenting their food.

56:21How are social media changing Chinese food? In the US people Instagram their food. I would say far too often. So there's an incentive to create Instagram -able dishes. Totally. What's going on in China? Totally in China. I mean, everyone's on their phones, like maniacs, like people everywhere else. And yes, and certainly very visually exciting food. And that's one problem actually with such an ease food that I think it's the real drama dishes, like, you know, this sort of lads of chicken normally, which are great, but they're just one facet of a very diverse cuisine. Again, I think maybe they encourage restaurants, not just in China, but everywhere.

56:57But it's the same pressures of social media and... Podcasts. ...principal eating. But when they're eating the restaurant, I guess it's a whole menu dictates, is we can keep them. A lot of the time, restaurants suffer with, oh, we have a lot of one -time diner. They came because of Instagram. The food is Instagram -able, but actually it doesn't taste amazing. So what is the reason for them to come back? That goes beyond social media. What is the new dish? Oh, it looks like we have a... So in Chinese, umami has... has fish and has half lamb. So this is a dish with full umami with our fish bowl. Oh, it'll lamb stew.

57:41Love it. I heard about that as a Shanghai dish. And when I first heard about lamb and fish stew, I did not quite believe it as a real soup. Have you been converted? I have been converted. I think it's awesome. Maybe you should go first. Okay, yes, please. But also again, we were talking about the importance of soup. This is a proper Chinese meal with a soup. It's not just one soup. It's of course, this of soups, right? And a nice soupy dish here. Sorry, it's hard. Where in China have you not eaten in the food? I have never been to a jangxi province. Also, one place I really want to go is Hei Longjiang, in Dongbei, Northeast.

58:20Because there it's sort of bordering Russia. And that's going to be a whole other lot of local ingredients and traditions and a bit of Russian influence. It's a very good restaurant in Dordeflac, right on a border of North Korea, that has a very, very strong North Korean Chinese cuisine combination. And it's the only pretty good to get that, the correct food. Yeah, I mean, that's again the diversity of Chinese cuisine that you don't only have the sort of branches of classical Chinese gastronomy, but also you said in Yunnan, you have food that is like Vietnamese, Thai, Laos and then in the Northeast, Korean, Russian.

58:57I mean, it's very extraordinary. Mongolian. Chen Yang, I quite like the food. Spice here than I was expecting it to be. Wonderful dumplings. Maybe the best dumplings I'd had in China. Oh yeah, there are kind of Chen Yang dumpling restaurants on there in other places too. Yeah. Since Korea was mentioned, my Korean friend has a theory that a lot of perhaps most of global variation in cuisine can just be explained by temperature in different countries. In particular, that western and northern Europe, it's too cold to cook outdoors. And if you're cooking indoors and you don't want to poison yourself from the fumes or the smoke, you have to rely a lot more on covered pots and cooking vessels that rely on the, they create kind of less smoky, flavorful dishes.

59:46Yeah, how do you kind of think about the geography or temperature of a place as a variable. Well, I was sort of thinking, sort of, so Chinese walk cooking does create a lot of smoke and so on. But I mean, in lots of Chinese northern apartments, they would have a kitchen that's almost like a balcony that way you can open all the windows. So you don't actually influence the place where people are sitting and eating, but it's adjacent, right? But I suppose in the North, the Nantes, you have lots of hearty stews and soups. So maybe to an extent, very interesting question. The Sichuanese say they need to eat a lot of spicy foods because it's such a humid and hot environment.

1:00:32I've never understood that. But what actually, why is that helping with things in the environment? It's really sweet. Because it's humid, you have this unhealthy dampness in your body. So you have to have ginger, chillies, peppercorns to make you sweat and that drives out the unhealthy humidity and restores a lovely equilibrium. But the funny thing about that that is a little inconsistent is that the Cantonese south is also pretty humid, it seems to me, and yet chillies are not advised there. But you think that's what water is. Pound sugar. Oh yes, that's true. Yes, you do other things for the...

1:01:11This is a lovely texture too, with the sort of slithery crisp woodier mushrooms. Yes, I know. You've noted very well Fushua that Chinese cuisine has... ...been of an elitist bias. These eight great, great cuisines are very much concentrated in more rich coastal provinces. I wonder, can you gesture towards what a people's history of Chinese cuisine could look like? you know, how do we actually incorporate these folk traditions a little bit better into our conception of Chinese food? So it is not so Cantonese and Jiangnan focused. Well, I think, so the first thing to say is the eight great cuisines is a very recent scheme.

1:01:54You know, people talk about it as if it was something really old, but I think it only, I've said in my book, but I think it only goes back to about 1980 or something. So there are many different ways of trying to express the regional diversity of Chinese food. all of them totally inadequate because it's not an integral patchwork. But I think already, as you said, Jiangnan, which is the food of the eastern sort of region around Shanghai, very elitist, fine Cantonese food is very elitist, but Sichuanese already has a reputation for being a sort of hearty folk cuisine, right? So it is represented.

1:02:27But I think that, yeah, I mean, I don't, the eight great cuisines incorporates like Anhui, which is not regarded as a very great culinary in region now. And I think it's the categorization of that scheme is actually quite irrelevant. And it doesn't, I think if people took a fresh look at it, they would include. And also in the egg -rate cuisines, Hunan cuisine is one of them, but they're talking about elitist. Hunan food and not the wonderful spicy home cooking. So, I mean, I think in terms of what people actually want to eat, it's not elitist, right? So the cuisines that are most popular now, Sichuan, what else, who now?

1:03:09The spicy ones, are more popular. Spicy ones, yeah, Guajuo is also, and that's not in the latest cuisine. I think that the people writing about food are no longer the sort of confusion gentlemen scholars, are they? So it's so hot. Why is Hunan food fallen behind in the West? So you used to have so many restaurants that claimed to be Sichuan, Hunan, you know, they weren't really either one, but nominally there was some connection. And now many more people want real Chinese food. There's plenty of more or less broadly authentic Sichuan places, but I don't see broadly authentic Hunan places. What happened?

1:03:43Not so many. I don't know. I mean, what do you think? My understanding was that Hunan food became quite popular after Nixon's visit to China, and this was all Chairman Mao. And then everybody just started advertising their Chinese restaurants as Hunanese cuisine. I think that kind of shaped distorted our view. And so maybe people have caught on. Personally, I enjoy Hunan food a little bit less than Sichuan food. I find Hunan food a little bit too oily. And the flavors are a little bit too much instead of more refined and tingling and teasing in a way that's Sichuan often is. Liddy, do you have a view on this?

1:04:26Are you tempted to serve Hunan dishes? Yes, may I introduce you what we're having? This is a Sam special, but it's not fair to serve it only to Sam. That's why our table gets a separate platter. This is Chef Peter's signature dish. It's a dry fried plant. He has done so many ingredients. The dry fried way, we call him a dry fried master. He can do it with fish, he can do it with shrimp, with Okra, with Kali Flower, with Shitake mushroom. It's the special batter that he called anything with, makes it very crispy outside, but still juicy and tender in inside, with great balance of cilantro, citron pepper.

1:05:12Sometimes he likes to act human. Other times it's just a lot of flavors. If you think about all the family empire, how many restaurants is it now? I stop counting. Stop coming, exactly. Obviously, the food is wonderful. But in terms of business principles, what has made the difference? What have you all done that has been the difference maker? Viewing them as commercial enterprises? All right. I have to start with the things that we have tried, but not in a way, financially successful. It's really keep trying to offer new concepts. We wanted to, in a way, offer modernized Chinese cuisine. you know, people will call that more fusion or not really as authentic.

1:05:54This is something I really want to ask the people sitting on the dining table. So when it comes to the tradition, the classics, the authenticity versus modern ambience, what is the balance? What is your ratio? When it comes to your, like, if I'm going to pick a place for a meal, what do you guys look for? Floor is open. I don't think I'm a very usual diner. So I don't care that much for ambiance. Usually I like to very dull place. I love Filipino food also. And because it's usually very demure location, just go in. Everyone's just go for family restaurant for their cook. Everything very simple, homemade, done, and you go in.

1:06:42They don't have time for the other afters of it. But I know when you go those compresses, only other people there are other Filipinos. Similarly, because right now I live in Madrid and oftentimes the best Chinese restaurants I find, actually mostly Kondanese actually, are just very simple restaurants. And that's usually where the most people from Huland simply go and have food. But the ones that look very nice, very object to sense, typically cater to just the average customer. And because of that, they don't really tend to put that much effort on the food. But, you know, that's a multiply thing would prefer a nice looking restaurant.

1:07:21I am against nice looking restaurants. Because it attracts too much Instagramming. I'm there for the food. We're there for the food. You know, we don't want the photos. Well, one of the key tenants in the Tyler Karen theory of how to select a restaurant is looking for spelling mistakes on the menu. Similarly, I think some combination of Chinese clientele, not a particularly nice venue. I guess also when you're in the restaurant, typically in the UK, if the service is kind of not as warm and polite as the chiefs. You like to be treated me. Yeah, as you did very strong signal about the food being good and I find that to be very true.

1:08:04I don't think you should take any of this advice. I thought this. So this is a constantly paid. Well, I mean, for sure, what do you look for? Do you look for a dining room for at least 90 % Chinese audience? Well, I think having a Chinese audience is a good sign. But I like everything. Am I sometimes I like to go to beautiful places with amazing service and beautiful China and elegant presentation? And sometimes I like to go and have street food. And that's the joy of eating and of Chinese food that you have something at every level. Yeah. And I think also just this thing about classics versus innovation.

1:08:42You know, all the classics are actually the product of innovation. Somebody was saying to me the other day, you know, Ma Po Do Fu, it's only a hundred years old. You know, it's not an ancient dish. The situanese didn't have chilies until a couple of hundred years ago. And so I think you, you know, you can't be too conservative, really. I like it when the diners are grumpy. When they're too happy, I start to get suspicious. Like, why are they here? Are they here to have a good time? There's something about food you mentioned sex earlier. When you film people doing it, that don't necessarily look happy.

1:09:16Wow. So it's true. I shouldn't take any of this at last. For a few shows, who is maybe closer to our day -to -day customer, it is absolutely true when it comes to business success. is we look at what rings people back. So yes, you can have a very peacocky, surely dish that maybe lights up in fling or something that people look at it. They're like, wow, I want to see what they're really like. But once they are in the door, we think about what makes them stay. It really goes down to the ingredients, their personal feelings. Some of you guys like to be treated in the mean way. maybe that's a strong association with how you're being treated, but I believe there is a lot of perception about Chinese cuisine.

1:10:08We're trying to make a change too. And again, I know that everyone on this table is a foodie and takes a lot of pride on standard and quality. We're trying to expand that audience. We want to anyone that doesn't know much of Chinese cooking coming to a restaurant and feel good about being here. It's not just them. It's everyone they're eating it with. Yes, our dining room is a little loud, but we tend to you know, offer them appetizers before the on -tree comes out. And we offer them a little like matcha or ice cream at the end of the meal. Kind of in a way feel them, make them feel comfortable and familiar with what they're eating.

1:10:49Otherwise, we stay pretty true on the flavors. We like to offer both flavors, especially how that started his career in the US. It's really not afraid of using peppercorn. At the time, it was banned in the US. There's no legal way of getting peppercorn or sources. I remember the restaurant owner would ask their family member in China to send it over from Fujian. Okay. last 20, 30 years. And now we're looking at, oh, there's a lot of options. What is front -end business perspective? What makes us different that we get customer to come back for occasions, special celebration, or for their day -to -day carry -out and delivery?

1:11:38Now let's about the new dish, and should one eat it with chopsticks? Everyone should eat with chopsticks. So, yes, we have a pork belly dish. That is from start, marinated, and then coated with rice flour. After it's steamed and cooked 80 -90%, then we want it to create a crispy texture. That's when we start to put it in the wok, very quick, double -sized pan -sear. And then add all the green jalapeno, the scallion, the red chili pepper, peppercorns. This is my favorite dish so far. This and the numbing beef. But Fuchsia, would you comment on this? I was just thinking this is the first time. So this thing when you marinate the pork belly and you coated in rice crumbs and you steam it is a very classic Chinese country dish.

1:12:30And it's the first time I've had it fried like this and it's delicious. It's sort of like a new version of quake or roll back in the pork whole twice cook, cook. And if I can ask, this is a dish that is very known in the household family when you have something steamed like at home, my mom or my grandma will steam it for the first time and serve it as a beautiful first -time dish. But for something to be consumed later in the day or the next day, people tend to get tired of eating the same thing over and over. So they get really smart on why don't we pan -seer it so it becomes a new dish. We had to try it.

1:13:09Lydia, are you seeing a difference between Chinese restaurants in the DC area, in the LA area, and the New York area? Is there a distinct difference with these things where they're just kind of, you know, Citroen restaurants or something in each of these places they're kind of consistent? I feel like restaurants or restaurant owners are very smart to see what the trend is. As you guys can probably see, Citroen restaurant, you know, if we're talking about in the 2000, but there has not been many. And that's probably how that not his reputation being a master's, the trend chef, although he's really a classic train Chinese chef cooking all the regional creases.

1:13:50Now, I want to say, ever started in the 2010 -ish, this is when the new immigration from China started to merging a lot of them went to LA, a lot of them went to New York, a lot of came to DC. So we're starting to see Nha Jia in Orange County. We see Jiali, which is a very Jiangsu Zhu Jiang Tai in New York. And I'm just naming a few. There's actually a lot more original cuisine. Like some, I remember my friend, Chef Simong Tong, was making green onion noodles by NYU and it's vastly popular. Sam, any comment on the eggplant? It's very good. Vargas Rashid, what's been your favorite dish so far? The eggplant has been very good actually.

1:14:42I've also liked the scallion to be an excellent. I think I'll go with the pork. This one, this one. Yes, why? I usually like a very subtle ma tingling sensation. usually that's not kind of overpowering and also the combination with the you fry is very very good. If you had to pick a favorite so far, do you have a nomination? Well so for me I love the pork and I love that soup with the fish balls and but for me the reason this is such a lovely meal is that it's such a well -planned menu and this is the thing that I think foreigners have the most difficulty with with Chinese food is how to assemble a menu and you've really thought about different cooking methods, different ingredients, textures, some wet, some dry, and that's what makes it not only delicious but also shoufu comfortable because we have this, you know, something very sizzly and then a lovely light refreshing soup.

1:15:39So the pleasure of the meal is sort of physical as well as just, I mean, yeah. How did you learn that? Just been induction. You were served a lot of meals and you ran the mental regressions. Is there a way it can be taught to someone like you? Well, mainly I've learnt through just constant eating. But yeah, I think I mean, I tried to write about this really. And the idea that, you know, a well -planned Chinese menu, it's not just about delicious tastes. And I think if you think about going out for a classic French meal, you think about having lots of rich food, pudding, cheese, and feeling quite heavy afterwards.

1:16:14With a well -planned Chinese meal, you can have dozens of dishes and still feel comfortable. But I think it's just, you know, as a foreigner, once you start considering that the light and delicate dishes are just as important as the razzle dazzle, exciting dishes, then you're on the way to be able to plan a nice meal, right? I will say start with picking out your favorites and look at, oh, what am I missing from there? And that's a good way to go. And your father taught you? I guess so. I am very influenced by both great chefs at home. Mom and dad, mom is a pastry chef. That is a workshop and they train me to have a very picky palate.

1:16:58But I think also it's just, yeah, it's about not repetition, right? That's the key thing. So if you have a dish with one ingredient or one style, you just want to make sure the other ones are as contrasting as possible. on the subject of fuchsia's writing. I think that your book is wonderfully well organized to introduce the cuisine through 30 dishes and to use that to talk about knife work and the diversity and everything else. I thought it worked really well. And furthermore, what worked well was that you are just an abueless writer in terms of making the physicality of eating very, very good.

1:17:35Can you speak a little bit about, you know, So, is food writing, this is, I think it really rewards food, really rewards good writing. Can you talk about how you learn that other craft that you've picked up so well? Well, thank you very much. I don't know how, I mean, it's just instinct. And trying to, I mean, I suppose what I've been trying to do all this time is find ways of describing the intricacies of Chinese food to make it sort of illuminating and delightful for people who didn't grow up with it. And so trying to find ways things like texture, which is a quite difficult subject in the sense that many of our texture words in English are a bit disgusting, slimy, grisly, but trying to write sort of playfully and engagingly so that people can both sort of acknowledge these unfamiliar textures, but also see how they might be delicious.

1:18:24I did a degree in English literature, so I read lots of good books, which is the best training for any writer. But I think also I just try to have fun with it, to just be playful and have a laugh. And also I just love eating, and since I was a teenager I've always kept a journal, and it's always turned into sort of epic descriptions of meals, so I've had a lot of practice. When you worked for BBC World Service, you learned how to write then or before? Well, I suppose I've always written, I mean, you know, I had a certain training for how to think about language and trying to be very fair and thinking how it will be understood in different cultures.

1:19:07But I think more of it is just practice just writing, having an artwork, writing your impressions and it's just a craft that you develop through use, yeah. What did your parents do? So my mother taught English as a foreign language. So she had a huge food influence on me. So she's a great cook and we always had lots of foreign friends in our home. So I had a very unusual gastronomic upbringing. And my father was in sort of the first generation of IT people. There is a bit of anxiety I get when I go to a new church restaurant because I feel like when you want the good food, you have to perform.

1:19:44myself. I've got to say, Lao Ban, I'm here to actually consume the correct food, but people who can't dress or turn on some Chang Sha dialect, how would they actually get the good food from the rest of us? Well, so without the language, or yeah, I mean I suppose that one of the best ways is to look at what other people are eating, but it is difficult and even when I go to China and I order for a group in good bandering, knowledgeably, and I know the names of the dishes. And it's so often happens that the waiter will say, if I'm with foreigners, he'll say, oh, they can't possibly eat that. So there's the sort of assumption that foreigners won't be able to handle certain foods.

1:20:25And I sometimes have to have an argument and just say, look, we will eat it. And we have gone around proving that we can eat sea cucumbers and stuff, you know, on many occasions, but I think, and it's quite understandable because I think a lot of foreigners have a habit of ordering something that they can't handle and then being rude and obnoxious and just complaining or they think that there's a bone in the chicken. So that's a problem. It's not a problem. It's meant to be like that. So I think that Chinese waiting staff, particularly in the West, but also in China, a little wary of upsetting foreigners.

1:20:59And also they just want people to have a nice time. So you have to battle against that stereotype if you really want to eat the good food. But I think things are changing and I think just looking at what other people are eating is incredibly useful. And then also showing your appreciation when you do eat something unusual because I have a, you know, I should imagine that all the restaurants where I've been with groups of foreigners eating unusual things with gusto that afterwards they thought, well, you know, it is possible for foreigners to do something. What is it then that you can't eat? Put aside the illegal.

1:21:34But were you just saying, like, no, I'm not going to have that? No, I will eat everything. You will eat everything. Well, I did in Yunnan, actually. I did eat some. There's a very special dish in one particular region, which is raw pork, like a sort of tata pork, shanpi, dali, shanpi. And I ate that because I was, you know, local people rave about it, and he's still a time. And I was aware that there were health issues with eating raw pork, but I really wanted to try it. And so I had it with some local friends. It was really delicious, but I had this terrible panic afterwards. And I probably wouldn't do that again.

1:22:09But I think it's a really hard thing, like I want to eat with people and I want to be totally open -minded and nonjudgmental. Yeah, so I suppose it's just the only things that will restrain me are possibly sort of health concerns like that, and then also sort of ethical issues. But I have a real dilemma with hairy crabs. So this is one of the great delicacies of the Janganland region. And one of the best ways to eat them is their drunken crabs, and they're sort of pickled in rice wine and seasonings. And it's just like you just fly to heaven when you eat one. And I've been eating these for years with great delight.

1:22:47And then a couple of years ago, a few years ago, the Shanghai authorities where they're a great delicacy, the band rule drunken crabs. And so I started sort of looking at why this was and it turns out that they can carry parasites fresh water raw creatures So now you know somebody offers me a raw hairy crab. What do I do? You know, I've been fine so far and but I don't know that the sort of lost for eating them is The only ones. Yeah Why aren't there more raw dishes in Chinese food overall? Well, I mean historical prejudice so in you know in ancient China the Chinese these define themselves as people who ate cooked food and barbarians beyond the borders of the empire at raw food.

1:23:29And so there is this idea that a very ancient idea going back to the Book of Rights, Lee G, one of the classic texts that civilization began when people learned how to harness fire to cook their food and they left behind the era of drinking blood and eating feathers and having all the diseases from raw food. So there is a sort of idea that, yeah, I remember when I took a Huna and E's friend out for dinner in London and she was served a rare pigeon breast. You know her initial reaction was anxiety. Is this going to be a bit dangerous? So it's a sort of health concerns coupled with an ancient tradition of eating cooked food.

1:24:08I spent about three months in Dali last year and I was offered a lot of raw pork and I never took it. Right. Probably very sensible. It was very nice. It was like, I mean, it was a bit like a steak tartar. But you leave your own meat in the US or? I would eat Robbie, for sure. Yeah. Pork, I don't know. But I think, like, in Germany, I think it's, I don't know if it's a certain region, they have met, which is rural pork. But when you eat this, it's, there are all kinds of rules and regulations for the temperature, which is kept and how it's served and so on. Whereas in Dali, I mean, it was very, very kind of easy.

1:24:46But the fact is that local people of this particular group eat is all the time And I was I was always asking people if they had any problems and most people say it's fine You know they check the pool. It's fine When and where is China most effective as a street food country and when isn't it? So I don't I don't eat much street food when I'm in China Why not but I might say in Malaysia are the restaurant food is so good? Yeah, and I've never found the street food to be better even though it can be very good Whereas in St. Malaysia, I might find street food on average to be better than restaurant food.

1:25:18Is there anywhere in China where street food is the way to go? Yeah, in the north, I went to Kaifeng, the old Song Dynasty, northern capital, and this is some years ago, but they had the most incredible night market with all kinds of food. And that was just amazing and delicious. And then I've had good... I mean, I think the problem is that, you know, So with China's modernization, there's been this big effort to clean up the streets and they've seen sort of street food as being old fashioned and something undesirable. And so like when I lived in Sichuan in the beginning, there were actually quite a lot of street traders doing really nice food and it's harder to find them.

1:25:55But actually if you go to Chengdu, go to the Wenxu monastery. And in the streets around there, there are people serving some traditional snacks. that's Dan Hong -Gar, these little pancakes stuffed with whole or sweet things. Yeah, these are lovely. So I would go there. There are certain areas where it's tolerated and where you can have a really lovely street food. Dan, you have a view on this? Basically, anywhere with a night market, I think, is reliably the places with great street food, especially these nice little barbecue and noodles. I'd echo Fuscia here at that. that Shanghai, I believe, used to have actually quite a nice street food life.

1:26:34And then they cleaned all of that up. And I think they've maybe been borderline successful in driving that out. And then sometimes what they do is they bring street food into an area, a bit like the Singaporean hawker centre idea. But the problem is that they're not individual traders anymore. They're just people working for someone else. So it's not really the kind of really good street food. The idea, what do we have here? I think we missed our seafood pearl with sticky rice. And that's a dish that everyone took one and it's now gone. So that's a very typical food -based cuisine. We actually use pork as a filling, but for today's variety, that's which you'll crop in seafood.

1:27:18And coat it with sticky rice, steamed, and just finishing up with the beautiful glaze. And next we have the famous squirrel fish. Today I think they're more daisy looking. But that's sometimes amazing knife work. Look at that. You know, cut like that and they're not falling apart. They're all staying in these lovely fronds. That's right. Oh, I saw a picture. So no episode of conversations with Tyler would be complete without implication or understanding that everything comes back to economics. What can an economist learn from eating more Chinese food? You're asking me? Either. Anybody? I have no idea.

1:27:58As a A, competition works. B, Adam Smith said, division of labor is limited by the extent of the market. So as Chinese became the number one group coming to the United States, you started getting a lot of regional cuisine, but also look for places that are not too easy to get to, not frequented by too many tourists, and have grumpy diners and abusive staff. Because there's a selection effect if the place is in business at all and it's full, that's implying the food is very good, it's being patronized, often by elderly Chinese, who in my view are much vassier than a lot of younger Chinese. Younger Chinese in this country, sort of by my standards, are too willing to go out to eat, to enjoy themselves, and I distinct that's wrong.

1:28:41Those would be my starting points, but other answers are welcome. Trade promotes globalization. So, trying food is slightly easier to export, as Fuchsia said, given the chilies and the peppercorns. That's why it's really easy to have that standardized across the world. When Fuchsia mentioned that the willingness for the government to try to standardize cuisine, did it really work? You kind of see this ability of the individual to kind of design and menu themselves. It's a very big aspect of, you know, big economic offset there. So, a different question for Fuchsia. I'm wondering, you write in your book about it high, the West, I guess, the English fear in particular, had this experience with Chinese food coming, and I guess in the Pusswar period, when essentially what they end up getting in a takeaway is not real, kind of, proper Chinese food.

1:29:30So I guess do you have a sense of other regions, other continents of the world, have they had a similar experience with Chinese food coming there, or maybe some of you haven't even had it yet? Oh, well, I mean, I think yes, I think that the sort of Cantonese simplified model is in many places, but with slight variation. So like in Sweden they have something called four little dishes, which is like a standard menu of Chinese takeaway food. Yeah, and I think that it seems to have been blueprint that worked very well all over the place. Yeah, with sweet taste and fried foods, with variations. But I have to say, I mean, I haven't traveled to Peru, for example, where they have, I, by all accounts, are very interesting.

1:30:10Yeah, local Chinese food and also calcutta has some very interesting old Chinese dishes and I have yet to go there. So... Both of those are very good, but they're very different. Yes. They don't feel to me like white Chinese food, but I would recommend them, chiefa's, which you even can get in northern Virginia, though it's much better in Peru. Oh, really? But they're like rice dishes with Chinese elements in them, so why I would think about them. I spent some time in Barcelona this summer. And I found, first of all, Barcelona to be, I think, the my favorite city for food in Europe. And part because I think it has a very great respect for Asian cuisine.

1:30:50This was the first European country I've seen where there were a lot of Spanish chefs making Chinese food, Spanish chefs making Japanese food. And I thought that was quite good. Where is the best city in Europe for Chinese food? Is it London? I mean, I haven't done a survey, so I have no idea. But yeah. But if somewhere were great, you would have been pulled to it, right? Well, I hope so. But I mean, I'm spoiled because I ate a lot in China, so I don't feel the need to go in each Chinese food ever. I feel like Singapore has really good Chinese food because of the Chinese population. Yeah, London has great Chinese food, not just the Chinatown that has been there for maybe decades.

1:31:30but also the new world where I like to call it modern Chinese. We talk about chef Wang, Andy Wang, really doing an excellent idea with elevated Chinese foods, being tasting menu. But I think one problem, and this maybe comes back to economics again, that in England, for example, I think now the door has opened to massive public interest in regional Chinese food, and people are really open to trying now eating Sichuan, Xiyam food, and so on. But the real problem is that we have very stringent immigration rules. So in order for a chef to come over and work in a restaurant in London, they have to have a certain level of English and a certain income, which is prohibitive for anyone but the big international hotels.

1:32:15And I think it's a shame that we don't have more trained chefs coming in from China to bring different aspects of Chinese. I find that the Chinese food in Madrid is actually even better than Barcelona. He's been much more trained in Madrid. Chinese? I think because even there you get very, very obscure local cuisine from China's also image read, where in Barcelona it's not as, you know, you can't get the obscurity as much. This book, other books you've written, what's the hardest thing for you about writing a book? Well I found this a lot harder than writing a cookbook. Why? Because a cookbook has as a slightly obvious structure.

1:32:55So unless you're going to do something really radical, you have a sort of introduction, you can go into basic techniques and ingredients, then you have recipes often grouped by ingredient, and each recipe has a head note. So the structure, by now, I've done a few cookbooks, is fairly straightforward. With a narrative book, it can be anything you want. So I start with a vague idea that I want to talk about some of the great themes of Chinese gastronomy and cuisine. And then it's sort of how to organize it. It's a bit frightening because I felt that I was starting with much more of a blank page than with a cookbook.

1:33:30Yeah. What's your most unusual, successful work habit? Getting on a train. And what do you do then? No, if I'm... Through China. Or just get on a British train and you write. If I'm on a British train and you cook. If I have a blog, a writing blog. Am I just I'm frustrated and I feel I can't possibly do it and I just give up. If I get moving and get on a train, then for some reason my mind starts loosening up and I have a break through. Also sitting in cafes, but just change of scene. So moving and not moving? Or your... No, no, being somewhere, getting away from being the solitary writer at your computer or at your desk and sort of that breaks the deadlock.

1:34:13But I have to say, I mean, yeah, I wouldn't put myself up as a model of effective and efficient looking. I want to say, you're French book on time. I remember meeting you last year in London. You said you were writing this book and you have a very strict deadline. And look at where we are. Well, I did have the advantage of the global pandemic, which meant that I wasn't racing around the world, but I had to stay home. I'm like, you know. Other than China now that it's quite easy to travel, where else do you want to go for food? I'd like to go back to Japan. You know, people sometimes think I know about Asian food and I really don't because I've been so concentrated on China and I went to Japan for the first time in 2018 and I have only dipped my little finger into that particular pie and so I would love to go in.

1:35:01And it's so interesting because obviously it relates to Chinese food And you see some words and processes and things that have died out in China that are still in Japan expressed differently. So it's kind of related but fascinatingly different for me. I was there a few weeks ago. I had one Chinese meal for breakfast. It was quite good. Just amazing sushi anywhere without even looking for it. Yes. And some people would say that Japan now has the best French cooking, some of the best Italian cooking. Now I'm skeptical that they can have the best Chinese cooking. But what do you think? I don't think they do.

1:35:36I've been to Michelin star Chinese restaurants in Tokyo. They're very good, they deserve their stars. But I think they compared to Chengdu somewhere. They'd only be meddling quality among the good restaurants. Is it because there's no grumpy diners? No, no. They're cooking for Michelin diners who do have good taste, but it's a little rarefied. And at the visceral level, there's something a bit missing, I found. But it seems so. This is a very superficial impression, because I wasn't there for very long, but it seemed to me that Japan also has the old school Chinatown cooking. and newer cooking.

1:36:07Yoko Han and the Piccola, yeah. Yeah, but one meal that I wrote about in this book, a Chinese meal was actually cooked, the stir fry chapter. I went to one small Chinese modern restaurant, where the Chinese technique and the sort of sensibility and aesthetics were very Chinese, and it was absolutely superb. Yeah, so that was just a little snapshot, but it was a very interesting Chinese food cooked and served at a sort of ball like sushi counter, actually. Lydia, where do you think you're going to? For food, obviously there's maybe other reasons to travel. Oh my God. Well, I'm dying to go to Peru for the food, but also for the nature thing, Machu Picero.

1:36:50And I want to say, I haven't really explored much of Mexico. I feel like it's so close to a home where we live, but it's underrated. I was only in Mexico City the first time this August with my at then nine -month -year daughter, we explored the city from pastries in the morning, great coffee shops to... We haven't really had a lot of opportunity to explore the street tacos, but the dining scene, the restaurants, are truly amazing with boat flavors. Okay, then. I would say Southeast Asia for me, I guess maybe more the street food that I find quite thrilling. I've had quite a lot of refined Chinese food.

1:37:34And now it's more, it's street food now for me. And I have not spent Mexico and all, and I think that Mexico is hugely exciting. Rural Mexico in particular is one of my all -time favorites. For me, it's on a par with China. I love Mexico City. It's incredible. But just side of the road dishes in small towns or on the edge of mid -sized towns. For me, that's the best food in Mexico. And I will do that in life until I can't do it anymore. And I've been to Mexico over 30 times and every meal is a wonder in the way that it is in China and can be in India But not too many other places. I love Japan, but Japan also has a lot of the worst food now.

1:38:13I don't go there to eat it But it can be disgusting or the desserts or I think Japan is a very high variance of food Even though all of it is well done by its standards is sometimes I think they are pursuing their wrong standards It explains that variation. They pursue perfection in a way achieve it. But if you don't agree with all matters of taste, pursuing perfection in a sense can be a negative. So if you look at these Filipino desserts, which from here to sweet, or to gooey, or too large, too many different things piled on top of each other, but they're quite popular. There are people who love them.

1:38:53I don't think they're wrong to love them. Japan just takes every direction you can imagine and perfect it. And that's a little dangerous. And I won't eat raw chicken in Japan, speaking of things that I don't eat. To me, I don't know that I'm afraid. I trust that it's safe. I just think it would disgust me. And that's irrational. But there I am. And what else I can get is so good.

1:39:16Nominations from this side of the room? I've only been to China once. So I think I'd love to go park. I was in Chongqing, I think, I mean, for all the reasons we've just mentioned, like there's, I think, an endless amount of things to sort of discover and kind of seems to mind there. Well, I've never been to China, so I'll be asking. I think Ethiopia is still very underrated when it comes to food. It's been been there for the first time this year, and it was just blew me away. So I want to go back for sure and try a lot more if you're religious. What struck you in particular, the spice combinations?

1:39:49That was the quick, quick, quick answer. Some of the combos are so odd, I can describe them properly. And as it is, the only closest thing that reminds me of is some peruvian spices, for example, strange in itself, are mesochemal spices. But that combination of spices needs a lot more exploration, I think. But yeah, what do we have here? We have a page 3 -sav. Speaking of, Chinese is not huge and dessert. sometimes, you know, after full meal of banquet, we just eat some seasonal fruit. It will be a lot of like specialty cutting into, like, cute shapes of watermelon, or apples, pears, dragon fruits, but today we're having a little tree sap.

1:40:33This is also a modern Chinese dessert. Future can talk a lot more about it. It's funny, because I never saw... So this ingredient, in gradient, peach tree sap. I never saw it until the last five years. Yes, or something. And suddenly it's becoming incredibly trendy. And it's often served in sort of fairy tale suks with things like silvery or mushrooms and lotus seeds, goji berries, and another of these lovely texture foods, right? And it is from the beach tree. Yes. And how do you source it? There's a huge tree sap. You get it dried and it looks like little pieces of nobly amber. And you soak them and then they sort of swell up into this lovely jelly.

1:41:15We are at about the end of our podcast. I would just like to thank everyone for participating. Thank Lydia Chang, her father Peter, the entire staff at Mama Chang. They always treat me wonderfully. I just love them. I actually don't want them to be surly to me. They're super nice. Fuchsia, of course, has done the book and made this all possible. Again, that's invitation to a banquet, the story of Chinese food. Please do buy it, read it, and I would stress by all of your books, you cannot buy just one. And Fuchsia, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all.

1:42:13on Vos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.