Another dinner at the Hot Pot

It’s my second dinner in china and I’m already leading a small group of brave (read: foolhardy) coworkers to the closest Hot Pot restaurant. Tandy, (that’s the name I gave Andrew Tan), and Pat are the two adventures joining in for dinner. So we get to the restaurant, by foot, and after a little bit of awkward confusion they seat us. Most every situation here is accompanied by some awkward confusion, because I’ve only learned enough Chinese to get myself into trouble, not to get out of it. So we’re seated, we manage to charade the fact that we do indeed want dinner. They hand me the menu and it’s completely in Chinese characters. No English. No pictures.

Yummmy!

Now, this is Tandy’s first trip and Pat’s second. No one knows much Chinese. Undaunted we order, reciting the names of various meats and vegetables in our collective, very limited Chinese. I’m drawing pictures of the things I can’t remember how to say, as Tandy looks through the English-Chinese dictionary in my phrasebook. When the waitress realizes we can’t struggle through ordering anything else, she suggests something, which I accept without knowing what it is. How bad could it be, I think to myself. Then in the light of trying new things, I select a mid priced item (without knowing what it is) and finally I cover my eyes and point at the menu, selecting yet one more item at random.

It starts off fine, as they bring out:

Leafy Vegetables

Potatoes

Chicken (unfortunately with all the bones, head and feet still present)

Beef

Tofu

Fuju (a type of tofu that is cut into thin strips and sun dried, I love this stuff)

Shrimp on sticks

Long white mushrooms

Grey large mushrooms (must be one of the ones picked at random, the white ones are the ones we requested, however I actually liked these more.)

Fish balls (half-inch spheres of fish meat, apparently one of the items we chose without knowing what it was)

Tripe (which is cow stomach. My intuition tells me this is the one she suggested. I've had this before at a different hot pot. )

Yay for tripe...or not.

Then finally she brought out something she described as “Ju roe” which means pork. The problem was, this pork didn’t look like any other pork I’d ever seen. At first I was thinking it was a type of pig sausage or intestine because it looked squiggly. But. it wasn’t sausage, or intestine. We cooked it and it turned a lighter shade of pink, almost white. Tandy was the first to try. “It kinda just melts on your tongue.” The texture was really…uh…strange, to say the least. So we called the waitress over to the table and asked “Jegge Shenma Roe?” or what type of meat is this. Again she replied, Pork. Finally, Tandy said, I think I know what this is, and he repeats the Chinese word for pork and points to his head. The waitress replies with an ecstatic “dway” or correct. We were eating pig brain. Pat almost threw up.

Brain food.

Later, as if to ad insult to injury, we discovered at the far side of the room, a table set up buffet style where you can choose what you want. It would have made the process of selecting the food
much easier.