First meal

Came here on my wife’s brother’s recommendation. Nothing particularly special about the place at first glance.

Hang on. The flavour is so gentle, but the rice noodles are impossibly thin and melt in your mouth. Can texture alone make something this good?

A filling with a bit of local character. Dip it in the spicy sauce and the savouriness goes through the roof.

One whole goose

This is the famous goose place. Locals + visitors all have to try it. There’s nothing else around, but so many people come for this restaurant that street vendors have set up out the front too.

This is what it’s like inside. Spot an empty table, move fast and claim it.

Once you sit down, they set the table in no time. Tea comes out here too, of course, and the first pour goes towards rinsing the dishes.

Goose ought to be a bit different, right? First up, these enormous feet and wings greet you. Just making sure you remember what you came here to eat. The recipe goes:

Soy sauce + ground peanuts + chewiness = the perfect appetiser.

The rest of the goose. We’ve already established that it tastes good. Different parts, different pleasures.

Tofu stir fried with pork, taking everything that’s good about pork fat to its peak. Comforting, happy food.

Today’s main event

The kind of flavour I could eat often without getting bored. Here too, the star arrives last.

What about dim sum?

Straight to a dim sum place. Apparently this huge restaurant opened recently.

Walk in and the cooks are bustling about like something out of Spirited Away.

People enjoying dim sum in a massive hall. There used to be a smell of cigarette smoke too (that was just part of the culture), but there’s less of it these days. I don’t even smoke, yet somehow I miss it a little.

There’s an absolutely gigantic TV on the wall. Leaving the TV on when the family gets together seems to be universal.

Glad there are photos. Choosing what to eat, though, requires the same care as filling in the bubbles on an exam answer sheet.

My wife’s brother expertly rinses the dishes with tea first. At a barbecue, the person holding the meat tongs is the busy one. Here, it’s whoever sits next to the teapot.

Small tongs instead of barbecue tongs, rinsing dishes and filling cups. So grateful.

Here comes the dim sum.

Buns came first.

Prawn siu mai. Packed full.

Mugwort dim sum steamed on a leaf.

Dim sum wrapped in red rice sheets. Fried breadcrumbs inside, so it’s crunchy but chewy. First time you eat it, you wonder what sort of fried ice cream combination this is. It’s so popular that every restaurant serves it.

There was a soup that reminded me of Korean sujebi too. Little bits of seafood, different meats and all sorts of ingredients. Full of flavour, but easy to enjoy.

Thin, soft pieces of dough in the soup. Like I said, there’s some kind of magic in the flour here. The texture alone has already won me over.

Oh, and a bit of wisdom I can’t leave out: the tea culture. There’s always a little teacup beside me (and someone kindly keeping it topped up 🤭)

The cup reminds me.

Don’t just chase the food. Enjoy this moment. Savour it slowly. There’s no reason to rush a meal.

The steamed peanuts are part of this rhythm too. As you shell them, fullness slowly catches up with you. Ah, that was good.

Again, have you seen Chihiro eating those rice balls Haku put a spell on in Spirited Away? Looking like they’re the best thing ever? Anyway, that’s how I ate. Even plain rice would probably taste amazing here.

---

Previous: Where even is Yangjiang?

Next: I ate a goose brain.