Dining Guide
Chinese soup
The Chinese have a refreshingly unemotional approach to edibles. One may think that as long as eating something doesn't cause a disease there must be a way it can be prepared deliciously.
Therefore, birds nests are not the only strange food stuff used in Chinese cuisine. Others include turtles, sea weeds, shark fins, etc. There are no forbidden foods like pork in islamic countries and beef for Hindus. On the contrary, many foods are recommended in the Chinese cuisine for a variety of medical purposes, several of them to restore sexual power. This goal, for example, allegedly is achieved by consuming Soup No 5 which contains the testicles of various animals and which is served in many Chinese restaurants in Metro Manila.
Many animals with a phallic look are also supposed to help men's sexual power, as for example eel and snake. Snake meat is highly valued in Chinese cuisine rather for a number of alleged phar-maceutical effects than the taste (it tastes like chicken). Snake is supposed to be particularly good in winter because it is regarded as heart warming. Eating the snake's gall bladder is supposed to bring sure relief from rheumatism. A dish named Dragon, Phoenix, Tiger is prepared of snake, chicken and cat and is supposed to be an especially powerful agent to restore youth and vigor.
Of course there is nothing wrong with eating cats, snakes, and bird's nests; most probably these foods are even nutritious; it's just the idea of it that cannot convince Westerners to enrich their diet with these delicacies.
But what criteria makes some kinds of animals a clean food and others unacceptable are just per-ceptions based on ignorance. Shrimp live in mud and preferably near sites where waste is drained into the sea, and those who believe chickens only eat clean food may observe them pecking on dung-hills. Who after these elaborations doubts that the Chinese have a more enlightened approach to food than Westerners, and a much more enlightened ap-proach than Moslems and Hindus.
China is a vast country and it is therefore no surprise that there are many regional variations in Chinese cuisine. In general one can say that the Southern Chinese, Cantonese, cuisine puts more emphasis on fish and seafood and the Northern Chinese, Peking, cuisine includes more meat. Of all meats pork is most common in all Chinese cuisines. Actually the pig is so respected by the Chinese that the Chinese character for "home" is a combination of the characters for "roof" and "pig".
The central Chinese regions of Szechuan and Hunan have the spiciest food in all of China. Garlic as well as chili are exten-sively used. Helmsman Mao Zedong who was Hunanese once claimed that the more chilies one eats the more revolutionary one becomes. It was meant as a joke (most probably) but the statement is in accordance to the Chinese belief that diet makes a great difference in the well-being of a person.
In the case of exclusive dining, Chinese have a different orienta-tion than Westerners. First, the ambience of a restaurant is much less important; even first class Chinese restaurants tend to be simply and inexpensively fur-nished. Second, unlike European custom a dish doesn't become much more expensive when prepared by a much better cook; in Europe a cer-tain meal (for example baked duck) can cost many times as much in an exclusive restaurant than it does in an ordinary restaurant; in the case of Chinese restaurants it's less the particular preparations that make a restaurant first class but more the use of fancy and more expensive foods.
An exclusive Chinese restaurant for example will serve foods like turtle and abalone (a large marine snail; only the foot, about fist size, is served) which cost many hundreds of pesos per dish. But it's not the preparation that makes these foods so expensive, it's just the price of the raw material. Many more ordinary Chinese dishes do not cost much more in first class Chinese res-taurants than they do in plainer kinds.
Tea is preferred by the Chinese as a drink during all meals less for it's own taste but to clear the palate of a former dish before proceeding to the next. And as proclaimed by the Honk Kong Tourist Association in their official guide, "the Chinese don't ruin the tea with such alien substances as milk, sugar or lemon."
Two typical additions to the names of Chinese restaurants are Tea House and Garden. Tea houses generally are simple restaurants while Gardens are better class.
More on Chinese cuisine:
Restaurants
More Restaurants
This page: http://www.cockatoo.com/english/philippines/philippines_chinese_cuisine3.htm
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