Eat Like You're Hungry

Last Sunday I went with 3 other people to Pizza Hut for lunch. 

Now, we didn't intend to go there originally, but the place where we MEANT to go was suddenly out of business -- that happens a LOT in Hong Kong, especially in these rough economic times. In fact it seems like at least once a week the lead story on the local news is "another restaurant closes it's doors"... Of course it matters when hundreds of people are suddenly out of work, but also it's that HK is a city where food is REALLY taken seriously, so when restaurants close it's news!

Anyway, so my three friends said, "Okay, this place is closed, let's go to Pizza Hut!" 

Of course I didn't argue. 

You see, Pizza Hut is one of my favorite restaurants in HK. I know that may sound square, like, "Geez, Glenn, you're in HK and you like Pizza Hut? What a waste!" 

But the only reason you might say that -- sitting there eating your delicious American food -- is that you don't have rice or noodles coming out of your nose because... that... is... all... you... eat!!!! 

Seriously, don't get all snooty with me over this, because first of all, I used to eat pizza like 2 or 3 times a week when I lived in the States, so if I only eat it once in a while here, what's the big deal? And secondly, it's not a joke that I can only take so much rice and noodles. I love it, and I'm thankful for it, but come on -- if I can choose between: a) ANOTHER meal with rice; or b) a pizza... well, I'm taking the pie, yo.... I'm taking the pie EVERY TIME... 

So we went to Pizza Hut, and as we are discussing what to order my friend David and I are saying how we're really pretty hungry and all, right? And we just kept ordering more and more, despite a few looks from the other two that suggested they didn't quite believe we were going to eat all that.

Well, the food came and we dug in and I had a great time, and -- as I always do at Pizza Hut-- I really enjoyed the meal.

But what was funny was that at one point they made the comment that it was "the first time we've seen you eat like you're hungry"... 

I had to think about that one for a bit before it really sank in.... 

. . .

When I normally eat lunch on Sundays with my friends we go to a dim sum restaurant. Now, listen, I'm not going to try to explain all that's meant by the term dim sum, I probably would get it wrong anyway...  but basically dim sum is a very common type of lunch in HK where you get small orders of all these different types of food and everyone just shares. 

I LOVE DIM SUM. I really do. It is one of the heights of Chinese cuisine, as far as I'm concerned -- maybe that reflects a little "blue collar" aesthetic in me, but whatever. It's good and it's hot and YES there are things that I don't like but geez, for the most part I really LOVE having dim sum for lunch.

But I've finally gotten the gist that most of my Chinese friends think that I must barely tolerate Chinese food. 

The way it happens is that we go to dim sum, and they just totally chow down. I mean, at a normal dim sum lunch, with maybe 10 or 12 people sitting all around one big round table, there is a CONSTANT rattle of dishes and chopsticks and teacups... plates and bowls (and those circular bamboo trays that most dim sum comes in) are literally FLYING back and forth. Waiters and waitresses work furiously to keep the teapots filled with hot water, and everyone is screaming (it's usually too noisy to just talk!) and eating, and the continuous flow of food and drink keeps everyone busy the whole time.

All that is part of the dim sum experience, and if you've ever been to a real HK dim sum restaurant on a Sunday morning (or any day at lunch time) you will know that what I say is true. 

But I don't really eat dim sum the way my Chinese friends eat it.

What I mean is, I don't really eat all the things that my Chinese friends like, so I'm a little more selective in what dishes I go for. For instance, they almost ALWAYS get cow stomach. You may assume that "cow stomach" is some crazy made-up name for the dish, it's really some vegetable, right? But NO, it is exactly what it says, it's the inside of a cow's stomach (tripe), and you know what? IT LOOKS LIKE IT! I'm not trying to be sophomoric, but I swear that sometimes I wonder if they can taste what the cow ate -- because, I'm telling you, dude, from the looks of it, they don't exactly STERILIZE the inside of the cow before they serve it, if you catch my drift. It really looks that gross to me, one of the VERY few dishes I've encountered in all my travels that I actually can't stand to even look at...

Another popular choice is "any animal served in such a way that if you had a needle and some thread you could literally sew it back together and have a complete (mostly cooked) corpse of the original beast." This is an absolute FAVORITE way to serve chicken. They don't always give you the head, so maybe you'd have to use a rolled up sock for the head; but OTHERWISE, except for the head, you could reassemble the entire chicken from top to bottom, feet included. (Actually, I have to be honest, with dim sum you'd have to order maybe 3 or 4 different things to actually get all the necessary parts -- one order of chicken feet, one order of wings, another order of "rice with chicken guts on it" (that may not be the actual name of the dish, I'm not sure) -- but what I'm saying is that the diligent student of chicken anatomy would not be frustrated in their attempts to construct a "Frankencluck" chicken out of the parts found on many a dim sum table -- "just add lightning")...

(By the way, I usually don't eat chicken in HK)... 

Let's see, what else? Oh, yeah... HK people also like to order various dishes that are meats (or seafood of some kind) that still have all the bones in it. Of course this applies to chicken (see above), but also to pork, or fish, or really anything that had a skeleton before finding it's way into the kitchen. Bones aren't such a bad thing in a meal per se, but when using chopsticks you can't cut out nice little bites and leave the bone on your plate like I'm used to doing. No, you must pick up the whole thing, put it into your mouth, and then chew and suck on it for about 3 minutes until all you have left in your mouth is the bone; then you spit the bone out onto your plate, or better yet onto the table next to your neighbor's elbow. You may think I'm being a little too "precious" about this, but I'm sorry, I just don't like doing that. I don't. It's not because I think it's "rude" and I can't get over that aspect of it -- please don't ANYONE think that's what I'm saying, it doesn't "bother" me or make me uncomfortable for others to do that at all. It's just that I personally don't like gnawing on a bone in my mouth, period. But that's the way you eat a lot of meat dishes in HK. "Why don't they just cut out the bones and give you the good stuff?" -- this is a question I have asked myself rhetorically a thousand times... But I admit, that would take a lot longer to prepare, it would leave a lot more waste, and really, I have decided that HK people must feel that they would be getting CHEATED if they only got morsels of meat without the bone. So I readily concede they are more correct than I am in this regard... But I still don't like crunching down on a bone and spitting it out on the table, so I choose to skip those dishes, also. 

Okay, well, there are some other interesting things you can get at dim sum, and if you ever come to visit me I promise I'll make sure you are forced to try EVERY SINGLE ONE... (ha ha)...

But where I was going with all this was not to point out what I don't like, but to say that for the most part I really like dim sum... I like every kind of dumpling I've ever tried, I mean steamed, fried, with vegetables, with meat, with seafood -- ALL DUMPLINGS ARE GOOD to me... I also like a lot of buns that they have, and of course things like spring rolls and steamed vegetables, it's all good. They have these sort of steamed spring rolls, similar to what I've had at Vietnamese restaurants, MAN those things are good. And they also have these little cakes of tofu or roots or something, it's seems pretty "fatty" to me but they always say it's healthy, except that they're fried so how can it be healthy? They also have these sort of pancakes cooked with onions and oysters, that may sound gross but actually I really like it, though I can't take too much of it, it's kind of like White Castle hamburgers (by the way, some of my friends call these pancakes "Chinese pizzas" -- as a joke). Well, and there's OTHER stuff I really like, too. 

So, I usually get PLENTY to eat when I go for dim sum with my friends! 

However, there is INEVITABLY a moment when there are no more "new" dishes on the table which I wish to eat, so I put down my chopsticks and otherwise occupy myself for a few minutes until the next round of dishes arrives. And I'm realizing that they must see me sitting there -- not eating -- maybe two or three times during a meal, and they seem to think, "Oh, geez, he must HATE this stuff!" -- when almost the opposite is true!

. . .

So I'm not sure there's any "moral" to the story. 

It's just that when we were at Pizza Hut and they said "you're finally eating like you're hungry!" it just really drove home the fact that they must perceive me to be barely surviving. Either that, or I have also wondered if they now have this image of me nibbling a few bites at dim sum, and then as soon as I leave RUSHING across the street to Pizza Hut where I spend the next two hours eating quantity one of every item on the menu... Sort of a junk food junkie, Pizza Hut-style... I mean, the more I think about it, they must have been wondering all this time, "Gee, Glenn doesn't eat anything, but still he's so FAT! What gives?!?!?" -- It must have been driving them NUTS!!! Except now when they see me put down my chopsticks during a meal they will look at each other and nod knowingly -- "Oh, we know your little secret, Mr. Fatman! Would you like EXTRA CHEESE with that spring roll?!?"...

But really, it's touching to me that they even think about it, you know? I mean, even if they've somehow got the wrong idea about me and dim sum, the fact is that they are genuinely concerned about me, and it just really warms my heart to realize that, and to see it play itself out in such a practical way -- they really do want to make sure I'm not going hungry. 

Now, if we could JUST get Pizza Hut to invent a "cow stomach" pizza... 

This article was first posted: 11 July 2002

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