The Confabulist

Day Nine: Fisherman's Wharf, and Meat Is Sexy Murder

My mouth is dry and tacky.  It is dark and murky inside the throbbing recesses of my brain.  I try to ignore the insistent banging in my head and slip back into unconsciousness, but I have the unfortunate realization that the banging is coming from outside my head, not inside.  It's a hotel employee at our door, trying to tell us that we need to get the hell out.  Check-out time, you see, is noon, and it's a quarter to one.

We throw our crap into our bags and flee the hotel.  Our plan for the day is to see a couple of casinos that we missed the previous day before heading back to the mainland.  In particular, we're interested in what our friends called Fisherman's Wharf, a series of wildly different casino buildings on the water.  Apparently there's some thematic link to San Francisco somewhere in there.  We joked about what it would be like.

"They'll have a vegan restaurant,"  Joe piped up, "run by expat hippies."

"No, they'll have a great steak place, " I said.  In Kowloon, we were much amused by a sign advertising a restaurant named the San Francisco Steakhouse.  There are probably as many good steakhouses in San Francisco as most other major cities in the U.S., but I wouldn't say that the Bay Area is widely known for its steak.  We imagined eating dinner there just so that we could call the waiter over and say: Mmmmm, this steak is great...tastes just like the steak back home.  There's nothing like a San Francisco steak.

"The shuttles that go from the parking lot will be done up like itty bitty cable cars," Joe suggested.

"They'll have a tiny little Castro district," I offered, "populated by overly flamboyant gay midgets."

"They'll have a place that serves clam chowder," Joe proposed.  "But what's really cool is that the bowl will be made of bread!  You can eat the bowl!"

(Clam chowder in a bread bowl is something that many tourists think of when they think of the San Francisco, because some gimmicky restaurants in Fisherman's Wharf do this.  But the Wharf is mostly populated by tourists, so it's not really part of a San Franciscan's self-identity; I'm much more likely to think of burritos in the Mission district as being characteristic of food in San Francisco than anything in the Wharf.)

We hopped out of the taxi at the first of the many small casino buildings in the Wharf area.  The first one was an elaborate floating casino with a Chinese motif.  Next was a strange Babylonian building built into a hillside.  After that, a giant Chinese fort.

"Maybe the San Francisco-themed stuff is further down," I said.

But the buildings only got more bizarre.  There was a place with a Disneylike Arabian theme, a bizarre artificial volcano with a steampunk bent, and then we reached an Egyptian-themed casino.  To our right was a diminutive Roman Colosseum, alongside some buildings that looked vaguely Mediterranean, and there the Wharf seemed to end.

"Maybe it's not San Francisco-themed at all,"  I said, pretending not to be disappointed.  Maybe it just used to be a wharf.  For fishermen."

"Are you hungry?"  Joe asked.  "Let's look for something to eat."

We decided at that point to head through the Egyptian casino to see what it was like on the inside.  We must have chosen a back door, because we wandered through empty and rather featureless halls for a few minutes before emerging into an area that had a few shops.   And then I saw a restaurant.  Painted on the wall in the middle of this Egyptian-themed casino was a giant mural depicting the flagship dish of this small eatery, which was:  clam chowder.  In a breadbowl.

To this day I don't understand.  Either the "Fisherman's Wharf" theme was meant to evoke San Francisco (in which case why isn't there anything even remotely related in all of these casinos besides this restaurant), or it wasn't (in which case why in the hell is there a clam chowder place here in the middle of Egypt in the first place?).  I'll probably never know.  It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma served in a bread bowl.

Naturally we had to have some.  We sat out by the water and ordered our chowder.  It was the worst clam chowder I've ever had.  Clearly these people have never actually eaten clam chowder.  Perhaps they saw some images on the internet and labored to make a soup that looked like what they'd seen in the pictures.   In this they had some success.  They should not have stopped there.

We headed back to Hong Kong soon thereafter, and immediately got down to the business of answering the all-important question:  what would we have for dinner?

We'd been in Hong Kong over a week, and we still hadn't had hot pot.  Fortunately, our co-workers had made a couple of recommendations for us, including a spot that wasn't too far from the hotel.  We were fortunate enough to get one of the last tables; by the time we walked out of the restaurant, there was a huge line outside.

The hot pot broths were excellent, particularly the spicy one.  (Or it could have been that I had enough of the spicy one that I couldn't really taste the one that wasn't spicy.) There was a wide range of dipping items available.  My favorites were the wide noodles and the mushrooms, both of which soaked up the broth like sponges.  The meats were good, too, although the lamb tenderloin was cut with the grain, and this made it a little chewy.

Halfway through our dinner, two pretty Asian girls sat down at a table nearby.  They made their order, and minutes later, the waiter brought them a giant plate of meat...and then another...and another.  By the time we left, these two skinny girls were surrounded by platters of meat.  It was easily twice as much food as we'd had, and we were stuffed full.  They smiled sheepishly at us when we looked over their meat orgy as we left.  I thought it was pretty hot myself.  But then, I'm probably not representative.  Earlier in the week, while waiting for a tram, I saw an anti-fur poster from some animal advocacy group that featured a sexy woman wearing the bloody, battered body of a small fox around her neck as though it were a stole.  I have no love for the fur industry, but I must admit that the first thing that went through my head was "Wow, that's hot."  I'm not sure what this says about me, except this:  never again will I have a vegetarian girlfriend.

Day Eight: In Macau, you Wynn Some, You Lose Some

Friday morning, we got up, ran some errands, and took the hydrofoil into Macau.  Immediately after stepping off of the boat, you know that Macau is not like Hong Kong.  It's much more "in-process".  There's a lot of dust on the streets, and empty lots.  The highly developed areas are much more localized, and the empty areas aren't as lush.  And there are scooters everywhere!  Macau, we discovered, means "city of Vespas" in Portuguese.

Checking in to the hotel room was quite a surprise.  The door opened to a huge suite with dark woods, a marble entryway, and a giant bathroom with a huge tub and separate shower stall.  The bathroom itself was probably half of the size of our entire suite over in Hong Kong.  And the rooms are about the same price!  I'm not sure why the prices are so different, since this hotel didn't even have a casino in it, I don't think.

We immediately set out to have a look around Macau.  It's a really interesting place.  Certain parts of it have the same signage aesthetic that Hong Kong does, only all the signs are low-tech -- many of them don't even light up.  The architecture is a mix of old Chinese highrises, casinos built in the mid-1970's, some odd, garish modern buildings, huge contemporary casinos.  One thing you notice right away is the huge number of construction projects.  This place may be a low-rent Vegas for now, but somebody's banking big on rent to go up.

After walking around town for awhile, we decided to meet our Hong Kong co-workers, who were just getting out of their day-long meeting.  Our rooms were at the Landmark, but they were staying at the StarWorld hotel.  I didn't visit any of the rooms, but the expansive lobby is as impressive as any I've been to in Vegas.  Each of the hostesses were more than 6 feet tall and wore giant heeled boots.  If you have Yellow Fever and a giantess fantasy, this is the place to be.  Joe and I had a drink at the hotel bar, waiting for our friends to come down, and when they did, we all piled into a couple of chartered busses and went across town to a Portuguese restaurant.

These Hong Kong engineers are an enigma.  They seem like wallflowers at work during the day, or at best, quietly confident.  But get them all together en masse at night, and they're a boisterous (though orderly) bunch, raising their glasses and shouting "Gom bui!" (though very few of them were drinking alcohol) and egging each other on (though in a generally respectful manner).  Several folks were suggesting that one of their number could put her entire fist in her mouth, and soon everyone was trying to get her to do it.  For a few moments it looked like she might do it.  I had my camera out just in case.

We left dinner and headed to a casino -- the Wynn, as it happened.  Joe and I arrived a little later than others, and we were shocked by what we saw and heard.  Or rather, what we didn't hear.  Do you know the feel of a Vegas casino?  The low rumble of conversation, the comforting chime of the slot machines, the buzz of life?  Well, the Wynn had none of that.  Now, I've never been to the Wynn in Vegas, but the Macau Wynn is more like a library!  They had carts rolling around serving hot tea!  I wanted to ridicule them for this, but I kept quiet for fear of getting shushed.

Most of the engineering talent was crowded around one table, where they'd pooled all of their money and given it to one player who had some proficiency in Blackjack.  He was slowly winning against the house, which while entrancing to the people who had money on the line, was boring us to death.  We tried to peel people away to head to a more interesting casino for drinks and carousing, but it proved to be a really tough sell.  The same people who were loud and boisterous in the restaurant were content to wile away the time quietly in the Wynn.

After much persuasion and whining, we finally managed to convince a couple of great folks, Alex and Terrence, to join us as we went wandering.  We blew through the Lisboa, decided it wasn't our kind of spot, and then decided to try the Sands.

Immediately upon entering the Sands, we knew we'd made the right decision.  There was a hum to the place that reminded me much more of a Vegas casino, an energy that puts you in the mood to party.  There was a stage with a bar front and center -- our kind of place.  We parked right in front of it and ordered a round.

A cover band from Canada took the stage and began to play, fronted by a guy and two pretty girls, all of whom alternated singing lead vocals.  I don't mean to brag, but one of the two female singers sang several songs directly to me, including one in which she asserted that I wished that my girlfriend was hot and raw like she was.  I wanted to explain to her that while I was willing to concede that she was hot, my girlfriend is also hot and likely is quite a bit more raw.  I suspected that if I got to know her further, I might be in the position of wishing instead that the singer was as hot and raw as my girlfriend. 

The cover band played a good set, and the four of us -- but particularly Joe and I -- had a good time.  The band liked us, I think, since we were among the few in the place who got the pop culture references they would make.  During breaks we alternated between playing video poker and watching dancing girls do various routines, with the Hong Kong folks largely in the video poker camp and Joe and I more firmly in the dancing girl camp.  Subsequent sets by the band, despite quality covers of the likes of Stevie Wonder and Gloria Gaynor by way of Cake, were marred by such wedding-band staples as "Play That Funky Music".  I wanted to stay for awhile longer so I could explain at some length regarding the hotness and rawness and freakiness of my girlfriend, but Joe was afraid that they'd launch into some Kool & the Gang or do the Locomotion or something, which is indeed something to fear, so we left them to descend into banality alone.

Tipsy and hungry, we prowled the streets in search of food.  After a few moments, we wandered into a well-lit walkway.  The shops were all closed, and the street was full of ... women.  Good-looking women, dressed for nightlife.  They were very friendly.  I've never seen anything quite like it.  It was like the Whole Foods of prostitution.  I'd have taken a picture, but I was afraid of how much I might be charged for it. 

Dodging women left and right and avoiding eye contact, we stumbled into the first restaurant we saw -- a dirty little place with scummy fishtanks full of angry crabs, cross-looking lobsters, and big, dumb fish.  We asked the price of a particularly angry crab, but they were clearly enforcing a steep westerner tax, so we settled for some shrimp.  Turned out to be some of the best shrimp I've ever had, but for the price, I'm certain we could have had some oreos and one or two of the women outside.

After gorging ourselves, we headed back to the hotel, to dream of Kool & the Gang and prostitutes.

Day Seven: Macau Bound

We'd been told that everyone in the office was going to an offsite event on Friday, so we wouldn't be teaching any classes.  What we didn't know until this week was that the offsite was in Macau.

Macau is a Special Administrative Region of China, just like Hong Kong.  It's a former colony of a foreign power, just like Hong Kong.  And it's a tiny area that commands a disproportionate amount of income, just like Hong Kong.  But where Hong Kong's strength lies in its financial institutions and large corporations, Macau's is in its casinos and gambling joints.  Macau is the Las Vegas of China.

Pictured here is the roof of the building next door to the office, which is 28 stories up. Maintenance people ride around on the little cart on the foreground, and we've seen them jump casually from the cart to the roof as though they were jumping up onto the curb from the street.

I'd done a little research into Macau before coming out, trying to see if it was something we wanted to plan to do.  The consensus was that if you really enjoy gambling and are in the area, it's worth visiting, but if you like Vegas for its shows and attractions and non-gambling entertainment, you'll be sorely disappointed.  Since neither of us are big gamblers, we didn't bother planning to go.
But it's one thing to head off to Macau by your lonesome, and quite another to be out on the town with a bunch of friends.  So when we were extended an invitation to attend the offsite, we jumped at the chance.

I was in the pen with a bunch of the developers -- who are mostly a somewhat reserved bunch -- later in the day, when one of them approached me.

"You know about Macau, don't you?" he said.

"I've read a little bit."

"Well, Macau is known for three things," he said conspiratorially. "Two of these things I am sure you like.  You do not look like the sort of person to do the third thing.  Do you know what the three things are?"

"Gambling!" I volunteered.

"Yes, that's right.  And the second?"

Actually, I knew what the third one was.  Macau is a hotbed of prostitution.  There are massage parlors, there are high-class escorts, there are women on the street. Anyone with half a mind to can find sex in Macau.  And I was sure that he wasn't about to suggest that I was a whoremonger.

But for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the second thing was.  I'd read a little about Macau, and hadn't come across anything else that it was known for.  "I give up," I said.

"The second thing is...Prostitutes!" he trumpeted.

"What's the third thing!?" I asked.

He looked around to make sure no one with authority was listening. "Drugs," he whispered.  "And you do not look like the sort of person who takes drugs."

But apparently I look like the kind of guy that regularly enjoys the company of prostitutes.  Well, at least I know where I stand.

--

Foodwise, the day was fairly uneventful.  Lunch was at a workaday Cantonese place that was good but not remarkable.  Joe and I had to work through the evening to prepare for India, since we were headed to Macau the next couple of days and wouldn't be able to prepare later. We left the office around 11:30 p.m. and had dinner at the hotel restaurant while watching people do karaoke.  Had a couple of gin and tonics and went to bed, dreaming of prostitutes.

Pictured here is the hydrofoil to Macau.  A trip to Macau takes about an hour on one of these boats, where it used to take three hours on one of the older boats.

Day Six: Snake-eating Lesbians and Blackalicious

When I read that one can get snake soup in Hong Kong, I knew I had to seek some out.  I turned to Stephen for advice.  He explained that he didn't know where to get good snake soup, since he didn't particularly like it, but said that he would ask around.  After some consultation, he gave us the name of a place in Soho.

Soho is a pretty cool neighborhood with curvy streets and steep alleys packed with bars, restaurants, and cafes.  Our cab driver didn't know where the restaurant was, so he dropped us out in the middle of the neighborhood, and after blundering our way through conversations with a few locals, we managed to find our way to the right spot.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was full, and we had to wait nearly a half an hour to get in.   I amused myself by speculating on why the Chinese-staffed hair salon next door had a magazine rack full of African-American hair magazines.  I didn't come up with any good answers.

We were seated at a large, round, group table alongside two other couples.  I looked at the a la carte menu, which fortunately had English translations for the dishes.  Joe had a look at the set menu, which unfortunately had no English.  As luck would have it, the otherwise severe-looking lesbian couple seated to our left were happy to help.  Or at least I assume they were happy, as they seemed to avoid smiling.

They interrogated Joe as to our preferences, and made some recommendations.  They'd muse about the choices in Chinese to each other.  At one point they seemed to disagree about something.

"Did you want a vegetable dish?  She thinks that adding another meat dish would mean too much meat."

Joe and I looked at each other and shrugged.  "We're guys."

"That's what I said."

The soups were first to arrive.  The much anticipated snake soup, pictured, came with a plate of wonton-like fried bits and little strips of dry greenery that, when put into the soup, tasted a bit like lemongrass.   Snake soup as made here tastes a little bit like chicken soup, only slightly leaner and maybe a little gamier.  I can't imagine anyone not liking it; it's pretty inoffensive.  (Care to comment, Stephen?)  The lemongrassy substance added a nice touch.  I'm glad I ordered it, but I didn't find it anything to write home about.

Joe's coconut soup was more interesting.  We both expected a coconut-milk based soup, so what we got was quite unexpected.  A clear broth enveloped large chunks of coconut, vegetables, and chicken.  The broth delivered a focused coconut flavor quite different from the rich flavor of coconut milk.  This will definitely be a candidate for experimentation for me back home.

The other dish of interest was a rice dish cooked in a terra cotta vessel.  (Crispy Rice?  We can't remember what the dish is called.)  The outer edge of the rice is crunchy, and the whole dish is suffused with the flavor of the chicken and the liver sausage that it was cooked with.  The liver and blood sausage -- I wish I knew the real name -- was very strongly and distinctively flavored.  I can't even begin to describe what it tasted like.  This, I can see someone not liking.  I thought it was wicked tasty, myself, though if I were cooking with it, I'd only use it in small doses.

We left the restaurant and walked around Soho, through the alleys full of clubs, down the winding streets, past the crazy, sobbing white girl collapsed on the curb, clinging to the pant leg of a disaffected, baseball-cap-and-khaki-wearing yuppie.  We walked down some stairs toward a park and found a cool little bar whose name I did not record.  As we relaxed and had a couple of gin and tonics, one of which was made with a gin liqueur that was very interesting, a DJ spun some great Northern California hip hop (Blackalicious, Latyrx, Souls of Mischief).  This is Hong Kong.  Welcome.

Day Six: Thai food? In Hong Kong?

We'd decided to treat Stephen and Benny for lunch on Wednesday, since Stephen had paid for several of our previous lunches and dinners.  We told them to pick someplace they'd like.  To my dismay, they chose a Thai restaurant that Benny liked.  (I didn't come all the way to Hong Kong to have Thai food!  I thought.)

We walked to a building near Times Square and proceeded to get in line near the elevator.  A lot of restaurants are "hidden" on upper floors in Hong Kong.  Hidden to us, anyway; when we went out to eat by ourselves, we tended to choose places we could see at street level, but when we went out with people from work, we inevitably wound up at restaurant on the sixteenth floor of some high rise or buried in the middle of a giant mall or office park.  And it's not that these restaurants are little hidden gems or anything, either -- they're huge, sprawling venues packed with people.  I have no idea how people even know that they're there.

When we got out of the elevator, we discovered a whole restaurant wing with five or six very nice-looking eating establishments.  Simply Thai was a hip place with large plants, dark woods, and lush decor.

When we got out of the elevator, we discovered a whole restaurant wing with five or six very nice-looking eating establishments.  Simply Thai was a hip place with large plants, dark woods, and lush decor.

This is no country Thai food, but at the same time, you probably wouldn't call this a fusion restaurant.  They seemed to remain true to the soul of Thai cuisine (not that I'm qualified to make such a comment) while at the same time preparing dishes in a fresh, refined fashion. 

This was another occasion where the best dishes were complete surprises to me.  For a starter, I ordered a coconut-milk based soup, because I love Thai soups.  Joe ordered a pomelo salad.  I thought this might be tasty, but ultimately trivial.  Our hosts both ordered a dish of mushrooms on tofu.  I thought this would be pretty banal.

The soup was mediocre.  I've had many better Stateside.  The pomelo salad was elegant and simple:  pomelo, studded with hot pepper, lightly drizzled with a lime-based dressing, and with a little garnish on top.  It was also very good.  I'd order it again in a heartbeat.  It's an example of taking a few flavors and balancing them perfectly.  You can probably make this with grapefruit if you live in the States and are in an area where Pomelo is unavailable; I may try to do that sometime when I have guests.

But the real find -- the best dish of the meal -- was the mushrooms and tofu.  And that's basically all it was:  mushrooms sauteed and tossed a light oyster sauce, set atop a bed of tofu, with a few greens strewn over the top for color.  And it shocked the hell out of me.  Right after I took the first bite, I had a lightning flash of insight: I have never had good tofu.

I think I am not alone in this.  I live near Chinatown, I love Asian food, and I eat a fair amount of it.  And yet.  This tofu was like a custard.  Like the creme part of a creme brulee, but not sweet.  In my memory it's substantial to the point of being rich, but I know it was light and straightforward.  Beguiling.  I know it's ridiculous to talk about tofu in these terms.  But in a way, it's my first time.  And you know what they say about your first time:  it's always ridiculous.  I mean special.

The duck curry I ordered for my main dish was satisfactory, but not noteworthy.  I felt the same about the chicken curry dish that Stephen and Benny ordered.  But Joe took a chance on the lamb ribs (rack).  And they were stunning.  A deep pink throughout, smothered in a creamy sauce and sitting atop a pile of tasty greens, Joe was the clear winner of the entree contest.

I'm really glad that Stephen and Benny keep coming along with us and making recommendations.  I would never have gone to a Thai restaurant in Hong Kong and I would never have ordered mushrooms and tofu if I were on my own.  I'm always looking for culinary adventure -- an activity that I still think is worthwhile -- but the most significant experiences are never where you expect them to be.

Day Five: Good Goose and Bad Wine

Another thing on my list to try in Hong Kong is goose.  Goose is relatively expensive to buy in the U.S., but the few times I've had it, I've really enjoyed it.  I'll never understand American's relationship with bird meat:  we eat massive amounts of chicken, a relatively flavorless bird, factory-farmed to be even more flavorless and uninteresting.  For special occasions, we pick the turkey, a bird that's difficult to cook and not the tastiest choice, and then we've bred them to maximize the breast size at the expense of flavor interest.  Many other cultures have made more interesting choices: duck, goose, guinea hen, capon...the list goes on.

Stephen and company have recommended Yung Kee for our goose-related pleasure.  It's very famous for its goose; in my pre-trip investigations its name came up two or three times.  But many assert that it's not the best so much as a standard by which others are judged; a convenient benchmark.

Having no reference point, we are perfectly happy to go.  Yung Kee is a huge restaurant in the Central district, right on the edge of  Lan Kwai Fong.  It's interesting to me how massive Chinese restaurants can be and still be considered upscale.  In the U.S., as prices and acclaim go up, restaurants tend to get smaller. 

We don't know how much goose to order.  A whole goose is relatively expensive, but a half a goose seems like it might not be enough for two hungry people.  We decide to bite the bullet and order a whole goose.

When the waiter arrives and I tell him so, he shakes is head.  "Too much," he says.  "Too much food."

"Half goose?" I propose.

"Too much."  He points to the "Regular Portion", which is approximately 1/3 the cost of a whole goose.  We shrug and order the Regular Portion.

The waiter asks us if we want any vegetables.  He reads off a list, and I pick one that sounds unfamiliar.  He asks me if we want _____ on top, some word that I do not understand.  I nod my head yes.  I also order a glass of the only red wine they have by the glass.  It's a Crozes-Hermitage of some sort.  It's not very good.

The goose arrives some time later.  The skin, I note, is not perfectly done as the skin on the Peking duck was.  The meat is dense and flavorful, but it's also chewy.  Joe notes that it has been sliced with the grain instead of against it.  We both wonder why this was done.

The word that the waiter said that I did not understand, it turns out, was "crab".  We are served a mound of perfectly cooked greens,  atop which sat mounds of crab in a creamy sauce.  The greens themselves are delicious; I wish I knew what kind they were, on the offchance that I could get them in Chinatown.  They'd be a great vegetable to serve at a dinner party.  And the crab...well, a little crab makes everything taste better.  Unexpected but delicious.

We leave the restaurant a little bit unsatisfied, though.  I think the Regular Portion is a reasonable amount of goose if you're ordering a few other dishes; that's probably what's expected. 

After a bit of wandering around the Central district, we decide to head back to the hotel and go to the little wine bar that's a couple of doors down and get a nightcap.

Juliette's is in a nice space, on the first floor (or, "second floor" as we call it in the U.S.), away from the hustle and bustle of the ground level.  There's a lot of space, though it still seems intimate, and the bar staff seems very nice.  So what's missing?  The wine.     The by-the-glass list was an accumulation of cheap bottlings from around the globe, the sort of stuff that you might expect in a very cheap restaurant Stateside.  Joe and I both had a glass of Chenin Blanc that neither of us liked.

"I don't think I need another glass of bad wine," Joe said after we'd managed to finish.  I agreed.

Hong Kongers have a very curious relationship to wine that I will explore in a later entry.

Day Five: Duck tongues and Bbq pork

After our morning session on Tuesday, it was decided that we'd go for Dim Sum for lunch.  "You'll like this place," Stephen told us.  "They have the best BBQ Pork.  Movie stars come here for the BBQ pork."

I love Chinese BBQ pork, but I've always thought of it as a commodity item.  You can buy it at any of ten or twenty Chinatown butchers, and countless restaurants.  We always buy it wherever we're closest to, and it's always pretty much the same.  Oh, sure, there are a few places we avoid, and yes, sometimes the pork is better than others, but usually we credit that to inferior or superior quality of the individual pig that was used that time.

The restaurant is clean and bright, and has a large fishtank in front with a giant eel and some very menacing crabs.  Stephen reads us some of the options from the Chinese menu.  Fried squid, shrimp dumplings, duck tongues...

"Duck tongues!" I squeal.  Stephen looks sorry that he mentioned them.  I think he was trying to shock me.  Joe looks mildly regretful as well.

"Okay, duck tongues," Stephen says.

Stephen orders and several items begin to arrive.  Shrimp wrapped in a flaky pastry.  Some kind of noodle in a soy-based sauce.  Deep-fried squid -- this is worlds apart from pub calamari.  The squid resists the teeth initially, but then yields a soft and rewarding fleshiness.  And then there it is:  the BBQ pork.

One look tells me that it's clearly different from what I've eaten before.  This isn't the tasty, somewhat dry, pleasantly chewy BBQ pork that hangs in shop windows both in Chinatown and here in Hong Kong.  This is high quality, well-marbled pork, fresh from being slow-cooked for hours,  drizzled in honey, and then rushed to the table.  The outside is crispy, flavorful as bacon, and sweet from the honey, and the inside is soft and chewy and yields unfettered porkiness.  This is pure heaven.  I'll remember this for a long time.  From here on out, whenever I'm having BBQ pork with someone else, I'll tell them:  you don't know what real BBQ pork is like.  I'll be the annoying guy that claims that everyone else's experiences aren't worth a damn, because they've never been to Hong Kong, to this place.  They just don't know.

Even though we haven't finished this plate of pork, I request another one.  They don't seem surprised.

In the meantime, though, the duck tongues arrive.  I'm a bit surprised.  They're short, plump, and juicy-looking.  My only other experience with duck tongues was of seeing packages of them at 99 Ranch in Irvine, CA, a few years ago.  I remember them being long and skinny,  resembling nothing so much as the tongue of a large snake, but with visible taste buds.  But these don't look anything like that.  So what was that a memory of?

Unlike beef tongue, which has the skin removed and the meat taken out, a duck tongue definitely feels like a tongue in your mouth. In fact, rolling the tongue around (which you will inevitably do) feels like nothing so much as french-kissing a duck, and then biting its tongue off and swallowing it.  It's kind of like bestiality and sadism all at once, though because it's only kissing, it has a bit of a sentimental aspect to it as well.

Actually, you don't swallow the tongue immediately; it has a bit of cartilage or soft bone running through the underside.  You must separate the meat from the cartilage with your tongue and your teeth, and then pull the cartilage out of your mouth.  It's not the most ergonomic of foods, but it has a certain sex appeal.  Or maybe that's just me.

One of the last dishes is Shark Fin Dumpling.  My guide to Dim Sum says that they don't actually have shark fin in them, but this one seems to.  Stephen explains that the ability to make these large dumplings is rapidly becoming lost.  Inside is a very soupy mixture, he explains, and it takes a certain technique to be able to wrap the soup into a dumpling and cook it without having it leak out, and fewer and fewer people are willing to go through the trouble to do so.  You put a splash of red vinegar onto it and you're good to go.

(Chinese Red Vinegar, btw, is another revelation.  It's critical to the taste of a number of Chinese dishes.  I've had some really good red vinegar out here; I wonder if I can get equally good vinegar Stateside?)

Day Four: Beijing Duck

We asked some of our hosts what food we should try while we were here in Hong Kong. (I already had my own list, but I wanted to hear what they had to say.) One item they unanimously endorsed was Peking Duck, which half of them, in particular the one guy from Beijing, called Beijing Duck. "It's not as good as the duck in Beijing," he said, "but it is better than what you can get in your Chinatown." So it was decided. Tonight Joe and I, along with five or six of our hosts, would go out for Peking -- I mean Beijing -- Duck.

The whole experience was typical of the scale of Hong Kong. The taxi drove past a glowing sign that said "Pacific Place" in what seemed like twenty-foot-high letters. It stopped in front of a skyscraper that was probably 30 stories tall. We all got out and walked into the front doors, and it turns out that the skyscraper sits atop a giant mall that's 3 stories deep. Once inside the mall, we walked for what felt like fifteen minutes to find the restaurant. Ludicrous!

 We arrived at a giant restaurant that was split into two halves: Sichuan Garden and Peking Garden. I kept expecting teams of waiters to come out of the back, snapping their fingers, preparing to engage in ritualistic combat: call it East Side Story.

I found the food to be very distinctive and absorbing. The vegetable roll was a medley of interesting textures. The thin slices of pressed beef (pictured) were fascinating. The whole sweet and sour fish was masterful: the sauce was thick and sweet without being cloying, the fry was perfectly crisp despite the sauce, and without overcooking the fish.

And the Beijing Duck was great. You eat it with little pancakes, making a roll out of it and a little sauce, and some vegetables. It's a lot of fun, but in a way all of those other items mask the best features: the dense flavor of duck and its fat, and the crispy, tasty skin of a perfectly made Beijing duck. And the skin of this duck was better than any duck I've had.

Just like at lunch today, another understated dish made an impact: this time an array of perfectly cooked mushrooms in a very light sauce. The way that these "minor" dishes are perfected in Chinese cuisine in Hong Kong is very humbling, even more so than the grand dishes we all celebrate. Sometimes all it takes is a plate of mushrooms to make you feel glad to be alive.

Day Four: White Sauce Has A Reason

We get up very early and eat quickly so that we can head into the office and do some last minute printouts and organization of materials before we start training. Upon arrival, we find that the office still isn't open. It's 7:45 a.m. and no one is here except for janitorial staff. Between yesterday and this morning, I'm beginning to suspect that the Hong Kong office doesn't actually exist, that our trip here is part of some elaborate con, and that back in Sunnyvale, Tom Cruise with facial prostheses custom-designed to make him look exactly like me is leading an Impossible Mission to root through my desk for a critical bit of intel or a giant green gemstone.

After about a half an hour, a very friendly guy named Alex gets out of the elevator. Unfortunately, he's forgotten his badge this morning, so we all have to wait for a little while longer. But he does a much better job of convincing the cleaning lady that we should all be let into the office, which is very good because we still have some photocopying and printing to do before we can get started for the day.

The morning session goes very well, and we find ourselves at lunch with a large part of the team -- probably around 25 people! This restaurant is the first place that reminds me of what I would consider to be a "nice Chinese restaurant" back home: a large, open room, huge, round tables with a large lazy susan in the center, etc. The menu, too is quite familiar, and there are no shockers among the dishes that are ordered, though I'm sure that is partially done for our benefit.

The BBQ pork is very good, as are the other dishes, but there's one thing that deserves a special mention. There's a whole class of Chinese dishes that I've always thought of as being a complete waste of time. You know the ones that I'm talking about: lightly steamed vegetables, maybe some of the whitest pieces of chicken breast on the planet, and a sauce so transparent and flavorless that it doesn't even refract light. The domain of food-fearers, picky eaters, dieters, and brown-rice-eating crypto-vegetarians everywhere.

So here's the thing: Those dishes are actually good here.  They look exactly the same as in the U.S., so I almost didn't try the one that rotated past me, but nothing else had been served for awhile, so I needed something to do. Whoa! the sauce was made with a very flavorful chicken stock, with a definite ginger presence -- not enough to make it spicy, or to dominate the taste, but just to add depth to the flavor. I guess there's a reason for those dishes to exist after all, besides to distract people from the good food.

Day Three: Authenticity In Question

Bad soup is depressing enough, but Joe's few bites of blandness have taken a foul churn. We head back to the hotel, where Joe feels the need to take a nap, hoping that he'll feel better after a little rest. After a couple of hours, he's looking to eat again, but he wants something a little more familiar. We head to the nearby restaurant district, and after some deliberation pick a little French place. Let's see how the Hong Kongers do the bistro.

It's a cute place with a helpful hostess/waitress. Probably seats around 25. Four businessmen at a table next to us are drinking a Bordeaux, but we're not offered a wine list. I see that the menu lists a charge for "glass service", so I presume that it's BYO and does not have a liquor license.

There's a 3-course prix fixe for around $30 U.S., so that's what we go for. Mine began with a mushroom-leek soup that did the job, but didn't taste like something I couldn't have made without too much effort. The main course, a roasted chicken, was eatable but shrugworthy. Dessert was a panna cotta with a tart citrus sauce; best course of the evening. Overall, the dinner doesn't fare well against what you can get for a $30 French/New American 3-course in San Francisco.

In fact, it felt a little bit like imitation food, as though we were at Epcot Center's version of a French Bistro. I don't know why this is. Joe and I had an extended conversation about authenticity and food. What I found interesting is that the experience was no less authentic than many in the United States, and yet I felt very differently about it. There's a little "French" breakfast and lunch place near my house. It's got white shutters, a French flag, and other affectations that someone actually from France would probably find to be cheesy. I equally recognize it as affectation, or at least as much as someone can who has never been to France, but I don't have the same negative reaction because I know what they are "getting at". There's some cultural context that I share with that place that I don't share with this little bistro. Odd. Not an unpleasant meal, but not worth the price when there is such good, cheap food to be had if you know where to look.