Clients of this online supermarket are shops, hotels, restaurants, charities organizations of the UK that work in foreign countries. They all buy English food for their shops or hotels from British Online. Apart from them, there are some genuine people who wish to buy English food of optimum quality. Low cost groceries, simple, fast and reliable delivery service are some of the unique advantages of buying groceries from this online mega shop.

The reason why you should buy English food from British Online is its hassle free shopping. Its simple login process ensures that you do not need another username or password to be burdened with. The shopping cart software used by the store falls in the category of latest state of art. Through this software, you can easily add products to your shopping basket. Once you choose the products and make the payment, the highly professional team at online supermarket leaves no stone unturned to buy English food which is the best in the market for you. Online payment is done here through an extremely secured gateway. The products are delivered on the same day of order and payment.

The tasting event was hosted by the owners Sara (pictured) and Pat Lee. The husband and wife team were quick to make everyone feel at home and seemed like proud parents of their new restaurant. Bacardi helped host their event to showcase their Dragonfruit flavored rum (see ice sculpture). They were there showcasing some of the mix drinks, very tasty, I liked the tonic/soda/rum with a squeeze of lime it was nice light and refreshing. Sara and Pat were very generous and gracious hosts we had plenty to sample and from the looks of the menu we had only touched the tip of the iceberg.

The first wave consisted of a series of basic dim sum dishes, this was good as it gave me a good basis to compare. The trio on the left was pork and shrimp Shao Mai, Char Siu Bao, Ha Gau (shrimp dumplings) next to that we have a clasic fried shrimp ball, and a closer shot of the Shao Mai (sometimes spelled shui mai). Quick commentary, I really enjoyed the Shao Mai the best, most places the wrapper is over cooked and falling apart and the insides are ground up too finely. The texture on this Shao Mai had healthy large (identifiable) chunks of shrimp and pork and had a very fresh substantial and clean taste. The Char Siu Bao had a light fluffy bread rather than the more dense-need-to-drink-tea-to-wash-it-down texture and the light sweetness of the bbq pork was pretty darn good. The Shrimp Dumplings were also well executed, perhaps the freshness of delivery helped, sometimes at bad dim sum the rice wrapper for the dumpling is too hard or worse over cooked and falling apart. The fried shrimp balls had a nice light crispy (not oily) taste and really good flavor. I got a copy of their usual dim sum menu and am eager to try some of the um… more traditional items.

Baoding is upscale and has a great modern, peaceful and relaxing atmosphere. The wait staff is very friendly and does a great job of actually making a little bit of conversation. It seems to me that in many chinese restaurants, the wait staff just barely tries to break through the language barrier and just gets the order the best they can. Of course, this comment only applies to those chinese restaurants with chinese employees – some have American wait staff. I imagine this helps the employees at Baoding become better at communicating with English speaking people in general – thus, increasing the accuracy of the orders.

To start with, I had the hot and sour soup. It was wonderful, although I am sure it was the best I have had. It was more spicey than most, and I wasn’t sure 100% why the word sour was even in the name.

I can’t remember what my main course was called, and it is not on their online menu. The closest thing I can remember was Pineapple Shrimp. While I may not recall the exact name, it was outstanding. If you love pineapple, and you love shrimp, you HAVE to get this. It was served on a split pineapple which was stuffed full of jumbo shrimp, pineapple, snow peas, pepper and onions. This dish is definately going on my favorite dishes list.

My wife had Beef & Broccolli. She always gets Beef & Broccolli at Chinese restaurants. It is the only Chinese food she will eat. In other words, she is quite the expert on Beef & Broccolli. She liked the dish, but did not think it was drastically better than some of the cheaper places she has had it at.

Another note, is that it isn’t that kid-friendly. They have no kid’s menu or chicken nuggest. You can get the sweet & sour chicken (the closest thing to a chicken nugget) as a substitute. My son seems to enjoy that, but I don’t know if he bought the whole idea of the “red ranch” that we tried to sell him as the dipping sauce.

My thoughts on Chinese food were derived from an experience that I had yesterday. I had breakfast at a small diner owned and operated by Chinese people. The meal that I had was an American egg and cheese omelet with hash browns… oh…and a side order of 3 pancakes (I like my meals large). The food was average but this post isn’t a review of what I ate.

This post is actually about my thoughts while eating American food in a Chinese diner. The question that came to mind was about Chinese food. This question is an age old question that can be applied to countless other ethnic foods. Is a food considered Chinese food just because the chef who cooked the meal is Chinese? Of course, Chinese food is the food that originated from the ethnic culture of the Chinese. But really what I am questioning is other foods in addition to what we already know to be popularly considered Chinese food. Can a non traditional Chinese food be considered Chinese food if prepared by a Chinese chef?

This question may sound stupid (and it did to me at first) but the more that I thought about it the more that I could not find an answer. Let me elaborate.

A Chinese chef may have been trained to use the ingredients and styles of the ways of the Chinese. Thus, any food that he or she creates will have at minimum some connection to the tastes of Chinese food as we know it. So in my case yesterday I ate a breakfast platter that is traditionally known to be an American meal. How can you make an omelet taste like Chinese food? The chef who prepared this omelet did though. There were subtle hints of a Chinese chef through the works of the meal. For example, I am sure that MSG was used as I could taste it throughout. Or how about the cheese being put on top of the omelet instead of inside neatly tucked away like the traditionally American style?

The point that I am making is how far do we draw the line when we define an ethnic food. Better yet, what is American food? Most American dishes are in fact derivatives of other cultures. The hamburger, for example, actually was derived from Hamburg, Germany. But the Americans have become known for the meal because of their style of the way it is cooked and the marketing behind it. If you apply this same analogy to my omelet, why wouldn’t you be able to consider that a Chinese omelet. Yes it is normally considered an American platter but another ethic group has now influenced the norm by cooking this platter with their own culture’s style. Who knows – in 50 years the American pancake may be considered a Chinese dish.

The honey chicken that I ordered tonight was delicious for the price. When I say for the price I mean it literally. If you gave me the same meal and charged double the price than it wouldn’t taste as good. Yes, this is possible. Price does influence taste, unless the food is exceptionally good.

Anyway, the honey chicken that I ate tonight had its own style. Some Chinese food places cook honey chicken by slapping a honey glaze on the chicken’s crispy exterior. This honey chicken was chicken in a semi honey soup. That is, the honey sauce was semi diluted with a water base. The way it was done was acceptable. With so many styles to cooking this dish, I believe that there is no one right way to do it. This style was very tasty and worked even better when I put rice in its sauce. I then ate the rice with the honey chicken to achieve the optimal effect.

I also ate hot and sour soup with the honey chicken. I ordered a quart of each. The hot and sour soup was cooked nice but had a little too much tofu. I don’t like when they prepare hot and sour soup with too much tofu. It hides the other ingredients’ taste.

So today I went to a Chinese dim sum restaurant. For any of you who don’t know what dim sum is let me give you my American explanation. Dim sum is a type of Chinese restaurant that serves various displays of Chinese food in a cart that they bring to your table. The Chinese dim sum has a large variety of food that you can choose from. This is different than the traditional style that allows you to order off of the Chinese menu. With Dim sum there is no Chinese menu. You will select whatever food that is already prepared and provided as a selection. From my experiences, there are usually no more than 50 different types of Chinese food samples to choose from.

Dim sum food is also different then the food from the Chinese menu in that they usually only serve certain types of Chinese food that would be considered Chinese food appetizers. What I mean is that you won’t usually find a bird’s nest soup or a Chinese pizza at a dim sum. These restaurants have a certain standard of their samples and it usually is this way all across the industry. Most of the dim sums that I have been to usually serve the same Chinese food appetizers on their cart. I am sure that there are probably restaurants that are out there that serve almost anything that is Chinese but I have yet to be at one of them. Not to be mistaken is the fact that if you don’t like something served at the dim sum then you can order off of the menu and get something else to eat. But dim sum itself is usually limited.

So where does dim sum come from? Dim sum is translated as “touch the heart” and is a Chinese tradition of eating a group of light meals usually in the day time. Dim sum Chinese food is served with tea (which has its roots in the Chinese tradition of Yum Cha or to drink tea). Both tea and dim sum light food are equally important in the dim sum tradition.