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Whew, lots of events this week and plenty of pictures to be had. Tonight’s event, I was invited to Fortune Chinese seafood restaurant, it’s been open for four months now and is ensconced in the Chinatown Center in north Austin. They’ve taken over a previous restaurant and redesigned and hired a new executive chef hailing from Los Angeles. The menu looks very authentic and I for sure will be returning to order just about one of everything on the menu (perhaps with camera covertly in tow ). The restaurant is huge, boasting 9000 square feet of banquet space and a fairly good sized bar to the side. They pride themselves on serving dim sum seven days a week (one cart on the week day, but full on Friday thru Sunday) and specialize on Chinese seafood straight from the tank.

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.

Still looking for ideas for treats for Halloween? Baked Wonton Wrappers (pictured in the photo) are very easy to make – the wonton wrappers are dusted with sugar and topped with almond halves before baking. Meanwhile, Bow Ties are egg roll wrappers that have been knotted like a bow tie, quickly deep-fried and then dipped in a brown sugar syrup. The deep-fried wrappers can also be lightly dusted with icing sugar.

There are a bunch of guides to eating out in Beijing including a workmanlike Zaggat and recommendations from the English-language weekly city magazines like City Weekend, The Beijinger etc. The trouble with these efforts, worthy though they are, is twofold: a) they are heavily oriented to expats living in Beijing, so will have list upon list of spaghetti and meatballs/pizza  joints that most visitors have zero interest in knowing about; and b) when it comes to Chinese restaurants the reviewers, be they the magazine’s readers or in-house reviewers, often don’t have much of an idea what they are eating and stick to safe and boring know-quantities, missing out on 99 percent of the tens of thousands of restaurants in Beijing. That has always struck me as a waste in a city that surely boats the greatest range of Chinese cuisine on offer anywhere. But the one exception when it comes to reviewers has always been Eileen Mooney, who reviews for various magazines as well as writing about food for international publications and really knows her stuff. She recently published Beijing Eats, which describes itself quite accurately as the definitive guide to eat Chinese food in the capital. As you’ll see from the pages below, not only does she give a handy guide to the food of different regions before recommending the best places to eat that style of cooking in the city, each section also has a cheat sheet of the region’s most famous dishes. An invaluable resource for visitor and resident alike and a steal at RMB 100. (Eileen has also now started her own blog at eileeneats.com)

I visited Baoding the other day for the first time in years. I got to thinking about how long it had been there, and did some research. It has been at that location for 15 years now (since 1993). For those that are unfamiliar with Baoding, it is an upscale chinese restaurant located in Southpark (4722-F Sharon Road; in the plaza with Barne’s & Noble’s). Most of my past visits to Baoding have been for lunch – mostly when I worked in Southpark. This time, I went for dinner.

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.

This post is about my current thoughts on Chinese food. I have been absent from this blog lately because I have other food blogs that I manage. In particular, my flagship blog is a pizza blog (please visit some time).

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.