Eating without chopsticks...

So I'm seeing that China has a tale of two cities like any other country. Russia has Moscow and St. Petersburg, America has New York and LA, and my latest conquest Beijing and Shanghai. Now they both do have their benefits, but as is the case, people have their favorites. This is no secret to some people in my group: I'm not especially fond of Shanghai. It's a nice city, very modern, but it could be any other big city. This is the reason that I have not included much information about some of the sights I have seen. The thing that has bothered me the most is that, through my own choices, I've not eaten at as many true Chinese places.

Case in point, our outing to the Brazilian Steakhouse. While this was a reasonably priced meal, more meat than I've ever seen/eaten in one setting, and there were at least 2 servers that could have actually been from Brazil, I forgot that I was in China. I do give the restaurant high marks for creativity and flair. Never before in my life have I had two people cutting meat of a two foot skewer and letting it drop right to my plate. Some of the meat was identifiable (duck, bacon wrapped chicken, roast beef) and some was not (there was this rare meat that melted in one's mouth) but they were all amazing. There was even a French fry man if you did not have time between meat on a stick guys to make it to the buffet. Oh yes, there was also a buffet.

Food is always a great adventure and what each person's favorites turn out to be are a fun and interesting thing to find out. I never though that I would like green tea, but my beverage of choice (besides Tsing Tao beer) is a sweet green tea drink. There's going to be a suitcase full of it if I have my way. We are debating weather it will be available in the States, but I'd have to pay $2 as opposed to the 20 cents that I'm paying for a bottle now. There is also a small food shop that has some amazing little bread ball dumplings with meat in the center. I stop every time I go to the Metro no matter what the time of day.

The most disgusting thing that I've eaten thus far isn't really that bad, it's just strange. Earlier this week one of my friends was making a trip to the convenience store. I didn't want to go, so I have him money and clear instructions on what I wanted. He came back with an ice cream bar as I had asked but not the brand I was looking for. Thinking that ice cream was ice cream, I looked at the wrapper and noticed that there was a picture of what appeared to be potatoes. These days one sees many strange things on packaging so I opened it up and took a bite. If you ever wondered if frozen chocolate covered mashed potatoes were a good idea, this girl can assure you that no really it's not. The infernal thing was passed around and everyone agreed that it did indeed smell like potatoes. It went straight to the garbage and I went to the store to get the one I wanted.