The Xiao Yang Blog

Eating your way through the Chinese Zodiac

In all of the discussions I've seen, heard, and participated in about Chinese New Year dining traditions, I've never heard it suggested that eating the animal the upcoming year was named for would be an appropriate tribute to the new year. But why not devour the namesake creature of the spent year?  I'll be doing just that come Tuesday night, in fact, because we areleaving the year of the pig behind. 

The coming year is the year of the Rat and it occurred to me that I somehow have collected a photo essay on preparing and cooking rats, and I recall a National Geographic photo of a deli in Guangzhou showing barbecued rats hanging alonside the ducks and and bbq pork.   USDA Choice rat might be hard to come by in the US, but in New York, at least, one can score guinea pig (a rodent relative) at Ecuadorean delis, and there's probably some other edible rodent around that I'm not recalling at the moment.

Is it possible, I wonder, to eat one's way around the whole Chinese zodiac? Well, let's see.  Starting withe easy stuff, we also have chicken (Rooster), which everone who is not a vegetarian has eaten. Almost as many people have eaten Ox (that's cow to you and me).  Boar/pig?  Starting with our breakfast bacon.  Sheep is mighty tasty, especially on a skewer.  That gets us to Horse, which is widely available in French Canada, even in tartare form, which I've had at a fast-food frites chain. (Disclaimer: I downed a coule of beers first.)   Snake? I've had that, too, in Shanghai, in  a soup.  A little clam chowdery, it was. Dog? I've yet to have the opportunity, though many have eaten man's best friend.  The eating of Monkey in China has been documented, though the horror stories about eating it raw from the freshly cracked scull of a live monkey have never been proven to be anything but urban myths.  I have no idea what a Tiger steak would taste like, but I'm sure at least some part of a Tiger has been eaten in Asia, though I won't speculate publicly on which part.

After the above-mentioned Rat, that brings us to Dragon.  Hmm, isn't that on the endangered species list?

Shanghai Restaurant -- letdown in Oaktown

Shanghai Restaurant (Shanghai Xiao Chi, in Chinese) In Oakland's Chinatown, has long been one of my favorite places to be when I pine for Shanghai.  It has the most uncompromisingly Shanghainese menu, top to bottom, I've seen in the US and on the many occasions when the air is filled with energetic  banter in the musical Shanghainese dialect  it's easy to imagine oneself in a small family-run restaurant in Hongkou or what used to be Nanshi.  Specials posted on the wall (on fish-shaped pieces of paper) often promise the vegetable delicacy jiaobai, beloved by Shanghainese, but not to be found anywhere else in the US that I can recall.

Unfortunately, authenticity is no guarantee of excellence, and when six of us descended on it on Boxing day and ordered up a storrm, it became evident that the cooking at Shanghai Xiao Chi had seen better days.  The xiaolong bao, the cold appetizers and the red-cooked pork joint were decent, but the other dishes reflected a desultory preparation and lack of flavor.  My Shanghainese wife could have done better on about half ot the dishes and for once I wasn't dissembling when I agreed with her on that score.

I'll probably still hit Shanghai Xiao Chi at lunchtime once in a while for the xiaolong bao and more than passable salty soy milk soup.  But return for dinner, and experience an authentic mediocre Shanghainese family-style restaurant dining experience?  The yearning may never reach that level.