Ordering Regional Specialties: The Short Course

You’ve finally found a Chinese restaurant that you’re sure is authentic and you even know what regional cuisine it specializes in. You’re ready for adventure. But then you open the menu and are confronted with more than 100 items. Before you panic and order mu shu pork, consult this crib sheet:

CANTONESE: Beef tendons with anise: tendons of shin simmered for hours until they take on a wonderfully chewy quality. Flavor is very mild.

Lo hon jai with fat choy , sometimes called Buddha’s Vegetables: a combination vegetable dish that includes hair vegetable (exotic moss gathered from the northwestern desert).

Thousand-year-old eggs with pickled ginger: an appetizer.

Tripe combination with daikon : assorted innards, sometimes anise-flavored.

Pork cake with dried scallops.

Fried rice with dried fish: a good introduction to dried fish.

Ung choy with either fuh yee or shrimp sauce: It’s swamp spinach made with either fermented bean curd or shrimp sauce.

Dim sum : Try everything you see (especially from the roving grill carts) until you can eat no more.

HONG KONG: Pea shoots: a newly fashionable vegetable. It’s recently begun to appear on the menus of Hong Kong-style restaurants. The young shoots of the pea plant.

SHANGHAI: Vegetarian goose or duck: sheets of bean curd skin, sometimes stuffed with mushrooms, will resemble fowl while being tasty in their own right.

Fried milk or cream: egg whites with milk cooked until set with bits of chicken liver, pine nuts over fried cellophane noodles.

Jellied lamb: terrine of lamb in aspic, flavored with anise.

CHIU CHOW: Pan-fried oyster cake: omelet made of eggs, bean sprouts and plump oysters served with hot sauce. Essentially street food, but delicious.

SWEETS: Dou fo fa : custardy tofu that comes with warm syrup poured over it.

Sweet taro pudding with ginko nuts and red dates.