Thoughts on 谭鱼头火锅 - Tanyutou Hotpot restaurant
Just got back! As mentioned, I took Nudge to 谭鱼头火锅 - Tanyutou Hotpot Restaurant tonight. Here are some more links about the restaurant:
http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/en/beijing/stories/new%20eats_2004_12
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-05/03/content_328029.htm
I was pretty pleased because I managed to book a table with no problems and I got there with some time to spare. I had emailed Nudge the address in Chinese in advance and he had printed it out so he could go there.
I never thought I'd be eating fish-head but there you go. I'm not sure why, but we had a private room and the staff were extremely friendly. It's a huge restaurant with a food food store downstairs and a massive foyer for the restaurant which resembles a hotel foyer. As you walk in the door, waitresses with walkie talkies flank you - four on each side. I was shown straight to a private room.
Nudge was running late so I pulled out my textbooks and started studying. When he came, we started ordering. The headline dish is the ... fish head in the hotpot, so I ordered that. Basically there is a huge hole in the middle of the table in which a brass bowl is placed. They put the soup in there to boil. The colour is sort of like this:
I picked the soup base - a red hot pepper soup base because Nudge said he could hot eat food. When the soup base came out it looked very hot. It was a very dark red spicy colour. There were small onions, ginger, all sorts of spices and "things" floating around in it! We also ordered what would be placed in our bowls - being the speciality five spices. You pour the soup on top of the five spices in your bowl. One of the fresh spices was amazing - it tasted a lot like citrus and it had a very sharp and refreshing flavour. The interesting thing was that the flavour was very elusive so as you try to identify what you're tasting, it seems to vanish and then return again. Nudge bit a chilli and made his mouth numb.... Then he started to cry. :)
As well as the fishhead, we selected other things to place in the hotpot:
- tender beef
- tofu
- Japanese mushrooms
- strange spinach. Very yummy but it looked more like choco or some kind of melon. It was slightly crispy and very refreshing.
- sausagey things
So we threw all the things in the pot. Nudge lost his ladle into the hotpot at one stage so one of the giggling waitressses came to fish it out again.
I drank HUGE quantities of mineral water because the hotpot was very very hot and spicy. Nudge ordered a Beijing beer called 燕京 (Yanjing). I forgot to ask him if it was any good. He was really nice and had printed out some articles in Chinese for me. I don't have a printer here in Beijing and I need some articles for my reading class. Dad found me some great articles but I couldn't print them out and I didn't feel like going to a grungy internet cafe again ... He also delivered face cream to me from Hera to stop the dessication of my skin ;) It was a good night except he was trying really, REALLY hard to get me to commit to rejoining The Firm. I changed the topic every single time he raised it, but he was pretty persistent. He said a few other partners will want to meet up with me when they come to Beijing as well so I have to make sure I ask Hera not to disclose my number to everyone ..........
I got quite full but Nudge kept plugging away and fishing out more food (no pun intended). The fish head was really nice - although as you would expect, there is not a great deal of flesh on a fish head ...... It seems odd to go to so much trouble but apparently it's good for you. Funny thing is, I haven't spoken so much since I got my voice back so was quite hoarse by the end of tonight. I do speak Chinese a lot but that's usually in shorter bursts. This was a continuous conversation that went on for several hours.
For dessert I ordered my favourite 馒头 (mantou) with condensed milk. It came to RMB218 (USD26.33 / AUD33.32)for two people which is the most expensive meal I've had here so far!!! Usually the most expensive is RMB40 (USD 4.8 / AUD6.11) if I go to the sculpteasy cafe and lunch with friends on campus is usually about RMB8 (USD 0.96 / AUD1.2) to RMB18 (USD2.17 / AUD2.75). To be honest, apart from weekends, I don't need to spend more than RMB20 per day on food which is ridiculously cheap ...... I could go even cheaper if I wanted to but I really don't feel the need!
So then we left the restaurant. It was only 10.15pm or so but it was almost completely deserted and they had turned off the lights. Clearly Beijing isn't like HK - things close early here. I hopped in a cab and went home and was swapping superstition stories with the cab driver. I was telling him about how you're supposed to say "bless you" after someone sneezes 3 times. Actually I can never remember if it is 3 times or just once. Anyway he says Chinese people say:
- 1 sneeze means someone is thinking of you
- 2 sneezes means someone is badmouthing you behind your back
- 3 sneezes means you have flu / a cold :)
I got back home and Nudge phoned in a bit of a panic. He had given the driver a card to take him back to the hotel but it had both Grand Hyatt and also the Great Wall Sheraton. He goes: "I think I'm lost - I have a horrible feeling he's taking me to the Great Wall!!!" he said in a panic - meaning, the actual Great Wall of China :)
I tried not to giggle and checked my guidebook to see how to say Grand Hyatt in Chinese and spoke to the driver who said: "We're not lost, I'm taking him to the Grand Hyatt!!!" So I told Nudge to relax and he'd be there soon. It was quite funny but then I guess it must be really, really scary not to be able to understand ANYTHING ..... Still, my colleague Scott who speaks no mandarin at all managed to travel through Sichuan and Yunnan successfully without any mishaps by simply pointing to things in the Lonely Planet Phrasebook. I guess he was luckier than me. If you remember, when I tried to do that during my Voiceless Period, I either encountered people with bad eyesight or people who were illiterate!!!
Anyway it was a good night. He wants me to meet up again tomorrow night and also Thursday night, go for drinks on Friday and then accompany him and his wife to the Great Wall on Saturday but I don't think I can. I've got a few things to sort out and yet another 2 ex bosses to meet up with as both Lynette and Michelle are in town this week!!!! While I was eating, Julian phoned and was trying to organise a time when he could come and visit me but it would have been rude to talk to him while I was having dinner with Nudge so I'll have to speak to him later!! I hope he comes soon!!!