Eating Out in Dalian

This was my third trip to Dalian, and each time we seem to get a little better at picking places to eat. We made another trip to the mega aquarium restaurant, this time with a Chinese speaker, and had a seafood bonanza of shrimp, scallops, crab, and fish we picked right out of the water…the presentations were incredible, and compared to the US, it was dirt cheap. I left my camera in the hotel, but I’m hoping my coworker that remembered his will hook me up with the pictures he shot of the nervous eels, frogs, turtles, and sea worms that were all trying to swim inconspicuously in their tanks.

We went to a Sichuan place for lunch one day…nothing fancy, just a little spot in the mall. It was packed with locals, and we had to improvise to get all six of us around a tiny table….the food was really spicy but tasty. Some of the dishes included the infamous Sichuan peppercorn…I’d prefer to call it the novacaine seed. One bite and its almost like you’ve made a surprise trip to the dentist to get a filling. Your mouth goes numb for about 3 minutes. I’m not sure why you’d choose to add these to your food unless it was really spicy or really disgusting…either of which likely in China, although the food was delicious this day, and Matt and I both had sweat running down our scalps by the end of the meal.

One of the little things I love most about traveling in China are the minor mis-translations and spelling errors. Or in some cases the translations that are a little too exact. For example, we passed a place advertising “Steamed dumpling stuffed with ovary and digestive glands of a crab”… We actually ordered the dish pictured, and while it was hot, the sheep was more tasty than odd.