Food in Zhuhai

Part of the reason we like to travel is to be able to see and eat different foods.  Eating has been a bit of a challenge for us in Zhuhai, being vegetarian and not being able to read most food tags or restaurant menus.  We also have limited cooking facilities in our apartment, with 2 gas burners, 2 skillets, 1 sauce pan (which we bought), 2 reasonably sharp kitchen knives, 2 cleavers and a cutting board. We shop at two grocery stores, a covered fresh market and some street markets within a mile or so of our apartment, and no one speaks English at any of them.  Still, we’ve been able to eat remarkably well.

It’s fun to wander through the markets.  Some of the items we’ve seen are: all sorts of fruits and vegetables, tofu, chunks of meat, fish heads, live chickens, ducks, turtles, frogs, other seafood, eels and some live songbirds.  Other areas of the market have clothes, shoes, towels, and kitchen items.  The markets are perhaps the most the most colorful and lively places we visit.

 

Variety of eggs - the black ones on the right are fermented

Dragonfruit and other interesting fruits

Our regular tofu ("doufu" in Chinese) vendor

We hope the back pots contain some sort of morel mushrooms and not brains...

When eating at a Chinese restaurant, the food is ordered for the table and served family style.  Bowls of food, generally with only one or a few ingredients, are brought out, and everyone shares the same food.  After our last trip to China we had become quite accomplished with chopsticks, and I think we have impressed our current hosts.

This region (Guangdong) is known for mushrooms, and lots of fresh and dried mushrooms are for sale.  On one of our first days here, we went for lunch with some university faculty at the local Mushroom Restaurant.  Mushrooms of all kinds, prepared many ways, came to the table.  At one point the server added raw mushrooms to boiling liquid in the middle of the table.  We ate other dishes as they were brought, then the server scooped out the now-cooked mushrooms into bowls for each of us.  Other types of mushrooms plus tofu were added several times and eventually we were served mushroom soup.  The whole meal was very good.

Eating at the Mushroom Restaurant

Many types of mushrooms at the markets

We had an adventure trying to find two vegetarian restaurants that we’d found out about online.  We got to the first address, but found a huge new building being constructed on the site.  We then walked to a second address, and found a restaurant but not a vegetarian one.  Still, we used our guidebook to show them the phrase “I am a vegetarian” and the waitress immediately understood.  She helped us choose several tasty vegetarian dishes, including an eggplant/green bean combination and some leek dumplings.

What we found at the address of a small local vegetarian restaurant

Food at second restaurant

We have also seen some unusual food products.  We went on an outing with our friends to a theme park in Zhuhai recreating the old and destroyed Yuen Ming palace (old summer palace) in Beijing. We saw a man making, or more accurately, drawing, caramelized sugar suckers on a marble slab, and another man crushing sugar cane to make cane juice (we tried this juice - it was quite tasty). We've also seen a few food-related signs that might have suffered in translation.

Turning sugar cane into drink

Yesterday we walked by a local seafood restaurant.  You could come out to tanks in front of the restaurant and pick out your fresh meal.  This restaurant also had some of the friendliest workers we've met.

Tanks at seafood restaurant for fresh food

 

After eating at several local restaurants and cooking somewhat Chinese style (rice or noodles, plus veggies, tofu and some nuts or sauce) for a week, we decided we needed a little variety.  On Sunday night we made French toast, and Paul washed it down with the local Haizhu beer.

The fruit and veggie contents of our refrigerator

An average dinner at our apartment

French toast and beer for a change