Guang Zhou Food Hunt - 广州银记肠粉店

Rachel's friend came meet us up while we were walking around the Beijing walking street mall 北京路步行街.

She then lead us to this shop which I won't have any idea how to get there unless someone tells us where it is. There were like thousands of shops around and I could have miss this shop easily.

银记肠粉店 (Yin Ji Chang Fen Dian, directly translate as Yin Ji steamed cheong fun shop) is where she led us to. It is just behind the Beijing streetmall.

The shop was filled with people for breakfast, lunch and dinner selling on few things.

Hand made steamed chee cheong fun, with cabbage and stirr fried beef inside. The cabbage and beef combination is gives really surprising good flavoring, coupled with thin but stretchable steamed rice skin. I have not tasted good Canton style steam cheong fun for very long and I really like this.

The Canton porride is known for their savory tasting and has combination on century egg + mince pork, or just fish, or plain chicken. The main character of a good cantonese porridge would be the finely boiled rice till a point you don't see the grain. This shop has very good porridge that is hardly too salty, very healthy.

Of course, Cantonese porridge won't be complete without the deep fried You Tiao 油条.

We had a very good appetizer as well - Stewed beef brisket in secret sauce (I named it myself, heh)

Even the HK food critic Choy Lan, 蔡澜 came here before. This place has won many awards and they decided to hang it all up. Heh...

A must go I'd say when you are ever around this part of the town.

Posting from Guang Zhou China

Came to here for a week as we were having a Gene Expression instrument training. I was already knowing this is not gonna be easy when I search the Wikimapia and found the training location is at a distance from the main Guang Zhou city...

It is lcoated at this University City 广州大学城, which is like an Island between the river, with like few universities all moved into this new place. Rather spacious, rather isolated.

Very quiet here, since students have yet to return from holiday.

I don't think anyone cares if I decide in the middle of the road, no cars, no taxi, bus comes irregularly...

To my surprise, the hotel is actually decently built. But still the breakfast is bad... imagine for chinese breakfast you are given watery rice porridge, as well as a plate of noodle fried noodle (.i.e. mee goreng kosong?)

To walk to class, it is 15min.

Mango Tree

To walk to nearest store, is 10min

To walk to nearest eatery, is 20min

To walk to nearest subway, is 30min.

My leg aches on the last day I am here.

We hurried to town on Wednesday, by first walking 30min to subway station, then change train 2 times, and then took a 10min cab to find civilization. Came to this famous Cantonese restaurant 彩衣酒楼 at 天润路.

Think Anthony (orange shirt) and Tony feel great relieve with decent palatable Cantonese cuisine is served. Anthony is quick to snatch the menu to order great food. I think he deserve a credit for that.

But the food didn't come cheap, we paid like RMB 600 for such few dishes... but Anthony thinks it is normal...

Cantonese style mushroom soup

Guangdong pride fish - Guai Fah Fish 桂花鱼

Stewed Chinese Bun

Strange food serve here again, crocodile meat for soup...

But class was fun. Managed to learn many important yet new things. Met some nice people from here, like Tony from Taiwan, and few China base staffs, and customers

Almost like having a Chinese cultural crash course. Finding Malaysia mandarin are so rojak that I must always translate the word in english to chinese so they can understand me. Learn many new chinese science terms too, haha...

Since this place is out of no where, pretty much have to get lunch delivered to us. Though isolated, there's a fairly big shopping malls for the student about 5km away that has fast food restaraunts.

Some days we had this Chinese fast food call Zhen Kung Fu 真功夫. It emphasize on their food nutrient is maintain as they are all steam. Set usually comes one meat dish, veg, rice and a bowl of double boiled soup. Taste good actually.

This month promotion, mushroom abalone sauce as appetizer

Some days we ended up with KFC. I think China people actually like to eat fast food as I have a feeling that these junk foods are a luxury around here.

KFC here doesn't taste good at all, the coating taste nothing but bland. But the chicken taste better without the chicky taste. Thus I like their zinger burger actually.

We went to town again on our last day here. Managed to walk around and shop too.

At Beijing Walking Streetmall 北京路步行街

Rachel's favorite, double-skinned steamed milk custard 顺的双皮奶

I was happy to get some chinese novels. Book price in China is really hard to beat. I'd load my whole suitcase with them if there wasn't this 20kg weight limit from Airasia. Apart from that, I've also bought a lot of tidbits and instant mee. I know I know, don't start me with the China made goods are dangerous okay... :P

Rachel's routine grocery shopping in China ?!

We went for foot massage on our last night as well in town.

Foot massage center here are very different from Malaysia, it is more like a health club.

Blame its bad quality on the incapability of Nokia N73, grr...

Its front is a tea selling counter, and behind they have foot massage room, mahjong room, card game place room which can also be a discussion place while sipping tea. I suspected gambling is a known activity around here... heh.

Wandering in Xiamen Morning Market 廈門逛菜市

I came to Xiamen for a short meeting few days ago. My colleague and I found ourselves rather unsatisfied as we spent most of our time in the Sofitel. It might have been the best hotel within Xiamen for the last two years, but most of us would agree that international chain hotel generally have very little local flavors offered. It is not surprising that we were actually fed poorly by the hotel cafe, be it the morning buffet breakfast or the lunch and gala dinner later on.

We had a whole morning free on our last day prior our flight back to KL. Lew, my colleague suggested that we could take a peek at the local life and the best place for that would be at the local market!

Clever him too, that he thought about asking the tour guide on our city tour where we could find a wet market that is full of local flavor. The guide told us to go to Area No.8 market （第八區菜市場）. It is actually just nearby the Zhongshan Road shopping strip as well as the jetty to Gulang Island.

The next day, we quickly had simple breakfast in hope we could find something nice to eat at the market. Got on to the taxi and told him that we need to get to this market. He didn't seem too please why tourist like us would want to go to dirty wet smelly market.

When he dropped us off at this old looking area, the outer open air part of the market was already hustling and bustling from afar.

So many things on sale here. This market is very very well known for its live seafood trading. We caught glimpse of many unknown fishes, clams, shrimps, and even worm... Lew said he saw on tv before that these worms were actually made into seafood salad and taste like chicken feed kerabu. Hmmm... I don't know if I would eat that really.

Selling fresh seaweed. Lew says soup made with this taste pretty good

There are specialty stalls too...

Just selling bamboo shoots

And concentrade on mushrooms and nothing else.

Vegetables here are so cheap, pricing lingering on RMB 0.50 for like 1kg or so.

Lew and Kong ended up finding great quality dried scallops at RMB80/500g, they quickly bought some while I just continue lurking around like a genuine tourist.

Rare food source are found here for sure, sigh. Which includes Pigeon, frogs, rabbits, peasants, quils.

I like my duck meat, but not enough to see it killed right in front of my eye since it look beautiful like this. Hypocrite me... want the whole cake and not eat it.

Ok, these birds are not for food but for hobby use...

The main market was not that large, but it gets extend to the open air area right till alleys where local stays.

We wander all of this market trying to look for a decent place for seafood-on-the-spot but there is just none around. Even the steamed dimsums and roast duck was for take away. Nonetheless we really enjoyed our visit here, and that makes us remember Xiamen in its unique way rather than sterile tall buildings that looks the same everywhere in metropolitan China.