The Great Quest

December 5th, 2006, 10:53 pm PST by Greg

Last week, I was talking to a faculty member on exchange from China. He drove home something I knew, but had never really thought too much about: “Chinese” isn’t a very precise description of anything. That is, there are a lot of cultural differences between parts of the country.

So that got me thinking, which didn’t do any good, because I don’t really know anything about the subject at hand. That got me reading Wikipedia.

In my travels, I came across the Wikipedia article on Chinese Cuisine. In particular, the blue bar down the right of the page that lists types of Chinese cuisine caught my eye. There are apparently “eight great traditions” of chinese cuisine. I know something about some of them, but there are definitely some gaps.

So, I propose a quest: The quest to find and consume representative samples of each of the eight great traditions. This seems like a good city to do it: there are decent numbers from at least some of the regions. I should be able to find some restaurants, right?

Who’s with me? Anybody have good leads on restaurants? (Opinions not accepted from people who speak English with a Canadian accent—go ask your grandmother.)

Kat’s family is Fujian. Cantonese should be easy enough. There are plenty of Szechuan restaurants, so I’m sure I can find somebody with an informed opinion around somewhere. Our partner school in the DDP program is in Zhejiang, so hopefully I can find somebody with some insight. That’s four.

One Response to “The Great Quest”

  1. yang Says:

    I’ve noticed that it’s quite difficult finding authentic non-Cantonese food in restaurants around here.

    Although my family is not big on the eat-out-once-a-while thing, we do enjoy a good Chinese meal cooked by someone else from time to time, but, in all the years being here, we’ve never heard of much less been to a restaurant that did authentic Shandong cuisine.

    For what it’s worth, I’m familiar with making northern-style jiaozi and huntun (northern style wonton?). As for everything else I remember having eaten as a child, they’re all either too complicated to prepare, not very exciting, or will gross people out.