It’s time for a food post!

I shall show you lots of yummy photos of food that you won’t be able to find in Singapore because I know you like the sweet torture.

(Although I suppose it’s a bit unwise to post a food blog immediately after lunch hour, but then I haven’t had lunch! =P)

There’s this restaurant in Shenzhen just facing Days Inn Hotel which calls itself a seafood restaurant although the signature dish seems to be a chicken dish.

We only ate there because we had arrived hungry at Shenzhen at midnight and it was the only open eatery near our hotel. We had planned to have a light supper but once we saw the menu, everything changed.

Here’s a very nice appetiser dish which seems quite common in China:

My opinion on cucumbers has always been “No thanks”. I don’t mind them soaked in chicken rice sauce but I hate them raw.

China made me a cucumber lover. I think there’s a different breed of cucumbers there, juicy and crunchy without the icky raw taste that I hate. (Even better than Japanese cucumbers.)

Everywhere we go in China, if cucumber is on the menu, we order it. It always comes with very interesting sauces and condiments.

The signature chicken:

There’s a row of glistening juicy chickens just hanging at the storefront so you cannot not order this!

It’s really quite awesome, better than any chicken I’ve eaten in Singapore.

Why does food always taste better overseas?

Here’s a spicy Szechuan peppercorn (mala) dish which has a ton of yummy junk swimming in a spicy soup that will make your tongue numb and tingly:

Inside, we found lots of enoki mushrooms, luncheon meat (the good old traditional kind, not the rubbish we get after multiple luncheon meat bans over the years), bamboo slices and gelatinoid pig’s blood, which I don’t fancy so I left alone.

It’s one of those dishes that kill you (or rather, your tongue) while you eat it and yet you can’t stop eating it.

Salt and pepper (or something) pork ribs:

I think that’s all we ordered (with rice). We were only three people!

I wanted to take a photo of our hotel front but there wasn’t much of a front. There’s some kind of construction going on which makes everything look ugly.

There’s a very short walkway and steps past the Days Inn sign, and then you’re in the lobby already. But it’s a pretty nice hotel. Decent, comfortable and cheap. I think around the vicinity of S$100 per night for twin-sharing.

In the hotel, there’s a nice Chinese restaurant (on the second floor) that we like to go for dim sum breakfast. (In fact we visited the restaurant four years ago when we were holidaying in Shenzhen but staying in another hotel.)

I don’t remember the name of the restaurant but it’s easy to find once you’re in the hotel.

The one thing you shouldn’t order in that restaurant is this cute platter of dim sum. The menu shows this:

What you actually get is this:

The only thing nice on this platter is the swirly bun. It’s a salted egg custard bun and it’s the best thing in the restaurant!

I would fly back to Shenzhen again just to eat this!

If you ever go there, don’t order the har gao (steamed shrimp dumplings) because the skin is CMI. What you can order is the radish cake.

It’s the only radish cake I’ve eaten that actually tastes of radish!

You can also order the you tiao and the century egg congee. Those two go together very well. (No photo because I don’t like to take photos of common food.)

Okay, now that I have successfully given myself a major craving which I can’t satisfy any time within the immediate future, I shall go satisfy the other craving.

Guess what?