2.330
1 (Thu) December 2011
Sautéed Scallop with Celery and Cashew Nut
1.0
at Jumbo Kingdom
-Hong Kong, China Special Administrative Region-
with conference participants
Research Trip to China (Day 2 of 4)
In Hong Kong. With a contingent from AUSOM, we are here to attend the Frontiers in Medical and Health Sciences Education Conference (Friday and Saturday), hosted by the University of Hong Kong Li Kai Shing Faculty of Medicine. I delivered a presentation on my health ethics course.
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- Day 1 (2.330 Har Gao)
- Day 2 (2.331 Sautéed Scallop with Celery and Cashew Nut)
- Day 3 (2.332 Xiao Long Bao)
- Day 4 (2.333 Roast Duck)
AFTERNOON TEA
DINNER
Jumbo Kingdom is a Cantonese restaurant. More notably, it’s a floating restaurant on a gigantic 3-story boat anchored about 200 meters off the southern coast of Hong Kong, accessible only by a proprietary ferry that shuttles customers to and from a dock on the island. For novelty and seating capacity, the place is a common if not default destination among tourists and large gatherings, especially large gatherings of tourists. Everyone that I’ve talked to who’s been to Hong Kong on any kind of official business has been to Jumbo Kingdom; W has been there twice.
It was the venue for the gala dinner following the first day of the conference. The meal consisted of 11 courses, ranging from pretty good to mediocre. Way way overpriced at $500 HKD per person. Each person was required to pay out of pocket for the privilege.
Having traveled abroad on numerous occasions with large groups of Koreans, I’ve observed that Korean travelers in general experience immense difficulty adjusting to the local food. I attribute this to 2 factors.
First, Korea’s banchan (반찬) culture necessitates that every meal, Korean or otherwise, be accompanied by some form of spicy/sour/salty side dish. Kimchi is the most common example, while pizza is always eaten with sweet pickles, fried chicken with pickled radish cubes, etc. Koreans are dependent on banchan as an essential component of the meal. Without banchan, the meal feels uncomfortably incomplete. This is why kimchi is sold in single-serving travel packets at the airport.
Second, most foreign foods coming into Korea are immediately Koreanized by adjusting the seasonings and removing any unfamiliar spices. In fact, main dishes are preemptively prepared a bit bland in anticipation of the spicy/sour/salty side dish that will inevitably come with. Koreans are often shocked upon tasting the foods in their authentic forms. This is why many traveling Koreans carry around tubes of gochujang, conveniently provided on Korean/Asiana Airlines, to be mixed in with whatever food comes their way for on-the-go Koreanization.
This difficulty with the local food is most evident when Koreans go to China. No jjajang-myeon, for one thing. The Chinese food in Korea, resulting from a divergent culinary evolution, is unlike Chinese food in China or elsewhere in the world. Koreans, who regard this Koreanized Chinese food as the real deal and eat it on a regular basis, second only to Korean food, and thus consider themselves to be aficionados, are bewildered and disappointed when served Chinese authentic fare bearing no resemblance to what they’ve grown accustomed to. A student of mine, who’d visited China over his summer break, said to me when he got back, “There’s no Chinese food in China.” Which wouldn’t be so bad if banchan were available. Chinese restaurants in Korea all serve pickled daikon radish, as well as raw onions with black bean sauce. In the absence of either, the food is perceived by Koreans as being overly oily to the point of being unpalatable.
And for reasons mainly pertaining to the simpler style of preparation and lack of heavy sauces, Koreans have the worst time with Cantonese in particular. Personally, I favor Cantonese because it’s so light and therefore demands keener attention to the purity of the ingredients, especially when seafood is involved. The scallop dish featured here, for example, represented a fine balance of the soft and succulent scallops, the crispy and fragrant celery, and the crunchy and nutty cashews, no sauce, no gimmick, nothing more, nothing less. But to the uninitiated, it could’ve seemed boring.
My colleagues griped throughout the entire service, not because the food was bad per se but because they kept comparing it to Chinese food in Korea, which they agreed was far superior, and came with banchon.
MIDNIGHT SNACK
Seeing as how dinner had been so skimpy, I went out for a snack after getting back to the hotel. Just down the street, an all-nite diner had menus with photos.
I thought that I was ordering stir-fried egg noodles with seafood but ended up with deep-fried vermicelli with squid. Close enough. $39 HKD. Good enough.theme
(See also FOODS)
(See also PLACES)
