November 2, 2005 Archives

A five months trip to HK does that to you: finally realize and have engraved in your mind that generic Cantonese/Szechuanese with such typical dishes as "egg rolls" or "general Tao chicken" (and let's not forget sweet and sour pork) is not equal to Chinese food, and really just a subset of it. Sure, the usual stuff does not vary much: the veggies are likely to be variants of Nappa cabbage, or bok choi or kai lan.

Shanghainese was something I often had at fancy restaurants my auntie took me to, with most place serving similar dishes, the make-or-break xiao long bao on top of my list. There's a whole entry dedicated to food I had in HK.

The trend these past two weeks has been Uyghur food. There's another place Wee found out, from listings on a food column on the Sino-Quebec website. People from other parts of China are slowing making up for decades/centuries of letting coastal China dominate in terms of immigration to Western countries. It's a nice thing, especially with the food. After that Manchurian place two years ago, and the few Uyghur ones, I'm looking forward to see in Montreal some real Shanghainese cuisine, some authentic Sichuanese, Yunnan, and other places I've never heard about.

The place we've been to is only identified as "Arzou", in English characters. It's at 6254 Avenue Côte-des-Neiges, down the slope from the Jewish Hospital, a block past the Jean-Coutu. The specialty seems to be the spicy mutton fondue, which is a spicy soup with typical flavours (with at least 10 whole pieces of garlic thrown in the mix) and lamb meat, lamb liver, some veggies and tofu for dip. $19.50 and it feeds two people (but we're greedy and had 4 largish 羊肉串 each, $1.49 apiece :P). With this sort of regime, all attempts to lose weight through exercising have been annihilated. >_>