When we went to visit Mia's orphanage, the nannies and director went to lunch with us. Lunch in Cantonese restaurants is really an adventure as you have to be very careful about what you select. We had one across the street from the hotel. The only way I could eat there was to walk in with my face away from the aquariums in the front that had the live things that they would pick out, kill and then cook. What I came to realize very quickly was that if it ever walked, breathed, crawled or slithered and wasn't human or was a piece of any of the aforementioned, it is Cantonese cuisine. They had "sand worms". They had beetles, some type of maggot looking thing and the meanest lobster you ever saw. They had ostrich kidney. Oddly, the rest of the ostrich was never on the menu. Guess they export that. They had chicken feet and in this finer restaurant, boneless chicken feet. They had duck comb. But, the worst was some caterpillar tomato worm looking thing that showed up everywhere as a delicacy, cooked whole and served in a rice dish or in a very expensive soup with shark fin which is a gelatinous substance that is highly prized. Looks just awful. Almost like spilled and then dried hair gel. Um mm. Vegetarian wasn't a term they were used to. I'm thinking they probably still use those caterpillars as seasoning in the green bean dish that was actually quite good and widely available.
So, when we went to lunch in YangJiang, I had the fried steamed buns which had two benefits. First, they are fried dough. How can that be wrong? Second, I could stab the little suckers on a chopstick and get it to my mouth without wearing it. I also had some of the pork dish. Turns out it was sweet & sour pork rinds. Pig skin in sauce. Mmmm. At least it wasn't the fancy plate of sliced pig ears. Don't know how they were spiced but am guessing it doesn't matter.
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