I've been thinking Should I write about the food here. Probably I'll do so across the next Several days.
I've Mentioned Before That I do not really like the food here. It's not really That it's all bad, it's just that There's not much Variety, and Especially Not Many vegetarian options, and What Are There Are Things FEW only okay, not great. And everything's all drenched in oil and all kind of the Same, and the vegetables cooked down to Are mushy, and I'm never really sure if There's some kind of animal byproduct lurking somewhere in the dish, Which kind of spoils the appetite.
Partly it's hard to Be sure about the animal content Because the servers never know, and kind of look at you strange when to ask you whether it's Things like pork fat or vegetable oil,or whether the broth is made from bone (Usually it is). But They Can Go ask, pero Given the frequency Which events OCCUR mistakes as blatant as telling you a dish has no meat in it, And Then it comes out with meat in it, It Does not lend a lot of confidence to the small things . Plus, after eight years or so as a vegetarian, I feel like I have a pretty good grip on What do vegetarian dishes and do not look like and taste like. Even When They Say So it's Purely vegetarian, I do not always take Their word for it. (Given how little Usually They know or care about it anyway.) Adjusting
hard también dishes. I do not know about Other parts of China, but here in Haikou, at least at the more inexpensive restaurants That I Tend to Frequent, There is just no culture of customizing dishs (or of, like I said, even having a good grip on the ingredients of the dishes) like there is in the allergy-conscious, special-needs-catering, picky-eater-serving, customer-is-always-right U.S. of A. So asking for a dish to be made, say, without using the bone broth - just use water instead - can turn into an argument about whether it's possible (yes it is; I've done it at this restaurant before) and often them telling you that it won't taste good (I'm aware the taste may not be the same*, but I'm vegetarian; you can either make it vegetarian or I won't eat it). Which is obviously a situation I avoid as much as possible.
Things have gotten better since I first arrived. Partly it's been finding more and more specific things that I can eat. At first, it was a matter of asking about everything and getting it wrong a lot (does this have meat in it? - yes - does this have meat in it? - yes - do you have something that doesn't have meat in it? - this one doesn't - okay I'll have that one ... ... ... and then it turns out it has meat in it). So I've found a lot of things I can eat now. Or, at least, several things. I still tend to eat the same things really often. Partly things have gotten better on the food front because my Chinese has gotten better, so I can more easily express and understand nuances beyond \Sometimes, Apparently. Some Things Really Are vegetarian, and the sauce is brown Because of dark soy sauce or vinegar or sesame paste and Not Because of meat, and the taste is savory and Not Because of MSG meat, or Things Like That. So There Are Some dishes that I've enough times Asked at Different enough places (and Chinese with native-speaker friends Who Understand) That I Think They Are Actually really vegetarian, Even Though They Were I did not think at first. Aside from
the vegetarian issue, Another big issue with the food here for me is the Lack of Variety. Partly There's Lack of Variety Because I only eat the vegetarian food, of Which There Is little, and I'm aware of That. But really MOST Things Are pretty much the same, meat or no meat. There's Either or noodlesrice. There's a lot of oil, and some kind of sauce or broth. There's floppy vegetables. That's pretty much it. When I Went to Peru, the Peruvian I Found That Actually Chinese food was very similar to American Chinese food, Chinese Thought and Chinese food I Must Actually Be Not that far off. But - and again, I do not know about the rest of China - here in Hainan, Almost There is literally nothing available That is the close to the Same as What is available at Chinese restaurants in the U.S.. In my experience. That's not bad or good, but I'm just Saying, It's Not What You Might Be thinking of as Chinese food. When I Went to Shanghai I saw sweet and sour pork and That Was The First Time I Saw Something That Look familiar, like it Could Have Been on an American Chinese restaurant's menu. There's no General Tso's here.
Back to variety. It's just, I'm in college, right? They say there are some 30,000 students here. Even setting aside the cafeteria food, which is really bad, but really cheap, stepping off campus but right next to campus, at any school in the US, there'd be a whole row of different restaurants - probably be a sandwich place, a Mexican place, a pizza place (or, okay, a few), a Chinese place, maybe some sushi, maybe someplace to get hummus and the like, plus fast food... in other words, a whole lot of different kinds of food, completely different flavors. Here, stepping off campus, all the restaurants are literally the same. It's kind of flabbergasting. There's a whole row of restaurants, maybe a half-dozen or more of them, but their menus are almost literally identical. Foreign Students Sometimes we go there for lunch together, and at first we Put Some Effort Into Trying to decide Which one to go to, Until We Realized We Could Exactly the Same order dishes (and They taste similar enough to fool me) at all of Them, so it Did not matter. And When we go, we order the Same Basically do dishes Each time, no matter Which one we're at. Now, I know I'm not an expert, and There Are Large portions of the menus Because That I can not read my Chinese isn't good enough. And it's very possible That There Are Things That These restaurants do Differently, or That They offer Different Specialties. But they're all the same style of food, and They All the Same basic serve dishes. It's a far cry from "do you feel like Mexican? Or Thai? Or Indian? Or Italian? or...\ Thai place I only know because I saw an ad offering a sale at a special price of I think 28 RMB per person (and that sale is presumably over). One (very small) personal pizza at the non-Pizza-Hut pizza place was I think 38 RMB (and not filling), and at Pizza Hut each personal pizza was around 50 RMB, which means 100 for two people. Which is insane. And even if these places weren't so expensive, there's not many of them, so there's never one nearby or convenient.
More tomorrow.
*(And besides, if you add vegetable oil and MSG and salt and soy sauce and vinegar and hot pepper and whatever else, it will still taste good, even if it's lacking that delicious bone flavor.)
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