American Food: The Quest for Cheese

While I was in China, large amounts of time, energy, and thoughts were dedicated to the pursuit of American cuisine.  Often times this centered around a desire for cheese.  It's not that you couldn't find cheese in China, it's just that Chinese dishes didn't use it--ever.  So eventually you just started craving it, and other American foods. I would day dream about steak and potatoes the same way teenage boys daydream about playboy models.  Our fervor for some of the dishes from our homeland was damn near religious.

Of course, now that I have been back home for the past year, I would give an ovary just to have authentic Chinese food; while I was in China, I would have given anything for a casserole. A piece of beef that wasn't cut to chopstick sized bits.  Something made up of at least 95% cheese.  To meet these food needs, we would occasionally go to some pretty extreme lengths.  It is those lengths that I am going to divulge in this post.  Try not to judge.

Now, it's not that American food was particularly hard to find--if you were in the mood for American fast food, anyway.  McDonald's, Subways, Papa Johns, Starbucks, Burger Kings, Pizza Huts, and KFC's abound in the bigger cities in China (well, KFC is everywhere in China).  And despite having a more diverse menu--I had escargot at Pizza Hut once--they all pretty much taste the same as back home, and they offer all the classics to which you are accustomed.  One of our earliest American food quests was to the nearest McDonald's.  I'd been in China for about two months, and I had been adjusting to (and falling in love with) the cuisine just fine.  But I love French Fries (and all potatoes), and for a long time McDonald's were my favorite.   When one of the returning foreign teacher's discovered my long lost love, he volunteered to take Liv and I to the nearest location--about 10 minutes by bicycle!  It was a very happy reunion.

Continuing in the vein of fast food fixes, there is a Burger King at the train station in Hangzhou.  On more than one occasion we would volunteer to "assist" one of the other foreign teacher's who was heading out on travel to the train station.  You know, to help them carry their bags, defray the cost of the cab, keep them company...and tear into a whopper after we waved them goodbye.  I'd like to to think we would have helped our fellow teachers without the Burger King, but I don't think we would have been quite so happy about it.

Hangzhou had several fast food places that could somewhat satisfy our needs for American food.  However, we found ourselves missing other aspects of terrible-for-you American cuisine: junk food.  Sure, Chinese grocery stores have a LOT of different flavors of potato chips.  I mean, a lot--but they are not flavors most Americans are waiting in line to try (Hot and Sour Fish Soup Flavored, to name just one).  So, occasionally, we would tire of the limited selection in the imported food section at our local grocery store and we would make the 40 minute high-speed train trek into Shanghai.  For the sole purpose of buying junk food.  Shanghai also boasted a Krispy Kreme (Liv's favorite), a Dunkin Donuts (my favorite), and a Hershey's store (the world's favorite); we would make trips into Shanghai for no other reason than to gorge on fresh glazed doughnuts and ice coffee and load our backpacks up with chocolate, chips, and other snacks we could not find in Hangzhou.  This would include ingredients to make cookies, as the brown sugar found in our local grocery store did weird things to our cookies--we needed to get some imported brown sugar.

Our first New Year's in China found four of us in the city of Nanjing for about 36 hours.  Dave had asked  us to join him in presenting a lesson to a group of students at a vocational school as part of his work for the state department.  For dinner that night, we'd decided to check out what our hotel (that's right, hotel, not hostel--thank you state department) had to offer.  On the 28th floor of the building was an Irish Pub and Restaurant, and we thought: why not?  Some of us got pizza, some of us got quesadillas, and a few of us (the lucky) ordered the burger. Well, it turns out Danny's has the best freaking cheese burger any of us had ever eaten.  After returning to Hangzhou, the four of us could talk about nothing except for the phenomenal nature of this burger.  I am not sure what, exactly, about this burger made it so great--maybe it was the flavor in the meat, the onion-tomato ration,  or the fact that it had a fried egg on it--but it was (and still is) the single greatest cheese burger I have ever eaten.

Well, a full year later found Liv and I looking at various cities as our last trip together in China before I returned to America on a semi-permanent basis.  Liv suggested Nanjing.  Not because we loved the city (which we did) or to see any of the historic stuff we missed on our first whirlwind tour (which we eventually did get to) but mostly just to go back to that pub and eat that burger again.  That's right guys, we traveled four hours by high speed train, paid about 70.00 USD for the tickets, and an overnight in a hostel...to eat a burger.  And just in case you were wondering?  It was just as great the second (and third--we went there twice on that trip!) time as it was the first.

Oh, you know, never mind all that historical stuff...

Cuz we had some burgers to eat. 

Challenge...strategy...victory. 

Back in Hangzhou, we eventually started to figure out what restaurants in town offered the best options for American cuisine at reasonable prices (after considerable trial and error).  We also learned what to avoid (some of them just cannot get the meat right--very different taste or very bland).  We would go every other week or so to a restaurant and get something somewhat American--cheese covered pasta, various grilled sandwiches, pizza.  Or we'd head to the one and only Mexican restaurant in the town.  Or we'd go hit up a hostel when we were feeling like an American style breakfast as they seem to have breakfast nailed at most of these places--eggs, bacon, toast.

We found ourselves craving dishes that our parents made, that try as we might, we were just unable to replicate in China.  However, we did try our hand at cooking a few times, with often times pleasant results.

Our group of foreign teacher's would always be on the lookout for new restaurants selling American style food; we'd report to one another when we stumbled upon a new spot, or an old spot with a new menu.  And we'd all mourn together when some of established restaurants would close or change location.  I guess you always miss what you can't have; that was true of American food while I was in China.  And it is certainly true of Chinese food now that I am back in the States.