Nanjing: Another Dinner and what our T-Shirts said

I figure I'd better get going with more China posts before my memory really fades.......

After our visit to the Sun Yat -Sen Mausoleum, we caught the bus back into the city. My foot was feeling pretty good, so we decided to walk up to the major shopping district of Nanjing....which was packed to the gills with people. Out of curiosity we even walked through......

 

Which was quite interesting.....

We soon tired of the crowds and decided to walk back to our hotel and grab some dinner on the  way back. We had passed this restaurant earlier, another multi-leveled place.....fast food on the bottom, casual restaurant second floor, restaurant third floor, and banquet area on top....

The Missus and I decided to stop here and have dinner. The place wasn't very busy, and the service here was pretty good. The menu was fairly vast with some interesting looking dishes on it. Like this one......

 
Because I'd already had sprinkles on a dish during one of our banquets in Beijing it didn't have quite the same effect on me.... but I still found it a bit odd. I'm waiting for the day I'll open a menu somewhere in the SGV and see a savory dish with sprinkles on it! If you can read Chinese you might find the story of the dish on the menu interesting.

We ended up ordering a whopping five dishes of the menu, which varied in quality and taste.

The worst was the grilled lamb rib which was really dry and tough....and had almost no flavor....

 

I didn't think much of the classic Nanjing dish, the bean curd soup.

 

If I recall, the true classic version of this is supposed to have vermicelli in it...this one had bean sprouts. The Missus thought it was tasty though.

The Baihe (Lily Bulb) with Celery was passable. Not as good as other versions, but pleasantly gooey....

 

Of course after seeing the "Scrolls with Treasures" on the menu, we just had to try it!

 

This was actually better than it looked. The sprinkles were really just a garnish.... call it parsley on the plate if you will, and really didn't interfere with the flavors of this dish. The sweet soy and peanut oil mixture was very tasty. This was very much like the "seaweed roll" you'd see served in dim sum places.

The best dish of the night by far was the minced duck served with cups made of wheat flour......which looked like wo-wo-tou.

 

First off the duck had a wonderful flavor, and the sauce, a mild fruity-sweet, along with a nice salty-soy flavor went well with the minced duck. The vegetables added some nice crunch and helped to cleanse the palate a bit. The "cup" were wonderful, mildly grainy, nutty, with a restrained sweetness that just brought everything together for us. This was one of the most memorable dishes of our trip.

After dinner we walked back to our room....pass the now brightly lit "Disco Palace"....

 

To get some rest...... my foot needed some elevation, and the next day we were headed out to Xi'an, a city that I was really excited about visiting.....

 What our t-shirts said:

On my last post on our visit to Nanjing I had a photo of sort of matching t-shirts the Missus and I bought. I was surprised that folks wanted to know what the shirts said:

 

Mine on the left said, "I don't eat, but I do the dishes". The Missus on the right says, "I eat all the food, but I don't do the dishes."

Oh, and the one we bought for my Mother In Law, who is very frugal (and proud of it...she sent us a photo after we mentioned the shirt in our post) says, "I make money, but never spend it!"

 

Comments

[kat]

cute shirts! funky foods.

[Lynnea]

Fun post! I love the look of those little cups, they look so cute like stuffed mushrooms but better because the cup sounds delicious. Does the little white doggie great people who come in the shop?? so cute.

[Kirk]

Hi Kat - We get a kick out of those shirts.... especially since most folks around here have no clue what it says!

Hi Lynnea - That was one of dogs in a shop we passed on the street, he/she was so cute I had to take a photo.

[Dennis]

I think my favorite dish here would be the minced duck with wheat cups. But I'm really curious of the treasure scroll dish as well. I don't think I've ever had the seaweed roll at dim sum.

[Kirbie]

Those cups look so cute. I want to try the dish just because of the cups. Okay now you have to translate the treasure scroll dish story for us! The shirts are so funny.

[Rosa]

LOL I love the shirts. Very cute.

[Kirk]

Hi Dennis - That was a very good dish.

Hi Kirbie - I think you'd enjoy that dish.

Hi Rosa - I know you're one of the folks who wanted to know what those shirts said.