Out to eat

About a week ago, we were invited to go out to eat by one of Brant's Chinese co-workers at the college. He's the man responsible over all the foreigners at the college to make sure all the paperwork is in order and that they're all happy and legal. There are a lot of foreign students at the college studying medicine - most if not all from the middle east. These students keep this Chinese worker very busy with many complaints and requests all the time! Nearly every time we've visited his office, he's been inundated with calls and visits from the foreign students. Fortunately he has a pretty relaxed and in-charge type personality.

So, we agreed to go out to eat with this man and his girlfriend. We had no idea where we were going, but our taxi stopped at a restaurant that I've wanted to go to for a long time. There are restaurants in our area that I believe are Korean, and they all have little grills at each table, and that's what type of restaurant this one is. So you order your own raw meats, and then you grill it right there at your table. We just let our Chinese friends order the meal, so I knew it would be interesting. One of the best things about the meal was the sauce that comes with it. Each person is given a bowl of ingredients that aren't mixed together yet, and then you add however much soy sauce and vinegar as you'd like and mix it all together. I'm not sure what the other ingredients were, but boy was that sauce tasty! I heard our friends as they deliberated over what to order...they weren't sure which beef plate to get....then finally decided: two plates of non-fatty beef, and one plate of fatty beef. Sure enough, when the plates came, there were two plates of nice-looking, thinly-sliced lean beef, and one plate of thinly-sliced beef with a bunch of fat attached! I'll never understand why anyone would want to order and eat fatty meat. Actually, here in China they call it all meat whether it's pure fat or nice lean meat. They also ordered tendons (atleast that's what I think they were), and squid! I don't suppose you've ever had squid at your typical backyard barbeque! They really were squid-ey looking - almost like little octopuses. Then there was a vegetable to put on the grill - sweet potato. We also had some fried rice. So, we grilled and grilled and ate and ate. The meal was truly a raving success if one managed to avoid the tendons, squid, and fatty beef...which I mostly was able to do! I had one tendon, and a little bit of the fatty beef, and none of the squid. (Fortunately our hosts weren't the type to force food on us, as many Chinese people are apt to do.) Our favorites were the lean beef, sweet potato slices, sauce, and fried rice - yummy! I've been longing to return to the restaurant ever since, and I'm anxious to know what else is available on the menu. Brant and I are planning to go back there in the near future on one of our date days. Here are some pictures of the grill with the food on it. The pictures were taken with Brant's cell phone, so they're not the best quality.