Conversations with Tyler - Fuchsia Dunlop on the Story of Chinese Food

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

In her third appearance on the show, Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop joins Tyler and a group of special guests to celebrate the release of Invitation to a Banquet, her new book exploring the history, philosophy, and techniques of Chinese culinary culture. As with her previous appearance, this conversation was held over a banquet meal at Mama Chang and was hosted by Lydia Chang. As they dined, the group discussed why the diversity in Chinese cuisine is still only just being appreciated in the West, how far back our understanding of it goes, how it's represented in the Caribbean and Ireland, whether technique trumps quality of ingredients, why certain cuisines can spread internationally with higher fidelity, what we can learn from the different styles in Indian and Chinese cooking, why several dishes on the table featured Amish ingredients, the most likely mistake people will make when making a stir fry, what Lydia has learned managing an empire of Chinese restaurants, Fuchsia's trick for getting unstuck while writing, and more. Joining Tyler, Fuchsia, and Lydia around the table were Dan Wang, Rasheed Griffith, Fergus McCullough, and Sam Enright. Special thanks to Chef Peter Chang, Lydia, and all the staff at Mama Chang for the wonderful meal. Donate to Conversations with Tyler and help us keep the conversations going. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.  Recorded November 9th, 2023. Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Fuchsia on X Join our Discord Email us: [e-mail] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Photo Credit: Anna Bergkvist

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For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit Conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today we're sitting in Mamma Chang Restaurant in Fairfax, Virginia, one of my favorite restaurants of all time anywhere. And we are here with Fuchsia Dunlop. Now Fuchsia is the only individual we have done three conversations with Tyler with,

and that should tell you everything. Fuchsia quite simply writes the best books. I don't mean the best books on Chinese food, I mean the best books. And there is a new one, invitation to a banquet, the story of Chinese food, which is just out.

Fuchsia, welcome. We're delighted to have you here. Thank you, Tyler. Great to be back. Let's just start with very quick introductions of everyone at the table going around this way, Lydia. Hi, everyone. I'm Lydia. I am the business owner. This is my family business. And welcome everyone to Mama Chan. Hi, my name is Fergus. I work on the Fitzwilliam and online publication of Irish ideas. I'm Sam. I'm at Economics undergrad and I work on the Fitzwilliam with Fergus.

I'm Rashid and I help Tyler at Mercatus with the Merd Adventures. I'm Dan Wong. I've spent the last six years in China. Now I'm at the Yale Law School as a visiting scholar. Very simple question to start, Fufucia. How is real soy sauce better than what we might buy in the store? Well, I guess naturally fermented artisanal soy sauce has a kind of tang to it and a richness, which would be much more impressive than your average sort of mass-manufactured soy sauce. If you're lucky enough to get some. And how many different soy sauces do you either make or own? Oh, I don't make them, but I have that many, actually.

You don't have that many? You know, there are other decisions to make when cooking, apart from, you know, choose between 50 soy sauces. And where in China has the best soy sauce are your favorite, in your opinion? Well, Fujian is supposed to be best for artisanal soy sauce. But I suppose there's an amazing, really traditional soy sauce factory in Hegang, in southern Sichuan. And it's this magical place on the banks of the river with all these clay pots, Tanza, with straw hats covering them when it rains, laid out with sort of traditional buildings.

And they do traditional, old-fashioned, no modern innovation soy sauce. And a combination of the flavor and the place is just exceptional. Now, many of your books, they're cookbooks, their history books, they're also a kind of cultural studies set of books. But your latest book, again, invitation to a banquet, it is primarily a history, right? It's not a recipe's book. So after having gone through so much history of Chinese food, what updates have you made or what have you changed your mind about? What do you now see differently?

Well, I suppose the striking thing about Chinese culinary history is that there are these extraordinary continuities going back thousands of years in some cases, like steaming, for example, since the Neolithic age or making fermented soybean products going back more than 2,000 years. But that is also always been so multicultural and so sort of innovative, like, you know, the Han dynasty about 2,000 years ago was a period when lots of new ingredients and technology critically for milling flour from wheat, which brought noodles and so on to turn it, but came in. And I think while researching this book, it was just a real reminder of how, receptive Chinese food has been to other influences and how it's a kind of composite of many different

places and ideas. So we're here in 2023. You've been to China recently. You went all over. Perhaps you had a few meals. During pandemic times, it was hard to get there. Over those years, what has changed or what has struck you as different? Well, so going back, the first thing that was really striking, there were many fewer foreigners. So, you know, when I was there in the 90s, there weren't many foreigners at all, and I felt very conspicuous. And then there's been a period with loads of expats and visitors and tourists. And sort of in the wake of the pandemic, again, I was feeling like I was the only foreigner around. And food-wise, well, one thing that I found hilarious and surprising was having takeouts delivered

to a hotel room by robots. So that's never happened to me here. So technological advances. And then also, everyone I met was talking about Yu Jetsai, like semi-premed, prepared dishes. And so it's been a real trend in China that restaurants are having central kitchens that are supplying dishes that are either fully made and just need reheating or partially made to be finished in a restaurant. And it seems to be a really hot topic of conversation. And of course, there are always concerns about sort of the erosion of culinary skills if chefs

are not learning to cook from scratch but are just finishing dishes. I have more questions, but now we turn to Lydia to tell us what just arrived. Right. So welcome to Mama Chan, and today we're having a banquet meal. So invitation to a banquet. We typically like to start our banquet meal with something cold, a cold platter. And today we have a platter of four different kinds. We have the fava beans with goji berry.

We have the braced shittaki mushroom. We have some tofu skin and mala beef jerky. Are Chinese eating habits individualizing? So we're here together as a group. We're going to share a lot of dishes. It's how it should be done. But as you know, birth rates are declining. More people in many countries spend more time alone.

That makes it harder to have that kind of meal. How is that evolving in China? Well, I think it's very noticeable that restaurants in cities, there are more restaurants with small tables designed for couples and smaller groups. But, I mean, you still have the kind of round table big gang, but also alternatives. I have more questions, but let me now turn to Dan Wong to my left, who will ask a question or two. Fuchsia, in your book, you quote Farinatria as saying, who is the most important culinary figure of the last 50 years? Well, surely it is Mount Adom because the chairman sent all of China's farmers and all of China's chefs to work in factories, thus destroying the preeminence.

of Chinese cuisine. Is he right? How much do we really understand what culinary culture was before the People's Republic? And can we recover a lot of those traditions now? Well, I think it's, I mean, one of the reasons that I wrote this book is that it seems to me extraordinary that China has this exceptional cuisine, which is so diverse and sophisticated, and also which resonates with so many contemporary concerns. And, you know, there are parallels in China going back to the 10th century of people making imitation meats from plant foods, you have this tremendously creative, transformational cuisine, which echoes the avant-garde cooking of modernist chefs in the West.

All this stuff, and yet China has been a sort of terra incognita for many people in the food world. And this is, I think it's purely historical reasons. The Chinese food that most people in the West know stems from American Chinese food, which was created by immigrants from one particular region, the Cantonese South, who were working in very difficult circumstances. They were facing racial prejudice. They probably didn't have access to all the ingredients that they were used to. And they were often cooking for people who had no acquaintance with Chinese food.

So you have this simplified, very appealing, fantastically popular and successful, but not really a good representation of this amazing culinary nation. Throughout the 20th century war revolution, cultural revolution. And so China was just, you know, not part of international culinary exchanges. And I think also prestige food is often about money. You know, Japan got rich first. Japanese food is very prestigious. People will spend loads of money on Japanese sushi, but not so much on Chinese food.

So I think that, yeah, Faranagia is right that Chinese food doesn't have the recognition, the acknowledgement that it really should have. I think now it's possible, really, to have a fresh look. Can we cook a 10th century meal from Hongzhou today, or is that mostly lost to us? Well, the frustrating thing is that there are some, there's an amazing source. Well, actually, of sort of, when is it, 12th, 13th century, Hongzhou describing all the food served in city restaurants. And it is dizzying. You know, there were all different kinds of restaurants, regional, Buddhist, vegetarian restaurants, restaurants for students and snack shops of different kinds.

And the author lists all these delicacies, but there are no recipes or descriptions. So there's tantalisingly not very complete information. But you could, you know, I know chefs, I know a chef in Hangzhou actually who has created banquets of Song Dynasty food as far as possible from the texts. So I think we have to partly use imagination. But some, you know, there are some, you know, annuities in ingredients and techniques. Fuchsia will give you a moment to eat.

So I'll ask you, Dan, a question. Much of pandemic you spent in China, some of that in Yunnan. What did you learn about Yunnanese food during those months? I wonder whether Yunnanese food can be considered a cuisine as such. I think it is mostly not a very convenient label. So Yunnan is a very mountainous region that is historic Tibet in the north, and that is close to being culturally Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar in the south, which it borders. And so, you know, how do we make sense of a cuisine that is basically Tibet in the north

and Thailand in the south? I don't really think that there's such a thing as possible, that it is such a mountainous zone, perplexed with intricacies. And so, you know, I think this is mostly mountain food. depends on where you go. I don't think we can recognize it as a coherent cuisine as such. The question for Rashid. We'll get back to Fusha in a moment. But you're from Barbados. Chinese food is different in every country, every region. How is Chinese food different in the Caribbean? Chinese food in Barbados is actually quite dull, unfortunately. However, in Panama, which I also live,

Chinese food is probably as exuberant, as you would go with some parts of China. There's parts of Panama where the El Dorado area, where dim sum is, the Chinese restaurants are packed, they are full, not only with local Chinese, but also other Panamaian races. And it's just like a very big aspect of culture. And to me also, Chinese food in Panama has a much more authentic flavor than even most parts of Europe if they had Chinese food. That's, I think, quite surprising, almost like a hidden secret in Central America. And do you have a question for Fuchsia? Yes. So recently, given the, often the surprising boom of Sichuan food globally even. They're seeing a movement by some elements of the government, for example,

to publish these Sichuan requirements. I'm curious how that has impacting some of the culinary styles in Sichuan. Well, yeah, so as you said, there's been a sort of bid to standardize and categorize classic dishes. So, you know, the local government, also in Chongqing, they've produced publications. which say this is marpo d'olfo and this is the ingredients, like having a sort of, you know, appellation controlé for wine or something.

But I think the point is that, I mean, it's an interesting and noble endeavour, but people cook in a much more free ad hoc creative way. So there are many different ways to actually make a marpo doful, maybe some key characteristics, but you don't have every chef measuring to the gram, the amount of minced beef or the amount of et cetera on pepper. So I think, I would say they're not having that much influence.

And also because Sichuanese cuisine, one of the great things about it is that it's so dynamic. I mean, people in such a while love eating and they're creative. And they're always, you know, doing things like making Sichuanese dishes with Okra, which was not around when I was a student there in the 90s. So I think that there's always this tension between, you know, we all feel nostalgic and we love tradition. And there's something worthwhile about trying to document classics and traditions. But at the same time, you have to recognize that a cuisine is a very

vital living form of culture, which is recreated in every kitchen every day. So the difference between practice and theory is quite deep. You have observations on what we're eating so far. Well, it's certainly delicious. And it's lovely to have some vegetable dishes. And that's one of the things that Chinese food in the West, with the sort of concentration on shrimp and chicken, and beef and fried foods and so on. But actually the glory of Chinese cooking is that there are so many vegetables. It's healthy and balanced and refreshing.

So you might have a rich, intense dish like this mala beef, numbing and hot beef, very delicious and rich and meaty. But also we've got this lovely tofu skin with a sort of very light dressing and a bit of crab meat and some very refreshing shittake mushrooms. And this is gorgeous,

these white beans with Lao Zao, fermented glutinous rice wine. And these are all quite unusual to have in an American Chinese restaurant, I would say. For a typical quality Chinese meal, let's say in the United States or maybe London, what percent of the credit should go to the chefs and what percent of the credit should go to the people who bought the ingredients? How do you think about that? You're quoting UNA, the great 18th century Chinese gourmet. Well, that's another thing that's really interesting because I think Chinese food in the West is not associated with premium ingredients.

So if you go to a sort of fancy Spanish restaurant, they'll be trumpeting their Iberican ham, so on and so on. If you go to a new Californian restaurant, they'll be talking about which farm they got the produce from. But Chinese restaurants generally don't say much about the ingredients. And that's just because they've been kind of stuck in this bracket where people don't go to Chinese restaurants for fine ingredients, which is completely mad.

And, you know, in this book, there's a whole chapter about this, really, that the Chinese practically invented the concept of terroi. you know, the obsession with seasons, with provenance, you know, exactly, you know, which land your vegetables are produced on in and so on. Yeah, I think that in traditional Chinese cookery, certainly a vitally important part of it is sourcing seasonal, fresh, quality ingredients. So it would be nice to recognise that. And this is clearly happening here. We've got all these you know, Amish farm ingredients, right? Yes. I would say it comes maybe in both ways. we appreciate, and we use a lot of local ingredients from the Maryland crab that paired with our tofu

skin. We also go out of our way trying to look for seasonal, like really good quality white beans. What we are about to have, we have some Amish pork dumplings. We try to source the best ingredients, whatever we can find and use it to make quality dishes. And I think, my feeling is that, You know, if Chinese cuisine in the future in contemporary times manages to unite the exceptional culinary skills of Chinese chefs with the old obsession with ingredients, they're just going to blow everyone else away. Boucher, you mentioned the terror concept. But for example, it's a very big, it's a very high-end tea, for example, and a full solotally terror aspect. I'm wondering how much of that is a quality difference or is it really like a big chunk of marketing itself? Well, I mean, it's like wine, isn't it? It's exactly the same. So I think that, you know, to an extent, probably there is, you know, that the exact, the soil and the weather in a particular place will influence an ingredient. But clearly there's also a sort of cultural and imaginative aspect. And so there's a lot of fakery as well. So people pretending that they're supplying Longjing tea from the Longjing hills around Hangzhou when it's not actually that. But probably people who drink it still feel that it's, that it's, It's fine advocates of the label.

Sam, do you have a question for Fuchsia? Yeah. So I went to India for the first time over the summer, and the food was wonderful, but it sort of struck me that it was Indian food had transferred with relatively high fidelity to very high-end Indian restaurants in Glasgow or Birmingham, so on. Nothing in their cuisine was sort of shocking to me

in a way that I suspected it would be traveling around different areas of China. So, I mean, you mentioned Chinese food in the West being so Cantonese, but is there kind of more to it than that or like more factors that determine which cuisines translate with higher fidelity? Yeah. So the first thing is that China is absolutely vast and it has a very stunning diversity of different terrains and climates with all the implications for produce. So there are so many ingredients from different places. So you're only ever going to see small snapshots of this. this great richness of Chinese cuisine abroad. So even though now we're beginning to see, you know, Sichuanese food and different regional cuisines, there is so much more.

I mean, I've been researching this for about 30 years and I'm still discovering entire new styles, you know, local traditions, practically every time I go to China. And in terms of fidelity, I think Chinese food, I said in the book, it's a kind of victim of its own success. And it's all about timing.

So Chinese was one of the earliest immigrants' cuisines at a time when Western Palisans, were probably more conservative and it was, you know, more difficult to try and faithfully reproduce Chinese food abroad. And it got stuck, public perceptions of Chinese food have got stuck there. But now things are changing. And there are so many immigrants, students, visitors from other parts of China living in, you know, cities like this and all over the place who want to eat proper Chinese food. They want to eat the food they eat at home, whether it's from their hometowns or it's trendy cuisines like Cetranese. So it's now point.

for Chinese restaurants in the West to, you know, they don't have to tailor to Western taste. They can just start off doing food for a Chinese clientele. So then it's more faithful. But I think one should also say that some of the, I mean, like your Yunnan cuisine, for example, the marvellous thing about Yunnan cuisine is all this local produce. There are so many ingredients that you simply can't find anywhere else in China, let alone abroad. And so it's harder to I mean, you can't really reproduce many aspects of unique cuisine, wouldn't you say? Yeah, that's right. If I can ask a follow-up question on this comparison between India and China, you know, maybe this is half a question also for Tyler. Why do we associate Indian cuisine so much more with long simmers?

Whereas Chinese cuisine, of course it is a little bit of everything, as Fuchsia knows so well, but it is often a little bit more associated with quick fries. You know, what is the Factor endowment here? of these two very big countries, very big civilizations, having somewhat divergent paths, as we imagine, with culinary traditions. That's a really interesting question. It's hard to answer because I don't really know anything about Indian food. I did have a really interesting conversation with an Indian who came on my tour to Yunnan earlier this year because I was kind of speculating that one of the reasons that Chinese food is so diverse

is that the Chinese are really open-minded with very few taboos. So apart from, you know, Muslims eating halal food and some Buddhists not eating meat, there's a kind of great adventurous open-mindedness to eating. Whereas in India, you have lots of taboos and sort of religious and ritual restrictions. And that's one reason that you would think it would be a constraint on the creativity of Indian food. But this Indian I was talking to, who's a food specialist, he reckoned that the restrictions actually forced people to be more creative. So he was arguing that Indian food was, you know, had all the conditions for diversity that Chinese does. But in terms of cooking methods, it's hard to say.

And again, I don't know about Indian food. But the thing about China is that there's been this intense thoughtfulness about food really for a very long time. I mean, you know, you see it in descriptions of food from 2,000 years ago and more. And then in the Song Dynasty, this incredible restaurant industry in, in places like Hangzhou and innovation and creativity. And so I suppose that when you are thoroughly interested in food like the Chinese and thinking about it creatively all the time, you end up having a whole plethora of different cooking methods.

And that's one of the striking things about Chinese cuisine, right, that you have slow-cooked stews and simmered things and steamed things and also stir-frying. So that might explain why several different methods have achieved prominence. Before I comment on that, Lydia, on the new dish, please tell us. Oh, what we, apparently, it's an empty plate now. We have a vegetarian spring roll. So spring roll is something that we love to have as a holiday special.

We have it over spring, the Luna New Year. Or, you know, it's actually, you'd wrap things together. Sometimes you add shrimp, pork. And for this one, we use vegetarian, and that's a really, amazing vegetarian dish. On your India-China question, this is pure speculation, but my sense has been, China was wealthier earlier for a longer period of time, and on average, stayed wealthier, so it had more in the way of meats, and you had people eating in large groups,

so the idea that you would chop up the meat and divide the meat and feed it to people, and then flash, stir-fry the meat in some way. India, it's more likely you're cooking vegetables, you're on various spice trains, to a greater degree. The Indian spices work very well being simmered for a long period of time. You're less concerned with, well, how am I going to cook this meat? Because Hindus are not eating beef, and it seems that pigs are much harder to raise in India than in China. That would be my guess. But do you have a take? I have no take. Okay. But another idea that I was thinking of was that also, and again, I don't know about India, but China very early on, like in the Song Dynasty from about

12th century, had a really lively and developed and diverse restaurant scene with restaurants at different levels. And so eating out was a real thing. And I should imagine with eating out, and there were restaurants with menus where you would order your dishes, you know, not just fixed menus and so on. And so in those conditions, you do want dishes that can be made quickly to order. So maybe that would encourage the development of fast cooking methods, as well as home cooking and, you know, slow the pot on the stove in the home kitchen? What about it on di Sanchin? So the hot food would beat three times over the flavors or Chinese people love to eat quick hot food.

Yeah. Well, I suppose, and also... Greater urbanization of China, right? But actually another thing is the emphasis on texture, and I don't really know about the history of this, but one of the really distinctive things about Chinese gastronomy is that the Chinese totally appreciate and understand texture to a degree that is unheard of anywhere else really. And that's why they enjoy eating so many slithery, rubbery, and also often tasteless foods that have interesting textures.

And there are certain textures. So, for example, one of my sort of old favorite, Sichuanese dish, Kuo bao Yao Hua, fire exploded kidney flowers. So that's made with port kidneys, which are cut into little frilly pieces and stir-fried very fast. and you actually have to cook them fast to keep them none and a little bit sort of crisp, right? So I think perhaps when people have this obsession with texture, there are certain ingredients that require fast cooking. Also vegetables, right?

So you don't have everything very soft, but you have this briskness, liveliness, crispness in the bite. But what's your speculation of why this Colgan is such a big feature of the Chinese food? Okay, speculation again. But I think the thing about China, there was this ancient philosopher Gao Zi who said, Shih Shingya, food and sex are human nature. And there's this unabashed pleasure in the physicality of eating. Like English people traditionally are a bit sort of buttoned up

and it's impolite to make noises when you eat and it's not very proper to show too much exuberant delight in food, right? But in China you see this absolute joy in eating. eating in ancient poetry in the way people eat today. And I think part of that is feeling uninhibited about it as something physical. So like when you eat in China, you can make little noises, you can put something like a duck's tongue that's grappleous and a bit bony and complicated to your lips and you can enjoy the game with your teeth and tongue. And that's all perfectly acceptable and enjoyed. I think perhaps when you don't mind a little

noise and you're not shy of the physicality, then you can have things that are slithery and crunchy and, you know, require a bit of engagement when you eat them. Really makes you wonder about the English approach to sex. Yes, well, let's pause swiftly on this. Lydia, please tell us about the new dish. Oh, we're having a ginsome soup with what looks like tofu, but it's actually chicken. And the vegetarian version of it that Sam has, what can you tell us? Oh, unfortunately, Sam, we don't have a vegetarian food here.

It looks like tofu. It's actually not. And this is a classic Sichuan banquet dish, which goes back at least 100 years. It's sort of written about it in a very famous text early 20th century. And it's just a reminder that Sichuan food is not all spicy. You know, like any other Chinese cuisine, it's about balance. So if you have very intensely flavored and hot dishes and oily dishes, you always have refreshing things like this lovely broth. And this is Amish chicken, right?

How and why is that different and better? Well, let's just say that the environment has a lot to do with how things are raised. And, you know, when Dad first met the Amish community, he felt a strong tie to the way they leave. It reminded him a lot of the time, you know, he was raised as a boy in the village in China in the 60s. My grandmother was a farmer. She used to be the one that's earning all the credits and contribute that to the local village government. And in return, they don't really have a lot to eat on the table.

So it's the humble life of the Amish community reminded that a lot of nostalgia. Sam, do you have another question? Well, I was going to say, Tyler recently told me that the third best chicken he ever had was an Amish chicken, which pleased me a lot because it implies you, an encyclopedic ranking of every chicken you've eaten. Yeah, I mean, to continue on the train of extremely speculative things, there's this famous or perhaps infamous observation about how whether areas of China engaged in mostly wheat-based or mostly rice-based agriculture has affects centuries later on various social outcomes, SAT2 scores, et cetera. And you know, thinking about

Ireland, where I'm from, even just beyond the famine, like, it seems like there are many ways in which the presence of the potato and the dominance of it affects culture and land holdings and so on. How do you think about the role of the staple crop in creating the culture or cuisine of a certain place? Well. An easy question. And you thought I asked hard ones.

Well, I suppose, I mean, China was a whole civilization that grew around the staple grain, which was originally millet, and all the rituals of the state, the ancient Chinese state were about offering food to gods and ancestors. So wheat and alcohol and so millet and alcohol and so on and roasted meats. Yeah, I mean, I suppose what's interesting about that is that millet went on being the sacred grain right up until the end of, you know, the Chinese imperial period in about 1911.

But it had actually disappeared from people's daily diets. So people in North China went on to eat and wheat and noodles and breads, but millet remained the staple grain. So I guess there's a gulf between what people are actually eating and ideas about ritual and so on. What remains of Manchu cooking in Chinese food today? Well, I mean, there's a bit in the book about this idea that, I mean, one of the distinctive thing about Chinese cooking, going back about 2000 years, is the habit of cutting food into small pieces and eating it with chopsticks. And yet there are some dishes which are presented whole, like a Cantonese ceremonial suckling. pig or Peking duck. And of course, they're cut up before they're served because you don't have knives at the Chinese dinner table. The Manchus were sort of rugged northern nomads who liked

eating huge chunks of sheep meat, which they would then cut apart with their own personal knives. And this was something that was still part of high-level society in the Qing dynasty when China was ruled by Manchus. And you can see these little eating sets that people slung onto their belts or tucked into their boots, where you have a pair of chopsticks and a knife so that people could eat both Chinese and Manchu food. The sort of whole roast meats, particularly in northern cuisine, may have been a legacy of this Manchu production for meat. And there's a scholar Isaac Yue, who I cited in the book, who looked at an 18th century Chinese banquet menu. And there were whole servings of what were clearly Chinese dishes with food cut up very fine and served in soups and stews.

And then these whole services of real sort of, you know, charred and roasted and boiled meats, which were Manchu. And then also actually in Beijing cuisine, there is some legacy of the Manchus in dairy foods. So like other nomads, they ate dairy foods. And so you have very fascinating something in Beijing Imperial cuisine called Naila, junket, which is like a steamed custody dessert made from milk. and also another very interesting dish when nao gan, when it's cooked at a very low heat, that it turns to kind of fudge,

a bit like Dolce de Leche, but solid. So there are traces of Manchu food in Chinese cooking, particularly in the north. Lydia, what is new on the table, please? It's our homemade pork d'amboyne, and we use our mesh pork. Now maybe you can tell me what the difference is. Fusia, why doesn't pork in particular have a higher status on China?

Why doesn't it? so much of it. It's maybe the best pork in the world, right? The best pork dishes, but it's not the highest status food or close to it. Well, because it's popular and ubiquitous, pork is the celebratory food for anyone traditionally. But in China, if you want to get to the really highest echelons of gastronomy, you need rare and exotic and particular and sought-after foods. So things like deer tendons, you know, these are imperial delicacies, camels hump, you know, Hashemar, the ovarian fat of the snowfroll. All these unusual delicacies and birds' nest were and fabulously expensive. So these things are more prestigious in China because they're scarce

and expensive and extreme luxuries. Does bear's paw actually taste good? You better ask someone else. Because you've never had it. Yeah, you don't have bears poor really served these days. It appears in cookbooks right until the 1980s, you know, even of state banquets, but it's now something. But you have lots of bears in America, don't you? We do, but I don't think you're allowed to eat bears, ma. I'm not sure. I've never traded it. It seems awkward to eat, at the very least, right? Well, but I mean, if you're Chinese, that's no problem, because, you know, people in China

eat camel's feet and pigs' feet, and they cook them to make the most of these grisly and gelatinous textures. So the fact that it's highly grapples and not appealing to a Western palate is no problem at all. Fergus, do you have questions? Yeah, so as we sort of alluded to earlier, there's this regional divide in China, where in the north, wheat is sort of primarily grown rather than rice,

which is obviously much the same as Europe. So what is the kind of expanitary factor that means that in China people tend to make noodles rather than bread, and obviously bread in Europe rather than noodles? Is there a kind of factor, a single factor that explains that? There's a very interesting book,

a cultural history of chopsticks by Edward Q. Wang, who looks a bit at this. But it seems that the Chinese very early on, apart from eating food that was cut into small pieces, they really liked eating food that was plucked out of hot liquid, right? And so the classic ancient Chinese dish, long before stir fries and the more sort of famous modern Chinese dishes, was the gung, which was a sort of soupy stew

made from lots of ingredients that were cut into small pieces floating around together in liquid. This sort of evolved with the use of chopsticks, which are very suited for eating that kind of dish. It seems like some, you know, early forms of pasta appear to have been, you know, bits of dough dropped into hot liquid. And that would have fitted in to the China, you know, a way of eating that was already becoming, you know,

a bit distinctively Chinese, you could say. And I think that's still the case that wouldn't you say, Lydia, that Chinese people really like liquids in their food more than Westerners. So a classic Chinese, you know, in England, when we say meat and two veg is like a basic standard meal. In Chinese, it's scei tang, four dishes and a soup. And when I was living in Sichuan, you know, you never have a meal without soup. It might be really, really basic, but it's just going to be a light broth to cleanse the palate

and sort of, you know, refresh you after the other dishes. So I think perhaps, you know, and in modern China, you know, Westerners much prefer chalmane, stir-fried noodles. Chinese is all soupy noodles, and fried noodles are much less common, really. So perhaps this is why. And also just in China, until very recently, and still in most cases, Chinese people don't have ovens at home. They do not roast or bake. So everything was done on a stove top, a design that really hadn't changed much for 2,000 years. You can still see in farmhouses in China, these stoves with two openings for walks or steamers, and that's how you cook. And so bread in China traditionally is, you can still see. You're Usually steamed and sometimes cooked on a kind of griddle maybe with a lid like Shaobing. Yeah, the absence of ovens as a common kitchen implement and the love of hot liquid. Now, you live in London.

If I'm looking for good Chinese food in London, conceptually, how should I go about it? Should I run to Chinatown? Should I go to the outer boroughs? What's the right schema, apart from any particular place you might recommend? Well, I mean, I would look at where Chinese students are eating partly. So then you'll get the sort of more recent trends in China. But how do I find that out? If I just ask chat GPT, will it tell me where the Chinese students are reading?

No, you need someone who reads Chinese to go on social media and find what is being talked about, I think. That would help. Maybe the app, Xiao Honshu is going to... A popular amount of students. Foucher, how much cumin is too much for Dengbe barbecue? I mean, that's a matter of taste, right? I have no idea.

Yes. Have you been assaulted by excessive amounts of cumin then? To me, it varies so much because sometimes I eat cumin is like just cumin flame essentially. And then sometimes it's none at all. And I ask people, you know, how do you determine? They say, well, get taste, but it feels like I felt it's something more than just I decide to be to put more cumin than not. It's very unstandard in that sense. Hmm.

Yes, I have no idea, I'm afraid. Okay, a follow-up question. A very standard Caribbean dish is jerk chicken. Yeah. And a very strong component of that is soy sauce. And people don't always consider it as a Chinese influence, but of course it is. And I'm curious if there any other areas of standard dishes across the world where it has a very strong Chinese influence, people don't really realize it itself. Well, that's hard to say.

I mean, I suppose that all soy products is, you know, the influence of China, right? Because China domesticated the soybean very early on and soy foods have been incredibly important. Also in, you know, they came to Japan from China, right, making tofu and soy sauce. Wouldn't Mexican Moli be an example, those original Puebla recipes from the 17th century? What came on the galleon from Philippines, a lot of Chinese influence? Oh, really? Oh, really? Yeah.

I have been told, speculatively. Yeah, I'm trying to think of examples. Yeah, I'm really not sure. If a reader is using your recipes and they make a mistake, what's the most likely mistake for them to make? I mean, not paying attention to cutting things evenly with stir-fried food, maybe. And how does that influence the final taste, or what goes wrong then?

Well, it's just, if you're stir-frying something that's cut into slivers or slices, the whole point of stir-frying is meant to be very fast, and the reason that it's effective is that if the food is cut finely and evenly, then everything will be perfectly done at the same moment. And if the cutting is clunky and uneven, then some pieces of food will be overcoat while others are still raw. So I think that's maybe something that people don't necessarily realize that it's not just aesthetically important.

It's also technically important in Chinese food. Why might an older Chinese chef be reluctant to stir fry himself or herself? Oh, well, that's, yeah, because, and this is something that several people have told me, that stir frying is perhaps the most difficult of all cooking methods in any cuisine because it's so fast. There's no room for maneuver. There's no margin for error. So if you have food that's finely cut and that is sensitive to heat, so like, I don't know, stir-fried scullops, for example. So if you overcook them, it's a complete disaster. So you have to cook very quickly and you have to add.

your seasonings absolutely correctly because you can't start like making a hollandaise sauce when you can have a taste and then add a bit more lemon juice or whatever you have to just have this instinct so it's like wushu it's like martial arts you have to be on the top of your game and it's incredible seeing you know when you see a really accomplished chef with a professional cooker stir frying it is so fast and is so instinctive there's no measured thought they're just doing it correctly. And it's a kind of miracle when it turns out right. And yes, I found that sometimes when chefs have been explaining, even their own personal classic dishes to me, their preferred method is to stand by the walk and get a younger apprentice to cook. And people have said,

that's because, you know, the elder chefs have more a management role. They're not cooking every day. So like a martial artist or a dancer, they're not, they don't have that fluidity and sharp instinct that you have when you're doing it. So you may eat your dumpling. I have a question for Dan. Dan, you're a Canadian citizen. You've also spent plenty of time in China. How was Chinese food different in the United States versus Canada?

I think Canada depends on where you go. But where I grew up in Ottawa, there wasn't a terribly great amount of Chinese cuisine. And I think there was a little bit more of the Cantonese influence. You know, something like 11% of Canadians live. abroad. I believe that is the highest ratio in the world. And that is because in about, you know, in the 90s, the Canadian government just offered extraordinary numbers of visas to Hong Kongers to basically escape Hong Kong before their return to the mainland. And so that has a very big

Cantonese influence. Now, I haven't really tested this, but people would say that Vancouver at some points had, you know, the best Chinese food in the world because of just the amount of influx there, but I haven't really tasted enough in Vancouver to say. I've only been there three times. My sense was they had first-rate Cantonese food, not quite as good as Hong Kong, but clearly the best in this atmosphere, but in the other areas, at least at the time,

they were much weaker. Ferguson or Sam, do you have comments on Chinese food in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or anywhere else you've been? Yeah, I mean, I suppose Chinese food in Ireland is similarly not very developed, like in Barbados. If there is any sort of non-generic Chinese restaurant in Ireland is probably Sichuan. I'm interested in like, how did Sichuan become, maybe this is not an accurate description,

the prestige cuisine, like the one, if a first regional Chinese restaurant opens in a city, it's most likely to be that one. How did that happen? Well, I think that Sichuanese food travels really well. So there are some cuisines like the food of the Jiangnan region, or Yunnan, we already said. There are so many really unique local ingredients that you can't get elsewhere. And when you think about Yunnan food, you think about these extraordinary ingredients. But Sichuan food, the heart and soul of Sichuanese cooking is in the artful combination of flavors.

So not just mar la, numbing and hot, but also yu Xiang, which is a bit of sweet and sour, pickle, chili, ginger, garlic, spring onion. All these wonderful combinations of flavors. And I think that if you have, because the sort of identity of Sichuanese food is in the flavors, you can apply a Sichuanese ysian fish fragrant sauce to the kind of fish that you can get in, that you can get, say, in England, it doesn't have to be a local carp. It'll still feel like Sichuanese cooking because the flavorings and the techniques are there. So I think that with, you know, a Sichuanese cook just needs a sort of small battery of key ingredients,

Sedge van derbyes, pickled chilies, dough banjong, pickle chili paste, soy sauce, vinegar, and then you can cook whatever's to hand. So I think for that reason, it's quite accessible and transportable as a sort of concept and a practice. Lydia, could you speak to the new dish, please? Absolutely. So we have a seafood studio with crispy rice. And this is one of the typical dish that you think, oh, you have a rice crispy on the top and cook everything so fast. but I would probably call this one of the Kung Fu Cai, because we homemade the fishbowl.

And that process on its own is probably 8 to 10 hours. You know, you see some jumbo shrimp in there, scallops, and they're all cooked at different time for it to be at perfect condition. And what region is that from? Well, this is something my diet is holds very dairy to his heart. The fishbow, we eat it back at home in Ube. Yeah, this is a I will call it. call this a Huo Bezai.

And how do you think about not just any single dish, but how you put this meal together, the combination of dishes, what would you tell us? Well, I have to say, if you go to any Chinese restaurant, it would probably take a mastermind to put a banquet menu like this. So either someone that's really knowledgeable in the ingredients, and the methods that are, things are prepared,

you get a good balance of something mild, something with soup, something crispy, different poultry. It's really like putting puzzles together. Chinese people eat pretty picky. So any end of the meal, I'm sure the guests will have something to say, oh, I didn't like this and that pair together. So it really takes a lot of skill to put a banquet menu on the table. So today's meal, Jeff Peter, my dad, actually put everything. Great, Fergus, comment or question?

Yeah, going back to the sort of exotic ingredients aspect, so I think we even mentioned, say, deer tendons earlier. In the West, at least it's deer typically wild. It's quite difficult to domesticate and farm them. So what does the kind of economy of accessing those ingredients in China look like? Presumably some are intensively farmed if possible, but presumably others are very difficult to get your hands on? Well, they're quite unusual, and some of them are important.

as well, and some of them are wild. And then, of course, you know, one of the problems that China has is also with an illegal trade in wildlife. But that's under the table that's not in the open, so you're unlikely to find these things on sale in markets. Yeah, most people would never eat any wild food because it's expensive and scarce. Yeah. So, you know, when I was saying about things like the de-attendants, I mean, that's a grand

old imperial delicacy and not something common at all. And then some ingredients are imported. So like, well, bird's nest is farmed. A lot of it's farmed in Malaysia, right? And when I go to China, sometimes I'm disappointed when I see so many hot pot restaurants. They're typically pretty good, but they're a bit all the same. And maybe I'll go eat there once during a trip. But after that, it's just a kind of plague.

What's your view on this? Why does this happen? I totally agree with you. And I call it the hot potization of the Chinese restaurant scene. And it's just, you know, hot pot is great fun. It's a really convivial. lively, inexpensive, it can be very inexpensive way to eat and, you know, to share food with your friends. But in terms of cooking technique, it's definitely low-skilled. And that, of course,

makes it hugely appealing for restaurateurs. I mean, you know how difficult it is to get good chefs, right? Walk chefs, especially. It's a nightmare because it's so difficult to do. With hot pot, you just need a good soup base. You can even buy it in. And then you just need staff to slice up bits of food and your customers cook it themselves. And so I think it's partly that hot pot is very popular and partly for economic reasons that it's actually just a lot easier from the point of view of the restaurateur, right? But yeah, it's a poor, particularly with Sichuan, I mean, Sechuan has such amazingly diverse and exciting food and hot pot is a poor reflection of all that. It may I add, I think hot pot restaurants are like the McDonald's in China. It's really considered

as a fast food restaurant. Yeah, well, a lot of them are, but you also have incredibly high-end ones with, you know, seafood and abalone. Yeah. So it's sort of, you find them at all levels of the market, but it is a bit of a plague. Nice in moderation. By the way, I have to say, the technique of this dish is fantastic. Explain, please.

Well, so you've got an assembly of all different ingredients, and as you said, they're cooked separately. So these fish balls have a lovely, light, delicate texture, but they're not flat. They're not completely flaccid that have a bit of liveliness to them, a bit of scollop in mine, sort of juiciness. The prawn is beautifully silky and also a bit crisp. And you have the vegetables that are crisp and not overcooked. So that shows you that they've all been cooked separately to the peak, then combined together,

and then you have the lovely contrast between the crisp crunch of the guaba, the rice crust and the liquid. And so there's a lot that has gone into that technically, right? The new dish, please explain it. Excuse me. Tell us what's the different between chicken of this sort, on the bone and not on the bone? This is not chicken. We're having scallops today.

So we elevated it. Yes, you're right. Typically, we would serve this as lazi-chi, red chili pepper chicken. And some people would like to call it the treasure chicken because you have to find the chicken among a pile of red peppers. And to elevate it, today we're eating wild scallops. It has a good to it. It's rather lovely. Do you see the garnish, these very deftly, intricately cut cucumbers?

And that's something that you hardly see these days. So it's a real sort of classic old school Chinese cooking, but it's labor intensive. Most people, did your father do it himself or one of the chefs? He did it himself. And let me say about 40 years ago, he was actually in a national competition to just compete on the knife cutting skill. Really? Yeah.

Because apart from the technical aspects of cutting, like you have to. to cut, I mean, the practical aspects you have to cut to eat with chopsticks, the technical ones, evenness for stir frying. There's also the aesthetic aspects. And there's this whole other thing like the French sugar arts of completely frivolous artistry with vegetable cutting. Dan, do you have a view on hot pot? I think it's terrible. What else is there to say? I think that hot pot is a great social activity, but it is never really my first choice to eat. But on the point about chains, one of the things I've observed over the last few years is that there has been a pretty growing scale of chain restaurants featuring basically slow casual cuisine. I'm thinking about sibei noodles.

I'm thinking about the sauerkraut fish restaurant that is achieving remarkable consistency across all of these different restaurants, which is a pretty difficult thing to do, I understand. And I wonder, do you see that these restaurants can be something like Ding Tai Feng to become, you know, major exports at some point? Or do you think that will be, they can't quite figure out the international market? Well, I don't see why not. I think they'd be very popular if they could export. And I think that this sort of technical innovation in Chinese food is something that's going to be more and more of. Like we mentioned, you know, the pre-prepared dishes, which is something that is not necessarily good thing. But also, I met a very high-level chef in Beijing who was showing me a robo walk, you know, an electric walk that was trying to automate the process of stir-frying,

which I'm sure is at the early stages. But, yeah, I think if they can achieve the consistency in standardisation, which they are doing in China, then yes. But one thing about Shibé, particularly, this is a noodle, a restaurant that specialises in northwestern sort of country cooking, right? in particular oat pasta, which is a speciality of Shanxi province. And when Shibay opened the first branches in Beijing, they had all these people on tables outside doing incredible.

It's a bit hard to describe, but they have a big lump of oat pasta in their hand with a little bit going between their fingers and they rub it onto the board and they get a tongue of pasta on the board. They whip it up into a tube and they stick it in a steamer. and you end up with all these tubes of pasta together in a steamer like a honeycomb, and then you steam them. But I have to say that when I've been recently, they don't have those people anymore. So I don't know whether they're dropping the real artisanal, high-skilled aspects

so that they can standardize and expand it. But that's a bit of a shame because it was lovely when it started that they were showcasing one of the amazing sort of handcrafting noodle arts at Shanxi. Either Fuchsia or Dan, you have an opinion on how good the mission. Michelin Guide is for China, and I guess Shanghai in particular might be where you would use it. I guess I would have never tried to look at the Michelin Guide. That's notjanic, right? Yeah, in China.

You know, I guess I would look a little bit more just at the apps and look at the photos. Is Michelin Guide useful for you? Well, I think they do identify some of the very best restaurants in Shanghai, in Chengdu. And it's helpful for people who don't know Chinese to have some kind of guide. But the downside is that I think, although, I mean, the classic Michelin methodology is to send a single inspector to a restaurant to have a meal. And that means that eating like this, which is more typical of many very excellent Chinese restaurants, is a little impractical. I did interview someone from Michelin recently, and they said that on occasion they do allow inspectors to go out in groups. But certainly with the early Michelin Guide to Shanghai, for example, they did pick lots of excellent.

restaurants, but they missed some that were equally good, but that did not have tasting menus suitable for individual diners. And I'm guessing that may be partly why, places where you have to book a private room and have a big dinner. So I would say that's one issue with it. But they have got better also at recognising even small noodle shops in Chengdu. And I think they're trying to be closer to the pulse of what people actually want to eat. But the downside is that I know a lot of Chinese chefs I know are a little bit preoccupied with Mishnau. And I think that when, and it's the problem in the West too, but when people start aiming at Mishlau stars, then it has certain implications for Chinese cuisine like a sort of pushing people towards individual plating rather than this style, which there's

nothing wrong with, but this is lovely eating like this too. So I sort of hope that it doesn't sort of distort the way that Chinese chefs are actually cooking and presenting their food. How are social media at changing Chinese food. In the U.S., people Instagram their food. I would say far too often. So there's an incentive to create Instagramable dishes. What's going on in China? Totally in China.

I mean, everyone's on their phones, like maniacs, like people everywhere else. And yes, and certainly very visually exciting food. And that's one problem, actually, with Sertuanese food, that I think it's the real drama dishes, like, you know, this sort of lads of chicken normally, which are great,

but they're just one facet of a very diverse, cuisine. Again, I think maybe they encourage restaurants, not just in China, but everywhere, but it's the same pressures of social media and... Podcasts. It brings people in, but when they're in the restaurant, I guess it's a whole menu dictates if we can keep them. A lot of the time, restaurants suffer with, oh, we have a lot of one-time diner. They can because of Instagram. The food is Instagramable, but actually it doesn't taste amazing. So what is the reason for them to come back? That goes beyond social media. What is the new dish? Oh, it looks like we have a, so in Chinese, umami has half fish and

has half lamb. So this is a dish with food umami with our fish bowl and lamb stew. Love it. I heard about that as a Shanghai dish. And when I first heard about lamb and fish stew, I did not quite believe it as a real soup. Have you been converted? I have been converted. I think it's awesome. Maybe you should go first? Okay, yes, please.

And also, again, we were talking about the importance of soup. This is a proper Chinese meal with a soup. It's not just one soup. It's courses of soups. Right. And a nice soupy dish here. Sorry, Tal. Where in China have you not eat in the food?

I have never been to Jiangxi province. Also, one place I really want to go. is Hylongyang in the Dengbe, northeast, because there it's sort of bordering Russia, and that's going to be a whole other lot of local ingredients and traditions and a bit of Russian influence. It's a very good restaurant in Dutvak, right on the border of North Korea that has a very, very strong North Korean Chinese cuisine combination. And it's the only place you can go to get that particular food. Yeah.

I mean, that's, again, the diversity of Chinese cuisine, that you don't only have the sort of branches of classical Chinese gastroning, but also you said in Yunnan, you have food that is like Vietnamese, Thai, Laoshen, and then in the northeast Korean, Russian. I mean, it's very extraordinary, Mongolian. Chenyang, I quite like the food. Spicier than I was expecting it to be. Wonderful dumplings. Maybe the best dumplings I'd had in China. Oh, yeah, there are, there are kind of Shenyang dumpling restaurants on there in other places, too. Yeah. Since Korea was mentioned, my Korean friend has a theory that a lot of, perhaps most of global variation in cuisine can just be explained by temperature in different countries. In particular, that Western and Northern Europe, it's too cold to cook outdoors.

And if you're cooking indoors and you don't want to poison yourself from the fumes or the smoke, you have to rely a lot more on covered pots and cooking vessels that rely on less, that create kind of less smoky, flavorful dishes. How do you kind of think about the geography or temperature of a place as a variable? Wow. I was just trying to think sort of, so Chinese walk cooking does create a lot of smoke and so on. But I mean, in lots of Chinese modern apartments, they would have a kitchen that's almost like a balcony where you can open all the windows. So you don't actually influence the place where people are sitting and eating, but it's

adjacent, right? But I suppose in, yeah, in the north, Dongbei, north, you have lots of hearty stews and soups. So maybe to an extent, very interesting question. The Su-Chinese say they need to eat a lot of spicy foods because it's such a humid and hot environment. I've never understood that. What actually, why is that helping with the humid environment? It makes you sweat. So you have to, because it's humid, you have this unhealthy dampness in your body.

So you have to have ginger, chilies, peppercorns to make you sweat, and that drives out the unhealthy humidity and restores a lovely equilibrium. Yeah. But I mean, the funny thing about that that is a little inconsistent is that the Cantonese South is also pretty humid, it seems to me, and yet chilies are not advised there to eating. What sweet water is? Tangshui. Oh, yes.

That's true. Yes. You do other things for the... This is a lovely texture, too, with the sort of slithery crisp woodier mushrooms. Yes. As well. You've noted very well, Fischer, that Chinese cuisine has a bit of an elitist bias. These eight great cuisines are very much concentrated in the more rich coastal provinces.

I wonder, can you gesture towards what a people's history of Chinese cuisine could look like? You know, how do we actually incorporate these folk traditions a little bit better? into our conception of Chinese food, so it is not so Cantonese and Jiangnan focused. Well, I think, so the first thing to say is the eight great cuisines is a very recent scheme. You know, people talk about it as if it was something really old, but I think it only, I've said in my book, but I think it only goes back to about 1980 or something. So there are many different ways of trying to express the regional diversity of Chinese food, all of them totally inadequate because it's such a sort of intricate patchwork.

But I think already, as you said, Jiangnan, which is the food of the eastern sort of region around Shanghai, very elitist. Fine Cantonese food is very elitist. But Sichuanese already has a reputation for being a sort of hearty folk cuisine, right? So it is represented. But I think that, yeah, I mean, I don't, the eight great cuisines incorporates like Anne Hui,

which is not regarded as a very great culinary region now. And I think it's the categorization of that, scheme is actually quite irrelevant and it doesn't rep. I think if people took a fresh look at it, they would include. And also in the eight great cuisines, Hunan cuisine is one of them, but they're talking about elitist. Hunan food and not the wonderful spicy home cooking. So, I mean, I think in terms of what people actually want to eat, it's not elitist, right? So the cuisines that are most popular now, Such one, what else? Hunan, no. The spicy ones are more popular. Spicy ones. Yeah, Guajo is also, and that's not an elitist cuisine. I think that,

you know, the people writing about food are no longer the sort of Confucian gentleman scholars are they? So it's... Why is Hunan food fallen behind in the West? So you used to have so many restaurants that claim to be Sichuan, Hunan, you know, they weren't really either one, but nominally there was some connection. And now many more people want real Chinese food. There's plenty of more or less broadly authentic Sichuan places. But I don't see broadly authentic Kuan places. What happened? Not so many.

I don't know. I mean, what do you think? My understanding was that Hunan food became quite popular after Nixon's visit to China. And, you know, this was all Chairman Mao. And then everybody just started advertising their Chinese restaurants as Hunanese cuisine. I think that kind of shaped, distorted our view. And so maybe people have caught on. Personally, I enjoy Hunan food a little bit less than Citran food.

I find Hunan food a little bit too oily, and the flavors are a little bit too much instead of more refined and tingling and teasing in a way that Citran often is. Lid, do you have a view on this? Are you tempted to serve Hunan dishes? Yes. May I introduce you what we're having? This is a Sam special, but it's not fair. to serve it only to Sam. That's why our table gets a separate platter. This is Chef Peter's signature

dish. It's a dry fry egg plant. He has done so many ingredients, the dry fry way. We call him a dry fried master. He can do it with fish. He can do it with shrimp, with Oprah, with cauliflower, with shitaki mushroom. It's the special batter that he cold anything with makes it very crispy outside, but still like juicy and tender inside with great balance of cilantro, citroan pepper. Sometimes he likes to add cumin. Other times, it's just a lot of flavors. If you think about all the family empire, how many restaurants is it now?

I stop counting. Stop counting, exactly. Obviously the food is wonderful, but in terms of business principles, what has made the difference, what have you all done, that has been the difference maker, viewing them as commercial enterprises. All right. I have to start with the things that we have tried, but not in a way financially successful. It's we keep trying to offer new concepts. We wanted to, in a way, offer modernized Chinese cuisine. People will call that more fusion or not really as authentic. This is something I really want to ask the people sitting on the dining table. So when it comes to the tradition,

classics, the authenticity versus modern ambience. What is the balance? What is your ratio when it comes to, like, if I'm going to pick a place for a meal, what do you guys look for? The floor is open. I don't think I'm a very usual diner, so I don't care that much for ambiance. Usually I like to very dull place. I love Filipino food also. And because it usually is very demure location, just go in, everyone's a family restaurant, so they cook everything very simple, homemade, done, and you go in. They don't have time for the other aspects of it. But I know when you go to those kind of places, the only other people there are just other Filipinos.

Similarly, because right now I live in Madrid, and oftentimes the best Chinese restaurants I find, actually, mostly Indonesian actually, are just very simple restaurants. And that's usually where the most people from Hunan typically go and have food. But the ones that look very nice, very objective things, typically cater to just the average consumer. And because of that,

they don't really tend to put that much effort on the food. But, you know, that's a most people I think would prefer a nice-looking restaurant. I am against nice-looking restaurants because it attracts too much Instagramming. I'm there for the food. We're there for the food.

You know, we don't want to. photos. Well, one of the key tenants in the Tyler Cowan theory of how to select your restaurant is looking for spelling mistakes on the menu. Similarly, I think some combination of Chinese clientele, not a particularly nice venue. I think just kind of, I guess also when you're in the restaurant, typically in the UK, if the service is kind of not as warm and, I guess, polite as you like to be treating me. Yeah, that's usually a very strong signal about the food being good, and I find that to be very true. I don't think you should take any of this advice.

Exactly. So this is a constant TV. Well, I mean, Fisher will probably, what do you look for? Do you look for a dining room for at least 90% Chinese audience? Well, I think having a Chinese audience is a good sign that I like everything. And sometimes I like to go to beautiful places with amazing service and beautiful China and elegant presentation. And sometimes I like to go and have street food. And that's the joy of eating and of Chinese food that you have something at every level. Yeah.

And I think also just this thing about classics versus innovation. You know, all the classics are actually the product of innovation. Somebody was saying to me the other day, you know, Marpo doofu, it's only 100 years old. You know, it's not an ancient dish. The Sichuanese didn't have chilies until a couple of hundred years ago. And so I think you, you know, you can't be too conservative, really. I like it when the diners are grumpy. When they're too happy, I start to get suspicious.

Like, why are they here? Are they here to have a good time? There's something about food. You mentioned sex earlier. When you film people doing it, that don't necessarily look happy. Wow. So it's true. I shouldn't take any of this advice for the future.

Who is maybe closer to our day-to-day customer. It is absolutely true when it comes to a business success is we look at what brings people back. So yes, you can have a very peacocky, shilly dish that maybe lights up in flame or, you know, something that people look at it, they're like, wow, I want to see what they're really like. But once they are in the door, you know, we think about what makes them stay. It really goes down to the ingredients, their personal feelings. You know, some of you guys like to be treated in a mean way.

maybe that's a strong association with how you're being treated. But I believe there is a lot of perception about Chinese cuisine. We're trying to make a change to. And again, I know that everyone on this table is a foodie and takes a lot of pride on standard and quality. We're trying to expand that audience. We want anyone that doesn't know much of Chinese cooking coming to a restaurant and feel good about being here.

It's not just them. It's everyone they're eating it with. Yes, our dining room is a little loud, but we tend to, you know, offer them appetizers before the entree comes out. And we offer them a little like macha or ice cream at the end of the meal, kind of in a way feel them, make them feel comfortable and familiar with what they're eating. Otherwise, you know, we stay pretty true the flavors. We like to offer both flavors, especially how that started his career,

in the U.S., it's really not afraid of using peppercore. At the time, it was banned in the U.S. There's no legal way of getting peppercorn or source it. I remember the restaurant owner would ask their family member in China to send it over from Fujian. So yes, things have changed quite a lot in the past 20, 30 years. And now we're looking at, oh, there's a lot of options. What is, from a business perspective, what makes us different that we get customer to come back for occasions, special celebration, or for their day-to-day carry out and delivery. Now, let's have about the new dish and should one eat it with chopsticks. Everyone should eat with chopsticks. Yes, we have a pork belly dish that is from start marinated and then coated with rice flour after it's steamed and

cooked 80-90%, then we want it to create a crispy texture. That's when we start to put it in the wok, very thick double-sides pansear, and then add all the green jalapeno, the scallion, the red chili pepper, pepper points. This is my favorite dish so far, this and the numbing beef. But Fuchsia, would you comment on this? I was just thinking this is the first time. So this thing, when you marinate the pork belly and you coat it in rice crumbs and you steam it is a very classic Chinese country dish. And it's the first time I've had it fried like this and it's delicious. It's a sort of like a new version of huigua roll back in the pot, twice cooked pork. If I can ask, this is a dish that is very known in the household family when you have something

steamed. Like at home, my mom or my grandma will steam it for the first time and serve it as a beautiful first-time dish. But for something to be consumed later in the day or the next day, people tend to get tired of eating the same thing over and over. So they get really smart on, why don't we pen serious? So it becomes a new dish. We're going to have to try it. Yeah. Lydia, are you seeing a difference between Chinese restaurants in the D.C. area, in the L.A. area and the New York area, is there a distinct difference with these things where they're just kind of, you know, Cichuan restaurants or something in each of these places, they are kind of consistent.

I feel like restaurants or restaurant owners are very smart to see what the trend is. As you guys can probably see, Sishuan restaurant, you know, if we're talking about in the 2000, but there has not been many. And that's probably how that got his reputation being a master of Cichuan chef, although he's really a classic trained Chinese chef cooking all the regional cuisines. Now, I want to say ever started in the 2010-ish, this is when the new immigration from China started to merging. A lot of them went to L.A., a lot of them went to New York, a lot of them came to D.C.

So we're starting to see Naga in Orange County. We see Jhely, which is a very Jiangsu-Juancai in New York. And I'm just naming a few. There's actually a lot more original cuisine. Like some, I remember my friend chef Simone Tongue was making green nutals by NYU, and it's vastly popular. Sam, any comment on the eggplant? He's very good.

Fergus Rashid, what's been your favorite dish so far? The eggplant has been very good, actually. I've also liked the scallions of an excellent. I think I'll love the pork. This one, my favorite. Why? I usually like a very subtle ma tinkling sensation. Usually that's not kind of overpowering.

And also the combination with the fry is very, very good. If you had to pick a favorite so far, do you have a nomination? Well, so for me, I love the pork and I love that soup with the fish balls. But for me, the reason this is such a lovely meal is that it's such a well-planned menu. And this is the thing that I think foreigners have the most difficulty with with Chinese food is how to assemble a menu. And you've really thought about different cooking methods, different ingredients, textures, some wet, some dry. And that's what makes it not only delicious, but also shufu comfortable because we have this, you know, something very sizzily and then a lovely light refreshing soup. So the pleasure of the meal is sort of physical as well as just, I mean, yeah.

How did you learn that? Just by induction? You were served a lot of meals. you ran the mental regressions? Is there a way it can be taught to someone like you? Well, mainly I've learned through just constant eating. But yeah, I think, I mean, I try to write about this really. And the idea that, you know, a well-planned Chinese menu,

it's not just about delicious tastes. And I think if you think about going out for a classic French meal, you think about having lots of rich food, pudding, cheese, and feeling quite heavy afterwards. With a well-planned Chinese meal, you can have dozens of dishes and still feel comfortable. But I think it's just, you know, as a foreigner, once you start considering that the light and delicate dishes

are just as important as the razzle-dazzle exciting dishes, then you're on the way to be able to plan a nice meal, right? I would say start with picking out your favorites and look at, oh, what I'm missing from there. And that's a good way to go. And your father taught you? I guess so. I am very influenced by both.

great chefs at home, mom and dad's, mom is a pastry chef, that is a work chef, and they train me to have a very picky palate. But I think also it's just, yeah, it's about not repetition, right? That's the key thing. So if you have a dish with one ingredient or one style, you just want to make sure the other ones are as contrasting as possible. On the subject of Fuchsia's writing, I think that your book is wonderfully well organized to have to have. have 30, to introduce the cuisine through 30 dishes and to use that to talk about knife work and the diversity and everything else, I thought it worked really well. And furthermore, what worked well was that you are just a abulous writer in terms of making the physicality of eating very,

very good. Can you speak a little bit about, you know, is food writing, this is, I think it really rewards food really rewards good writing. Can you talk about how you learn that other craft that you've picked up so well? Well, thank you very much. I don't know how, I mean, it's just instinct and trying to, I mean, I suppose what I've been trying to do all this time is find ways of describing the intricacies of Chinese food to make it sort of illuminating and delightful for people who didn't grow out with it. And so trying to find ways things like texture, which is a quite difficult subject in the sense that many of our texture words in English are a bit disgusting, slimy, grisly, but trying to write sort of. of playfully and engagingly so that people can both sort of acknowledge these unfamiliar textures, but also see how they might be delicious. I did a degree in English literature, so I read lots

of good books, which is the best training for any writer. But I think also I just try to have fun with it to just be playful and have a laugh. And also I just, I love eating. And I have, since I was a teenager, I've always kept a journal and it's always turned into sort of epic descriptions of meals, so I've had a lot of practice. When you worked for BBC World Service, you learned how to write then or before? Well, I suppose I've always written, I mean, you know, I had a certain training for how to think about language and trying to be very fair and thinking how it will be in, you know, how it will be understood in different cultures.

But I think more of it is just practice, just writing, having a notebook, writing your impressions and it's just a craft that you develop through use. Yeah. What did your parents do? So my mother taught English as a foreign language. So she had a huge food influence on me. So she's a great cook and we always had lots of foreign friends in our home. So I had a very unusual gastronomic upbringing. And my father was in sort of the first generation of IT people. There is a bit of anxiety I get when I go to a new Chinese restaurant because I feel like when you want the good food, you have to perform. You have to perform yourself. I'm going to say, Lao Ban, I'm here to actually consume the correct food. But people who can't just, you know,

turn on some Changsha dialect, how would they actually get the good food from the rest of us? Well, so without the language or, yeah, I mean, I suppose that one of the best ways is to look at what other people are eating. But it is difficult. And even when I go to China and I order for a group in good Mandarin, knowledgeably, and I know the names of the dishes, it so often happens that the waiter will say, if I'm with foreigners, he'll say, oh, they can't possibly eat that. So there's the sort of assumption that foreigners won't be able to handle certain foods. And I sometimes have to have an argument and just say, look, we will eat it.

And we have gone around proving that we can eat sea cucumbers and stuff on many occasions. But I think, and it's quite understandable because I think a lot of foreigners have a habit of ordering something that they can't handle and then being rude and obnoxious and just complaining or they think that there's a, you know, there's a bone in the chicken, so that's a problem. It's not a problem.

It's meant to be like that. So I think that Chinese waiting stuff, particularly in the West, but also in China are a little wary of upsetting foreigners and also they just want people to have a nice time. So you have to battle against that stereotype if you really want to eat the good food. But I think things are changing.

But I think just looking at what other people are eating is incredibly useful. And then also showing your appreciation when you do eat something unusual. Because I have a, you know, I should imagine that all the restaurants where I've been with groups of foreigners eating unusual things with gusto that afterwards they've thought, well, you know, it is possible for foreigners to eat something. What is it then that you can't eat? Put aside the illegal. What were you just say like, no, I'm not going to have that? No, I will eat everything.

You will eat everything. Well, I did, in Yunnan, actually. I did eat some, there's a very special dish in one particular region, which is raw pork, like a sort of tartar pork, sheng pi, dali, sheng pi. And I ate that because I was, you know, local people rave about it in this all time. And I was aware that there are health issues with eating raw pork, but I really wanted to try it. And so I had it with some local friends. It was really delicious, but I had this terrible panic afterwards.

And I probably wouldn't do that again. But I think it's a really hard thing. Like I want to eat with people and I want to be totally open-minded and non-judgmental. Yeah, so I suppose it's just the only things that will restrain me are possibly sort of health concerns like that. And then also sort of ethical issues. But I have a real dilemma with hairy crabs. So this is one of the great delicacies of the Jiangnan region. And one of the best ways to eat them is they're drunken.

crabs, Swiss, yeah, and they're sort of pickled in rice, wine and seasonings. And it's just like, you just fly to heaven when you eat one. And I've been eating these for years with great delight. And then a couple of years ago, a few years ago, the Shanghai authorities, where they're a great delfties, they banned raw drunken crabs. And so I started sort of looking at why this was, and it turns out that they can carry parasites, freshwater raw creatures. So now, you know, somebody offers me a raw hairy crab. What do I do? You know, I've been fine so far, but I don't know that the sort of lost for eating them is so great. You only live once.

Why aren't there more raw dishes in Chinese food overall? Well, I mean, historical prejudice. So, you know, in ancient China, the Chinese defined themselves as people who ate cooked food and barbarians beyond the borders of the empire at raw food. And so there is this idea that a very ancient idea going back to the Book of Rights, Li Ji, one of the classic times, text that civilization began when people learned how to harness fire to cook their food and they left behind the era of drinking blood and eating feathers and having all the diseases from raw food. So there is a sort of idea that, you know, I remember when I took a Hunanese friend out for dinner in London and she was served a rare pigeon breast, you know, her initial reaction was

anxiety. Is this going to be a bit dangerous? So it's a sort of health concerns coupled with an ancient tradition of eating. cooked food. I spent about three months in Dali last year, and I was offered a lot of raw pork, and I never took it. Right. Probably very sensible.

It was very nice. It was like, I mean, it was a bit like a steak tatar. But you'll eat raw meat in the U.S. I would eat raw beef, sure. Yeah. Pork, I don't know. But I think like in Germany, I think it's, I don't know if it's a certain region, they have met, which is raw pork.

But when you. eat this, there are all kinds of rules and regulations for the temperature, which it's kept and how it's served and so on. Whereas in Darlene, I mean, it was very, very kind of easy. But the fact is that local people of this particular group eat it all the time. And I was always asking people if they had any problems. And most people say, oh, it's fine. You know, they check the pork. It's fine. When and where is China most effective as a street food country? And when isn't it? So I don't eat much street food when I'm in China. Why not?

But I might say in Malaysia, the restaurant food is so good. Yeah. And I've never found the street food to be better, even though it can be very good. Whereas I say in Malaysia, I might find street food on average to be better than restaurant food. Is there anywhere in China where street food's the way to go? Yeah, in the north, I went to Kaifung, the old Song Dynasty, northern capital. And this is some years ago, but they had the most incredible night market with all kinds of food. And that was just amazing and delicious.

And then I've had good, I mean, I think the problem is that, you know, with China's modernisation, there's been this big effort to clean up the streets and they've seen sort of street food as being old-fashioned and something undesirable. And so, like when I lived in Sichuan in the beginning, there were actually quite a lot of street traders doing really nice food and it's harder to find them. But actually, if you go to Chengdu, go to the Wenchu Monastery and in the streets around there, there are people serving some traditional snacks, Dan Hong Gao, these. little pancakes stuffed with pork or sweet things.

Yeah, Tongue, Wardler. Yeah, these lovely. So I would go there. There are certain areas where it's tolerated and where you can have really lovely street food. Yeah. Dan, do you have a view on this? Basically anywhere with a night market, I think,

is reliably the places with great street food, and especially these nice little barbecues and noodles. I'd echo Fusha here at that. Shanghai, I believe, used to have actually quite a nice street food life. and then they cleaned all of that up, and I think they've maybe been borderline successful in driving that out. And sometimes what they do is they bring street food into an area,

a bit like the Singaporean Hawker Center idea, but the problem is that they're not individual traders anymore. They're just people working for someone else, and it's not really the kind of really good street food. Lydia, what do we have here? I think we missed our seafood pearl with sticky rice, and that's a dish that everyone took a cold. Everyone took one and it's now gone.

So that's a very typical food bake cuisine. We like to use pork as a filling, but for today's variety, that's which should crop and seafood. And coated with sticky rice, steamed, and just finishing up with a beautiful glaze. And next, we have the famous squirrel fish. Today, I think they're more daisy-looking,

Amazing knife work. Look at that. Yes, it is. You know, cut like that and they're not falling apart. They're all staying in these lovely fronds. That's right. Or something. So no episode of conversations with Tyler would be complete without a implication or understanding that everything comes back to economics.

What can an economist learn from eating more Chinese food? You're asking me. Either, anybody. I have no idea. A, competition works. B, Adam Smith said division of labor is limited by the. extent of the market. So as Chinese became the number one group coming to the United States, you started getting a lot of regional cuisine, but also look for places that are not too easy

to get to, not frequented by too many tourists, and have grumpy diners and abusive staff. Because there's a selection effect if the place is in business at all and it's full. That's implying the food is very good. It's being patronized often by elderly Chinese, who in my view are much faster than a lot of younger Chinese. Younger Chinese in this country, sort of by my standards, are too willing to go out to eat to enjoy themselves. And I just think that's wrong. Those would be my starting points, but other answers are welcome. Trade promotes globalization. Citron food is a slightly easier to export, as Fuchsia said, given the chilies and the peppercorns. That's why it's really easy to have that standardized across the world.

when Fusha mentioned that the willingness for the government to try to standardize cuisine didn't really work. You kind of see this ability of the individual to kind of design the menu themselves. It's a very big aspect as a big economic concept there. A slightly different question for Fischer. I'm wondering you write in your book about how

the West, I guess the Anglosphere in particular, had this experience with Chinese food coming and I guess in the post-war period when essentially what you end up getting and a takeaway is not real kind of proper Chinese food. So I guess do you have a sense of other regions, other continents of the world, have they had a similar experience with Chinese food coming there or maybe something you haven't even had it yet?

Oh, well, I mean, I think, yes, I think that the sort of Cantonese simplified model is in many places, but with slight variation. So like in Sweden, they have something called four little dishes, which is like a standard menu of Chinese takeaway food. Yeah, and I think that it seems to have been a bit of, blueprint that worked very well all over the place. Yeah, with sweet taste and fried foods, with variations. But I have to say, I mean, I haven't traveled to Peru, for example,

where they have, by all accounts are very interesting. Yeah, local Chinese food. And also Calcutta has some very interesting old Chinese dishes and I have yet to go there. So both of those are very good, but they're very different. Yes. They don't feel to me like quite Chinese food, but I would recommend them, Chifas, which you even can get in northern Virginia. though it's much better in Peru. Oh, really? But they're like rice dishes with Chinese elements in them. That's the way I would think about them.

I spent some time in Barcelona this summer, and I found, first of all, Barcelona to be, I think, my favorite city for food in Europe, in part because I think it has a very great respect for Asian cuisine. This was the first European country I've seen where there were a lot of Spanish chefs making Chinese food, Spanish chefs making Japanese food. And I thought that was quite good. Where is the best sitting in Europe for Chinese food? Is it London?

I mean, I haven't done a survey, so I have no idea. But yeah. But if somewhere were great, you would have been pulled to it, right? Well, I hope so. But I mean, I'm spoiled because I ate a lot in China. So, you know, I don't feel the need to go and eat Chinese food everywhere else. I feel like Singapore has really good Chinese food because of the Chinese population. London has great Chinese food, not just the Chinatong that has been there for maybe decades, but also the newer, where I like to call it modern Chinese. We talk about Chef Wayne, Andy Wayne, yeah, really doing an excellent idea with elevated Chinese foods being tasting menu.

But I think one problem, and this maybe comes back to economics again, that in England, for example, I think now the door has opened to massive public interest in regional Chinese, food and people are really, you know, open to trying now eating Sichuan, Xi'an food and so on. But the real problem is that we have very stringent immigration rules. So in order for, you know, a chef to come over and work in a restaurant in London, they have to have a certain level of English and a certain income, which is prohibitive for anyone but the big international hotels. And I think it's a shame that we don't have more trained chefs coming in from China to bring different aspects of Chinese. I find that the Chinese food in my

Madrid is actually even better than Barcelona. He spent much time in Madrid in China. I think because even there you get very, very obscure local cuisine from China is also in Madrid, where in Barcelona, it's not as, you know, you can't get the obscurity as much. This book, other books you've written, what's the hardest thing for you about writing a book? Well, I found this a lot harder than writing a cookbook. Why? Because a cookbook has a slightly obvious. structure. So unless you're going to do something really radical, you have a sort of introduction, you know, you can go into basic techniques and ingredients, then you have recipes often grouped by ingredient and each recipe has a headnote. So the structure by now I've done a few cookbooks is

fairly straightforward. With a narrative book, it can be anything you want. So I, you know, I start with a vague idea that I want to talk about some of the great themes of Chinese gastronomy and cuisine. and then it's sort of how to organize it. It's a bit frightening because I felt that I was starting with much more of a blank page than with a cookbook. Yeah. What's your most unusual, successful work habit? Getting on a train. And what do you do then?

No, if I have... You mean, through China? Or just you got on a British train and you write? If I can't... Or you got on a British train and you cook? If I have a writing block and I just, I'm frustrated and I feel I can't possibly do it and I just give up, if I get moving and get on a train, then for some reason my mind starts loosening up and I have a breakthrough. Also sitting in cafes, but just change of scene.

So moving and not moving. Are you successful habits? Getting away from being the solitary writer at your computer or at your desk and sort of that breaks the deadlock. But I have to say, I mean, yeah, I wouldn't put myself up as a model of effective and, you know, efficient looking. I want to say, you finished your book on time. I remember meeting you last year in London. You said you were writing this book and you have a very strict deadline.

And look at where we are. Well, I did have the advantage of the global pandemic, which meant that I wasn't racing around the world, but I had to stay home. Other than China, now that it's quite easy to travel, where else do you want to go for food? I'd like to go back to Japan. You know, people sometimes think I know about Asian food and I really don't, because I've been so concentrated on China, and I went to Japan for the first time in 2018,

and I have only dipped my little finger into that particular pie, and so I would love to go in. And it's so interesting because, obviously, it relates to Chinese food, and you see some words and processes and things that have died out in China that are still in Japan expressed differently. So it's kind of related, but fascinatingly different for me. I was there a few weeks ago. I had one Chinese meal for breakfast. It was quite good. Just amazing sushi anywhere without even looking for it. Yes.

Some people would say that Japan now has the best French cooking, some of the best Italian cooking. Now, I'm skeptical that they can have the best Chinese picking, but what do you think? I don't think they do. I've been to Michelin-Star Chinese restaurants in Tokyo. They're very good. They deserve their stars. But I think, compared to Chengdu or somewhere, they'd only be middling quality among the good restaurants. Is it because there's no grumpy diners?

They're cooking for Michelin diners who do have good taste, but it's a little rarefied. And at the visceral level, there's just something a bit missing, I found. But it seems so this is a very super official impression because I wasn't there for very long. But it seemed to me that Japan also has the old school Chinatown cooking and newer cooking. Yokohama in particular, yeah. Yeah, but one meal that I wrote about in this book, a Chinese meal, was actually cooked, the stir-fry chapter. I went to one small Chinese modern restaurant where the Chinese technique

and the sort of sensibility and aesthetics were very Chinese and it was absolutely superb. Yeah. So that was just a little snapshot but it was a very interesting Chinese food cooked and served at a sort of bar like a sushi counter actually.

Lydia, where do you think of going to? For food, obviously there's maybe other reasons to travel. Oh my God. Well, I'm dying to go to Peru for the food but also for the nature scene, Machu Bitu. And I want to say I haven't really explored much of Mexico. I feel like it's so close to home where we live. But it's underrated. I was only in Mexico City the first time this August with my then nine-month-year daughter.

We explored the city from pastries in the morning, great coffee shops, to, we haven't really had a lot of opportunity to explore the street tacos, but the dining scene, the restaurants are truly amazing with oat flavors. I would say Southeast Asia for me, I guess maybe more the street food that I find quite thrilling. I've had quite a lot of refined Chinese food. Now it's more, it's a street food now for me. And I have not spent Mexico and all. and I think that Mexico is hugely exciting.

Rural Mexico in particular is one of my all-time favorites. For me, it's on a par with China. I love Mexico City. It's incredible, but just side-of-the-road dishes in small towns or on the edge of mid-sized towns, for me, that's the best food in Mexico. And I will do that in life until I can't do it anymore. And I've been to Mexico over 30 times,

and just every meal is a wonder in the way that it is in China and can be in India, but not too many other places. I love Japan, but Japan also has a lot of the worst food. Now, I don't go there to eat it, but it can be disgusting or the desserts or I think Japan has very high variants of food, even though all of it is well done by its standards. Sometimes I think they are pursuing the wrong standards. What explains that variation? They pursue perfection and in a way achieve it. But if you don't agree with all matters of taste, pursuing perfection in a sense can be a negative. So if you look at these Filipino desserts, which for me are too sweet, they're too gooey, they're too

large, too many different things piled on top of each other, but they're quite popular. There are people who love them. I don't think they're wrong to love them. Japan just takes every direction you can imagine and perfects it, and that's a little dangerous. And I won't eat raw chicken in Japan, speaking of things, you know, that I don't eat. to me, I don't know that I'm afraid. I trust that it's safe. I just think it would disgust me.

And that's irrational. But there I am. And what else I can get is so good. Nominations from this side of the room. I've only been to China once. I think I'd love to go back. I was in Chongqing. I think, I mean, for all the reasons we've just mentioned,

like there's, I think, an endless amount of things to sort of discover and kind of seems to mind there. Well, I've never been to China. So that's the obvious answer. I think Ethiopia is still very underrated when it comes to food. It's been there for the first time this year, and it was blooming away. So I want to go back for sure and try a lot more Ethiopian dishes. What struck you in particular?

The spice combinations. That was the quick, quick answer. Some of the combos are so odd. I can't describe them properly. And the only closest thing reminds me out of it's like some Peruvian spices, for example, strange in itself, or Mexican spices. but that combination of spices, these need a lot more exploration, I think. But yeah, what do we have here?

We have a peach treasab. Speaking of, Chinese is not huge on dessert. Sometimes, you know, after a full meal of banquet, we just eat some seasonal fruit. It will be a lot of, like, specialty cutting into, like, cute shapes of watermelon or apples, pears, dragon fruits. But today, we're having a little tree sap. This is also a modern Chinese dessert. Future can talk a lot more about it. It's funny because I never saw, so this ingredient, peach tree sap,

I never saw it until the last five years or something. And suddenly it's become incredibly trendy. And it's often served in sort of fairy tale soups with things like silveryer mushrooms and lotus seeds, goji berries, and another of these lovely texture foods, right? And it is from the beech tree. Yes. And how do you source it?

A fiends of a market. You get it dried and it looks like little pieces of nobly amber and you soak them and then they sort of swell up into this lovely jelly. We are at about the end of our podcast. I would just like to thank everyone for participating. To thank Lydia Chang, her father, Peter, the entire staff at Mama Chang. They always treat me wonderfully. I just love them. I actually don't want them to be surly to be.

me. They're super nice. Fuchsia, of course, has done the book and made this all possible. Again, that's invitation to a banquet, the story of Chinese food. Please do buy it, read it, and I would stress buy all of her books. You cannot buy just one. And Fusia, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowan,

and the show is at Cowan Convo's. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.