Flying Time Intermezzo: Philadelphia

Apologies for lightposting (again)! I hope I can make it up by starting this blog post with wonderful Chinese food.



Last weekend was time for our biweekly get together, this time in Philadelphia. Our only goal for this weekend was to have good food. We succeeded with flying colors. On Saturday evening we went to Barbuzzo (no pics), where inspired Mediterranean food was prepared with balls and love. We had wonderful trout, meatballs, acorn squash and bread pudding.

Then for breakfast the next morning, we went to Chinatown, specifically Heung Fa Chun Sweet House. We asked what was good, and got a soft tofu and a noodle dish. The soft tofu dish (first pic) was out of this world!



Then it was time for some mind food, so we visited the Rodin museum.

One more food pic: we then went to Bud & Marilyn, which is advertised as retro-American. This fried chicken was another big hit.



Another biweekly get together that worked out terrifically!

Cornell get together

We drove up to DC for a mini-Cornell reunion, meeting up with some friends from grad school. We also took advantage of this opportunity to eat insane amounts of food. Even now, I am still in a bit of a food coma, so I will just leave you to contemplate the vast amounts of food we managed to put away.

One Day in Frankfurt

We are back from Tyrol --- plenty of photos will follow soon. We made a stop in Frankfurt on our way back, to apply for a US visa, and to have some big city food, which we sometimes crave. We went to two Chinese restaurants, and one very special Frankfurt one (we will post about that one later).

Shui Zhu Yu (boiled fish served in chili oil) is one of those Chinese dishes that you don't expect to get a good version of, anywhere but in China. But lo and behold, in this small restaurant in Frankfurt, we found it! Real authentic flavors, and good, very fresh boiled fish --- an absolute delight!



We also had some fried tofu, and some cabbage, which were quite good too.



Highly recommended: Restaurant Jade on Moselstraße, close to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof.

People

Pelgrims

Monks

Nomad

Chinese Food

From Langmusi we traveled to Xiahe: a slightly larger mountainous town in Gansu. Our first lunch consisted of Chinese food.

Pork Belly

Remember the last Saarbrücken post when we had Chinese food from our favorite restaurant, Sake? Me neither! Anyway, the day after that we made our own Chinese food. I still have a lot to learn.

Profi Chinese Food

Long time no see at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Saarbrücken, with the unfortunate name Sake. The food was even better than I remembered!



We had the usual Hong Kong duck and Ginger Meets Chicken.



Yum-o!

Home Made Chinese Foodz

The dong po rou was not quite there yet, but these green beans were awesome.

China Restaurant

We tried another Chinese restaurant. The food was mostly what we would have expected in a good restaurant outside the city of Beijing.



But the fish (below) was not so good: it tasted like ground spices, and was too spicy. That, and the "The Nines"-effect afterwards, made us decide not to go back to this restaurant.

Icicles and Eggplant

After quite a nice walk in the forests in the neighborhood, we made Chinese food.



More care was used in preparing the food, than in photographing it --- it tasted quite good.

A Week in Foodz

Just being back from cold Japan in freezing Germany, meant a craving for good hearty food.



So this week started with Spätzle, Brussel sprouts and hutspot.



Of course we also had our chicken livers...



... and some Chinese food: fish with rice vinegar.



And after shopping in France, we had these amazing boudins.

Home cooked foodz are not a punishment.

China Road Syracuse

We went back to our favorite Chinese restaurant in Syracuse yesterday, and we're a little surprised that their food is really as good as we remembered (or maybe even better?).



They we're out of 梅菜扣肉, the pork belly with preserved vegetables that we always ordered there, so instead we had the pork 紅燒五花肉 pictured above.

We could not resist trying this restaurant's version of 鱼香茄子, and had to conclude that there is still plenty of room for F to improve.



We have always loved the tea smoked duck, or 樟茶鴨.



Mission Chinese food successful!

Hot and Sour Cabbage

I really like this dish with Sichuan peppers.



Also, some nice pork.

Fleischwolf!

We were feeling a little adventurous this weekend, so we got out the brand spanking new Fleischwolf to make some serious Chinese food. We made lion's head meatballs, which turned out to be a little firmer and heavier than what we we remembered, but the taste was divine.



We also made something we did not have before, stuffed eggplant.



Chinese food is awesome!

More Pictures of Chinese Food in Amsterdam

For our penultimate lunch in Amsterdam we were joined by Ellen and Christiaan, who wanted Asian food that they can't get in Hilvarenbeek. We first sat down in Nam Kee, but their menu seem to consist mainly of Dutch-Chinese food. So we went back to Sichuan on the Warmoesstraat. It was even better than the week before.



These spicy dumplings are awesome.



The fire fish was great.



I was not too fond of their yu xiang qiezi. We also had the same pork as last time, which was again really good.

In case this blog post has you longing for more pictures of Chinese food in Amsterdam, you are in luck, as Ellen just blogged about this as well!