Vancouver May 2005 - Dim Sum and Not so Canadian Bacon

I like Chinese food and eat it at least as often as I eat Mexican. But I do not like Canadian Chinese food. I see restaurants here all over the place advertising “Dim Sum” but didn’t know what it was. The Project Manager took the team to lunch yesterday at a Chinese restaurant where we had it. It’s kind of like the English high tea – basically a series of appetizers served family style. Very small portions (thank God!!!!). There was only one thing I kind of sort of liked even though there was a lot of pork and seafood (but the shrimp wasn’t COOKED). They just had a way of fixing everything that was totally disgusting. I noticed that the Australian member of our team wasn’t looking too thrilled either and we talked today and she was of the same opinion as me (said that chicken fried steak I described to her the other day was sounding might good about halfway through lunch). The last course before dessert was breaded and fried CHICKEN FEET!!!!! I have to tell you that I thought I was going to throw up just watching the two Canadians eat them (the other three of us just couldn’t do it). It’s mainly all gristle and bone and you suck the gristle off the bone and spit the bones out. Dessert was egg custard tart – how could you go wrong with that?? Well, you could – the custard appeared to be all YOLK!!!!! Thank God, it was very tiny – I just held my breath and swallowed it.

Tonight I got back to hotel and decided I just couldn’t take another night of salad, cereal, canned tuna or popcorn so I called down the street and ordered pizza and wings. (I had bought some groceries last week but the kitchen isn’t well equipped and the oven doesn’t work very well and when I’ve tried to cook, I’ve always seem to be missing something – so I just gave up).

I ordered Canadian bacon pizza (that and hamburger are the only kind I ever eat) and hot wings (because they didn’t have mild). Went to pick it up and on way back I thought the wings certainly had a pungent odor. Opened up the pizza when I got back – the bacon was not AMERICAN Canadian bacon – it was just big chunks of brown PIG and VERY PUNGENT. Now, I like pork and eat it often and I know it comes from pigs. But, this is the first time I ever KNEW when I bit into it that it was a PIG. It was just like, OH MY GOD – this is a PIG!!!!! I had just had a salad for lunch so nothing to come up but I was a good 15 minutes with the dry heaves. So thought, well let me try the wings – opened up the box – they were very tiny and skinny – all I could think of was those damn chicken feet!!!! It’s all sitting outside in the hall now and I can STILL smell it.

Food has not been good to me here – and it’s surprising – I love seafood and thought I would be in heaven here, but just haven’t had that good of luck. Oh well, I know there are some really good restaurants here – wish I had more time to really scout them out.