And so the meeting was okay. Nothing seems final as of the moment. Gaah. I’m still waiting for my brother now to meet with me regarding our stall’s food in the coming weeks. There are so many holes to fill, and it’s already 6:30 I haven’t visited the stall yet. We had a little snack on the way back at Su Zhou to contemplate on our meeting. We hope that things get ironed out because our deadline for operation would be in August.
There are new things in Su Zhou, I haven’t gone to that branch in a long time since I’ve been snacking in their branch at Promenade Greenhills. The place is casual, much like your typical no frills Chinese Restaurant. But the food is delicious, it’s simple, honest Chinese cooking.
Our first dish is a hot and sour soup with nori. This soup with a pleasantly sour note is made to be little thick. The soup has pieces of pork, soft tofu, egg, carrots, shiitake mushrooms and is topped with nori. The ingredients all contribute to the complex broth that is soured by black vinegar and probably simmered with double A powder to thicken. The heat from the chili is just right, and the nori definitely adds and interesting umami and seafood taste, even if the soup doesn’t seem to have bits of seafood.
The next one that got to our table was the Xiao Long Pao. I’m not sure if that’s the correct spelling, but anyway. It’s a pork dumpling with a luscious amount of soup in the middle. You eat it with black vinegar ang some ginger and chili oil. I think one of the interesting things about Su Zhou is that their dumplings are homemade. Ensuring the quality of this Xiao Long Pao is consistent. It always has the soup! I used to wonder how that was made, but anyway, I think it’s either, the soup is inserted into the dumpling in a jelly form so that when it’s steamed it melts…or the soup is in ice form and it’s frozen, once it is steamed and the ice melts, the wonderful dumpling is quickly filled with this deliciously rich broth. Steaming is perfect and the dumpling’s filling is nice and soft, the wrapper too is good, a little thick but I guess it’s a little tricky to keep all that soup inside.
Pork and Vegetable Fried Rice. Wow, I can still taste the pork’s rendered fat, and maybe the seasoning that they added to the rice that made it so tasty. Sometimes you can’t get taste like that unless it comes in a concentrated form, e.g. powder or oil…whatever works. All i know is that it was cooked perfectly, because the vegetables weren’t soggy and still had a refreshing crunch when you ate it.
Steamed Beef with Garlic and Chili, with a soy paste dip. I didn’t eat much of this. I found that the topping on the beef was too overpowering to eat with my fried rice. I guess it would be good on it’s own or with rice, at this point I was getting a little full and I was already waiting for Su Zhou’s Corn Biscuit which seemed way more interesting.
This was wonderful. It reminded me of living in my lola’s house in summers (my lola has a taco factory and a bakery at the back of their house…i was instantly enamored by the smell of corn and vanilla together, heheh). This corn biscuit is definitely something new. The corn was skillfully fried in a custard-eggwhite batter (or atleast that’s how it looks like) and served with a mayo dip. The interesting sweet/savory snack instantly got me. And I loved the texture. The fried batter that held it together was crisp on the outside, and chewy, along with the sweet corn, on the inside. This is definitely a treat. You learn something new everyday.
Our ending was this steamed kutchay dumpling which China likes. I guess I was too caught up with the corn biscuit that I only got to munch on half. Still this is a traditional favorite here in Su Zhou. The filling is juicy, and the kutchay adds a wonderful flavor and a little texture to the filling. Watch out for your teeth though, you could have a dark green snack hanging around and not knowing about it.
It’s already 7:00! And my brother hasn’t met with me about the food! I guess I have to head for the stall without him.
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