A highlight of the Sydney Closet Fashion Team’s visits to China is always feasting on authentic Cantonese cuisine. Chaozhou, the city in Guangdong Province where we spend most of our time, is known worldwide for seafood caught fresh from the nearby China Sea and vegetables just hours from the garden.
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Entrance Chaozhou Restaurant |
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No need for a menu at a seafood restaurant in Chaozhou where customers select from the day's fresh catch. |
At the hotel breakfast, we pass on the cauldron bubbling with “porridge with 1,000-year-old eggs”. We join the locals as they peel a whole baked sweet potato, wrap it in their hands and bite into it like a candy bar.
After a morning and afternoon designing in the factory showroom, it is customary for the owners to invite us to a local restaurant. Many American customers ask to eat more familiar fast food like KFC and McDonald’s now available in Chaozhou - although very expensive. But the Fashion Team bites (bad pun!) at culinary adventures that give us the chance to sample dishes foreign to menus back home:
- Blood red clams steamed in fish stock
- Oysters fried with eggs and bamboo
- Papaya baked with honey
- Lotus root stuffed with rice
- Egg yolks baked into sliced pork
- Rice rolled into a log with peanuts and vegetables then sliced
- Whole fried fish in the original sweet and sour sauce
We order ice cold Tsing Tao beer to wash down the spicy foods and have to laugh when it is always served in small juice-size glasses with the “Budweiser” logo in red.