The Tangled Web of Sin and Fine Dining

I am always filled with paroxysms of guilt after partaking in a meal of fine dining. It seems sinful to eat an extravagant meal when literally billions of fellow travelers on our small planet live without. It is also seems sinful to eat meat, a practice that takes up far too many of the earth's resources.  Eating fast food and corporate, mass-produced food also has unethical components. Even the humble, healthy blueberries I purchased from my local grocery store, became a source of consternation when I noticed that they had been flown all the way from Spain. 

I think the only way one can eat ethically is to consume exclusively the fruits, grains, and vegetables one can cultivate oneself or in a cooperative with other sustainable farmers. But such practice might not be possible for many of us. And my monthly donations to the World Food Program and the Spokane Food Bank do not absolve me of any of my food guilt.

6 days a week, I try to eat as humbly as I can, but one day a week I celebrate food and its deliciousness by cooking something extra special or eating somewhere wonderful. Over the weekend, I had a meal at Li Feng, the Chinese Restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental hotel where I am staying.  It is a kitchen overseen by Chef Fei, the superstar chef who runs the Mandarin Oriental restaurant in Guangzhou that has earned 2 Michelin stars.  And what a celebration of food it was tonight.

The highlight of the evening was the signature appetizer: Deep-Fried Swan Dumpling with Black Pepper Duck Meat. It was one of the most beautiful dishes I've ever eaten.  When it is presented at your table, the server pours your tea into a hole in the center of the serving dish onto a bed of dry ice, creating a steamy lake that it appears your swans are swimming in. And it wasn't just a showpiece; it was delicious too. 

Also had a tasty lobster noodle soup. The course after that was my favorite seafood, scallops, cooked in a wok with asparagus, walnuts, two kinds of mushrooms, in a truffle oil. Best wok preparation I have ever had.

Final dish was the least sophisticated on the menu: sweet and sour chicken, which is my favorite American/Chinese dish, even the dreadful versions you get in the States with meat covered in thick, heavy dough and smothered in a sauce that is very sweet and barely sour. I had always thought sweet and sour was an American creation, but the dish can actually trace its origin to China and has been a featured dish for centuries in the Cantonese cuisine spotlighted at Li Feng.

It is not often that you are served the perfect version of a dish, but I was this evening. Beautifully presented under a tepee of spun sugar, the entree was amazing, possessing none of the flaws found in American versions. The delicious surprise ingredient? Fresh sliced strawberries.  

I hadn't planned on dessert as I was quite full, but it turns out you are given a free dessert on your first visit to Li Feng, whether you want one or not. Thankfully, the magnificently refreshing mango puree wasn't at all heavy, but I could only take a minuscule nibble out of each of the dessert dumplings, tasty though they were. 

Martin Luther said that if we are to sin, we should sin boldly and not cower secretly in the shadows. And indeed that is how I sinned at Li Feng, one of the 5 best restaurants at which I have ever eaten.
















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Erik's Book Club: November Selections

Image
I experienced another wonderful month of reading, six books in all.  Five of them were quite magnificent. The Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was probably my favorite.  It's a novel that was a finalist for the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction. It's a philosophical novel of family, religious faith, identity, and science and one women's struggle to understand them all as they apply to her tragic life. It would take a 1000-word review to do the book justice;  I would simply say that I highly recommend it and it's a book worth seeking out. Very different, but as good as Gyasi's novel is: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, a finalist for the 2021 Booker Prize. It sounds peculiar: it's a hybrid history/novel retelling the story of crucial discoveries in quantum physics. It's a book that disorients the reader in that, for the first half, it is extremely difficult to determine where fact ends and fiction begins. Ultimately it is a caution
Read more

Erik's Book Club: September Selections

Image
I was bogged down in August, but I've roared back in September, reading five books during the month.  Even better is the fact that all five books were fantastic and worth reading. First one I read is a book a dear friend recommended quite some time ago and I found an old copy that I brought with me to Indonesia.  Finally, I read it: Blink, by the prolific Malcolm Gladwell. Though it's one of his older works, it still resonates today. In a nutshell, Gladwell utilizes lessons from psychology and neuroscience to teach us how to make better decisions using our ability to focus extremely quickly on a few essential details. Highly recommended, though it was sad to read the chapter on the Amadou Diallo case.  15 years ago Gladwell provided a blueprint on how police could be better trained so they could avoid cases of accidental police killings of minorities, such as in the Diallo case, by training police to recognize bias and modify their policing. Of course, in the thoroughly unprogr
Read more

Erik's Book Club: August Selections

Image
Didn't get much reading accomplished in August. Partly because it was my busy season of New Student Orientation and the start of the academic year, but also because I got bogged down with the main book I read. The book that bogged me down was The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro. Earlier this year, I read his newest work, Klara and the Sun, which I zipped through and enjoyed immensely.  However, The Buried Giant, while it is a well-written and profound work, really was a book that didn't speak to me and I had trouble getting through more than about 15 pages a day.  The novel is a fable telling the tale of an elderly couple trying to find their long-lost son as they hike alone through the stark English landscape.  The story is set in the darkness of Post-Arthurian England and mixes realism with the exploits of dragons and knights. If you like Ishiguro, you might enjoy this book, but I found it tedious and I would strongly recommend reading Klara and the Sun instead. I also read a
Read more