the roads are getting nearer

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

` Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Having had enough of cold sandwiches and pasta for the past work week (and 4 more weeks to go), I surrendered to a sumptuous plate of ...... roast duck with rice on a Sunday afternoon. At a mere GBP4.50, it was one of the best meals I've tucked into to date. This was a little gem found at South Kensington (I did get a wee bit lost attempting to navigate the subway to High Street Kensington aka second Oxford Street), in a tiny little shop with high stools and stark interiors (read: very basic). With my stomach rumbling at 3pm after a long lie-in from the close-to-midnight return from Prague (that itself warranted a GBP18 taxi ride, double ouch), it was a welcome relief from the starchy mishmash of meat and chips et al I've been consuming. A somewhat failed takeaway attempt at Wagamama for dinner last week had made my craving for anything authentically Asian (this being Chinese or Thai) much stronger.

I've always been a eat-to-live person, abiding by my very own 'purist' food inclinations. Give me plain rice or bread uncluttered with complex garnishes and what-nots and I'm a happy camper. I grew up contented with MacDonald's but I don't do buffets very well (eating 'air' is my speciality). The idea of fusion cuisine and anything related to chicken breastmeat is often rather unpalatable.

Which brings me back to the need to feel Chinese once in awhile, at least in the consumption sense. It was a running family joke amongst us about my dad, when he would drag the entire family to search high and low for places that remotely served Chinese food (more specifically in the search for roast duck!), while on a 10-day tour of western Europe several years back. I finally understood why: the need to feel familiar and to be able to tuck into food that reminded you of what you have always been used to struck a chord in me. You can only be a tourist that number of times, and you can only indulge in other people's culture for that much before you realise that you're just an outsider looking in.

Comments:

hey i can totally identify with that, I remember complaining like 10 million times to my parents when i went to US on holiday at the tender age of 12 and asking them why on earth are they eating chinese food in US?? Now i know...

# posted by

cLaiRe : Wednesday, April 19, 2006 6:58:00 pm