How to eat a pigeon
Sep 23 '00 (Updated Nov 17 '00)
Lsat time I was in Hong Kong, I decided to "treat" myself to a special Chinese dish that I knew I would not be able to find elsewhere. I'm not sure if treat is really the right word to use, but regardless of how I describe it, it was an experience.
I went to a posh restaurant in Central, whose name I've forgotten, and ordered pigeon roasted with tea leaves.
Now, this is not something I would have dared to order in anything other than a Chinese restaurant in China. The concept of eating pigeons in North America is just too weird; these are birds we've been chasing around and shooing away since we were young, and they're not exactly models of cleanliness among the world's avians.
To make the experience all the more special, the staff at the restaurant were kind enough to arrange the pieces of fried pigeon like the real bird: head on top, body underneath, wings at the side, legs below. I was a bit taken aback, but, not one to say no to a unique experience, I took a bite.
The first thing I noticed was that it was really quite tasty. I guess the tea leaves gave it an unusual savory taste. It also tasted a lot like duck, although there was less meat on the bird. I ate all the meat, leaving the head untouched, and chalked another one up for experience.
As seems to be the case in Hong Kong, extreme attention had been paid to the decor of the restaurant. It was beautifully appointed. I didn't pay much attention to the decor of the restaurant, though, because between bites of the pigeon my attention was captured by a noodle demonstration at another table.
The restaurant had invited a noodle master to come and demonstrate Chinese noodle making. Chinese noodles and Italian pasta are essentially the same, differing mainly in preparation: pasta is squeezed through a press, while noodles are twirled and stretched. It's really an incredible sight to see a noodle master (if that's what they're called) take up a big hunk of dough, twirl it, stretch it, twist it, wind it up, then repeat the whole process several times. At some point, the strands become so thin that the noodle master simply plopped the whole thing down on his table, took out a knife, and chopped the dough up. Of course, the result was perfect noodles.
I'd never watched this before, and I found it fascinating. It was done artistically, meant more as a show than as food preparation, and it was something else I got in that restaurant that I don't think anyone in Canada would have been able to show me.
Once my meal and the show was over, I paid up and left. I had been contemplating a helicopter tour above Hong Kong Island, but it couldn't be arranged. Still able to taste the tea and pigeon, I returned to my hotel in Kowloon and inscribed my thoughts on the evening into my travel journal.
I haven't been back to Hong Kong since, nor have I seen any more noodle making or pigeons on plates. That, I guess, made my brief stay in Hong Kong all the more memorable.
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singaporeboy
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Location: Illinois
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Just someone who's lucky enough to have lived in several corners of the planet
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