No Repeats!

Even after walking around for a good half hour, I couldn't find anywhere local open for lunch, so headed back to the local Carrefour complex to find some chain food.

In direct violation of cousin Hong's "No Repeats" rule - no going back to the same restaurant or cafe twice when in a new country - I found myself eerily drawn back to Sakura Delicious Foods.

Worryingly hungry (I think all that MSG really hollows me out), I ordered a bowl of 辣辣拉面 (spicy-spicy pulled noodles), and a 俄式肉肠比萨 (Russian Style Sausage Pizza).

This is the pizza. Oddly enough, it used the slightly sweet, preserved Chinese-style sausage, despite its name. I don't know if the 'Russian-style' refers to the sausage, or to the pizza, but either way, there's no place for Chinese sausage in a thing like this. In keeping with an odd Chinese habit of sweetening certain foods, the tomato sauce also had a bit of a sugary tang, although it could have been the chopped onions that did this. The cheese was nothing exceptional - no better or worse than anything you could find at Pizza Hut or Domino's (but inferior to Papa John's dangerously creamy formula).

A couple of words about the name. 俄 is an abbreviation for 俄罗斯 or Russia. It might come as a surprise that abbreviations are possible in a character-based (rather than alphabet-based) language, but they're all over the place. University is called 哈尔滨 工业 大学 (literally Harbin Industrial University) but this is almost universally shortened to the first characters of each component, i.e. 哈工大.

式 signifies style. It's often used in conjunction with an abbreviated country name, so 英式台球 signifies England （英国） style 'platform-ball', in other words snooker. Similarly, 美国 is America, so 美式台球 signifies pool.

This is my second main course. I couldn't get a good photo without using the flash, unlike above. I think light coming off the oddly bright cheese might go some way to explaining the shorter exposure needed.

辣辣 in the noodles means 'spicy spicy'. It sounds a little childish repeating things in this way, but in this case I think it's used to maintain the AABB metre of the dish's name. 拉面 means 'pull noodles' and refers to how the dough is made. Usually, it will be pulled into lengths, doubled over, and pulled again for several iterations until the cook is left with a handful of thin strands which he throws into bowling water. This stuff was probably made by machine though.

If you thought that the stuff on top looks like a big mass of chilli, you'd be right, but once again it's pretty mild, despite its colour. It's mixed in with little chunks of pork mince which is a trick quite common in Chinese cooking. Meat is historically scarce and expensive, so mincing and adding small amounts to dishes makes it go a little further. It also makes things a nightmare for strict vegetarians who can't get away from the stuff.

This is a pretty strange concoction actually. There's a culinary standard among noodles called 炸酱面 ('deep-fried sauce noodles') which has a spicy meat-based sauce which mixes nicely with a heap of dry noodles. 拉面 itself is often served with soup then sprinkled with toppings, such as a few shavings of beef or lamb. This dish was like the two dishes' hybrid offspring.

At home, I like to grab a couple of strands of noodles and twirl it round and round until there's a heavy chunk of noodle wrapped round the end of my chopsticks. I guess it's quite childish but I reckon it tastes better that way, and the method serves two purposes. The noodles cool down enough to eat, and I don't splash myself with the sauce.

The Japanese, however, believe that when eating noodles, slurping serves the same cooling purpose, while enhancing the taste. (As a brief aside, the Japanese word 'ramen' is a loan-word from the Chinese 拉面 (la mian). Now you know.) The idea is that oxygen rushing over the tongue enables it to appreciate different flavours more easily. I put this theory to the test, enthusiastically slurping down the whole bowl as loudly as I could. Noone batted an eyelid. In fact, I'm almost certain that a middle-aged woman at the next table was trying to compete with me in the noise stakes. Sure enough, the noodles *were* delicious, and equally as inevitable, I spattered my clothes with a healthy quantity of soup.