Exotic foods and dinner

What's on your menu for the day?

I have a client based out of Taiwan. As I sat at home last night after an authentic Chinese dinner, I pondered the evening. the restaurant was in a part of town I'm not sure I could find again, but I couldn't read any signs in the neighborhood (all Chinese)...very cool. I wasn't sure if I liked the food, if I was full, or if I was going to be sick. Don't get me wrong, I love PF Changs, etc. But according to my Asian friends, this isn't even close to authentic.

It was the cooked pigeon head that was staring at me during dinner that I recall most clearly. It looked exactly like the picture included here...note the head and beak of the roasted pigeon chicks....yeah.

We also had frog, which was pretty good except for the bones...which were messy. Crab, which was normal crab, a soup made of crab and monk fish belly, sea cucumber, Thai clams and a mango dessert that was refreshingly normal. Oh...and four beers (Sapporo, imported from Canada...heh).

So add pigeon to the list of stuff I have eaten that I consider to be out of the ordinary for an all american white-guy like myself.

My list:

Roasted pigeon chick
Frog
Sea Cucumber
Monk fish belly soup
Birds nest soup (a Chinese dessert of strange origins - saliva from a swallow)
Escargot
Multiple sashimi dishes including shrimp, eel, octopus, etc.
and pizza left on my TV for a few days (college...what a time!).

Next on my list, snake in Thailand and a choice selection of what my Asian friends refer to as "drunken shrimp". Apparently they bring out live shrimp in a bowl of alcohol, the shrimp swim around for a bit, get wasted and basically go almost comatose. You then grab them and eat them live...yummy!!!!!

not on my list: Dog (sorry, pets only) or "fried internal" (need a little more detail on that). Gotta draw a line somewhere.

Be excellent to each other!