CITY GUIDE >Food Reviews
Kong Yi Ji Shang Yan
(bestfoodinchina.net)
Updated: 2008-08-07 11:04

Kong Yi Ji Shang Yan

A central food processing plant makes and ships the sauces used in the eight restaurant chain to maintain consistent quality and flavor. This cultural cuisine integrity extends even to the pictures in the menu: what you get at the table must look just like the picture.

So, that's the philosophy, how about the food? Mr. Wang had chosen the dishes. We started off with precisely cut finger sized rectangles of boiled pork (similar to ham), with a layer of translucent fat (gasp), and slit through the bottom to accommodate a sliver of pickle.

Chewy but tasty. A bowl of crushed ice arrived with black-green tubes wrapped at the bottom in foil and sticking up like quills.

As a Westerner, I naturally picked one up and bit into it. A mistake I found out, as the outside was inedible. These were young bamboo, cooked and marinated.

Once peeled, however, the center was tender with a briny and spicy-hot flavor: as addictive as a steamed artichoke.

We also had sticky rice-stuffed lotus root in a pale pink fruit marinade and topped with a golden halo of spun sugar (18 yuan).