Lunchtime Adventures

Anyone who knows me as American Chelsea knows that I'm a vegetarian, have been for nearly two decades, and generally steer clear of food that has shared frying pans, utensils, cooking broth, etc. with meaty things. An exclamation I heard often in my household growing up was "I didn't use the same spoon for yours, don't worry!" I think I've gotten better / less neurotic about it over the years, but this is truly a test of my limits.

Our organization generously provides stored-value cards for a restaurant near our office so we don't have to pay for lunch. This restaurant is a fast-paced, loud, noodle-slinging cafeteria-style joint. The menu is entirely in Chinese, no English or even pinyin. We've had a colleague translate the menu for us but even this is only marginally helpful (though he has made an effort to identify vegetarian-friendly food!).

A lot of the vegetable dishes have some sort of meat in them, and I've tried and failed at ordering the "beef noodle" with no meat, and where American Chelsea would have been panicking, Chinese Chelsea has come to terms with this. Also, this is probably the best Chinese food I've ever had. We've either been getting a few dishes and sharing, or bowls of noodles. Here are some examples: 

Clockwise: Greens and egg soup, eggplant, tomato and egg, mapo tofu

Clockwise: Tomato and egg, rice, potato and pepper, some sort of cold salad we accidentally ended up with, which had eggplant and lotus root, among other things. 

Beef noodle, pre-removal of beef

Finally, I leave you with a short video of our canteen. Basically, you order and pay at the front, and then walk to the back where you shove your ticket and receipt at these ladies, who call the order back to the kitchen and give you a number. Unfortunately this video does not contain any of the incredible shouting that goes on when the orders come up, but it gives you an idea of the chaotic feeling and the general din in the background. By now, these ladies recognize us and usually don't shout at us anymore (since we usually don't understand what number they are shouting).