dresese

Taste of West Lake

Ben and I went to eat in Flushing last weekend. After wandering around Main Street for about half an hour, we had about six great-looking restaurants we wanted to try. We eventually settled on Taste of West Lake, because neither of us has had that regional cuisine before.

The restaurant was downstairs, in a plain-looking room with a few long tables and a bar. The menu was not extensive, having a list of 8 or so West Lake specialties, about 6 appetizers, 6 desserts, and about 10 or so regular items.

We ordered a variety of dishes. one of the highlights of which were a set of 4 giant pork belly cubes.

When eating this pork belly, I started out by eating a lean piece that was falling away. I found it tough and dry, although it had good flavor. After finishing that, I couldn't see how eating the rest of it would be an enjoyable experience. However, when I ate a mouthful with both lean and fat layers, the whole thing magically transformed into a succulent, juicy piece of meat. Amazing how the two kinds of layers to the pork belly and complement each other so well, and essentially fool the tongue.

Probably the most interesting dish we got was the raw salted crab. It came with a sweetish dipping sauce that I could not identify. The sauce was a good complement to the salty meat. But the crab meat, being raw, was amazingly tender. In fact it was nearly liquid, and a complete delight to eat.

Another interesting dish was the shrimp with tea leaves. It sounded more interesting than it was. As you can see, there are tea leaves there, but the shrimp itself didn't seem to pick up any of the flavor. Don't get me wrong, it tasted very nice. But nothing special, I think.

When I was taking the pictures of the food, an amazed waitress came up and said "Hey, why are you taking pictures?" I was sort of at a loss what to say. Was she mad at me? Or just curious? I couldn't tell, so I said "I'm just like taking pictures of food." Then, to make myself seem a little less strange (or perhaps more so?), I added "I put these pictures on my internet site". This made her very happy, and she thanked me. Which I felt a little strange about. I didn't tell her that hardly anyone reads these things, and most of them that do read it don't live anywhere near Flushing. So I guess my taking pictures of the food was really as crazy as it initially appeared to her.