BBWorld 2016 – Day 1 Lunch

The theme is Asian food and being Asian, I’d say this is the worst lunch I’ve had in awhile. There are only two things I liked from this lunch, the salad and the dessert.

The salad, regardless of what they called it, have little bits of fresh fruits in it along with some walnuts. With a vinaigrette dressing, it is superb! I used to custom make my salads at the college’s food court like this.

Here is the reason why I disliked this lunch so much, they have Char-Siu buns (aka BBQ pork buns), some white jasmine rice, Kung Pao Chicken, and some beef stir fry.

The BBQ pork bun used too much flour in the bun, therefore it is super stiff. This type of buns can kill someone if you throw it at them once it is cold, not to mention they used the wrong type of paper to rest the buns on. In modern day Dim Sum places uses baking parchment paper, in the 70s to 80s, they would rest on a piece of metal, and the really original days it’d be just the bamboo steamer. The texture of the paper used resembles those paper we use to separate CDs/DVDs in a holder.  The jasmine rice was too damp and they sprinkled real jasmine tea leaves on it… There are some famous dish in Chinese cooking which uses tea leaves, it is used to enhance the fragrance of food, such as shrimp. In this case, I don’t know if it actually did anything to an otherwise moist pot of rice. That Kung Pao chicken is not even Kung Pao Chicken, I will classify it as Chop Suey style and resembles more of a General Tao Chicken. That stir fry beef is once again over cooked. Also, where are them chopsticks when you can use them?

The dessert on the other hand were great! However, that lunch really bumped me out to the point I just ate it and got out.

All in all, this was a disappointment. However, coming from the Chinese food capital of North America (Toronto), I can’t really blame them for these. back when I was a kid, Toronto’s Chinese food was just a little bit better. With brands like Ho Lee Chow or Manchu Wok being the ‘Chinese food’ to many of the people I knew here… and all those times I am forced to eat at Manchu Wok during my days as an undergrad… There is a reason why Chinese Americans do food tours in Toronto. Now that I think about it, even the Manchu Wok food was better than this…

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