Dutch restaurant?

Behind my school’s main office there is a street with all kinds of restaurants and a lot of street food. One of the restaurants has these two characters in the name of the restaurant; 荷兰. You pronounce them as; he lan, which means Holland. (a very small Chinese lesson) My Chinese colleague said it meant something like Dutch barbeque, I really wondered what Dutch barbeque could be, cause I’m quite sure that barbeque came from America. So we decided this would be a nice restaurant to have dinner, together with her husband and two of their friends. Maybe there was some Dutch connection? Another Dutch person in Wuhu? Dutch Cheese maybe?

When we got at the table and I saw the grill which was on our table I understood why it was called Dutch barbeque, or why my colleague said that, that was what it said outside. It looked a lot like a gourmet grill. And although I rarely eat gourmet in Holland, and although it is a France word, it’s a Dutch way of having a more special diner. I understand why she translated it too Dutch barbeque, cause the word Gourmet doesn’t seem to mean the same thing in English as it does in Dutch.

So… did I eat gourmet in China? Well, the grill was the same. After that the similarity ends because well, the Chinese just have a bit different mindset about eating. It’s still strange to me that in a country where most people’s first goal in life, is simply surviving, they value food so much. Ok it sounds obvious that if your first goal is to survive, your first target will be to get some food. But it sometimes feels like there is more food here than there is back home, or at least more variety. Not all their food is that good though, the quality also really varies, but somehow there doesn’t really seem to be correlation with the price.

At this restaurant we started with pork and immediately the hole grill was loaded with meat. There were some onions too but they were definitely a minority at the grill. One of the guys who had been to the restaurant before took the responsibility for the meat, and he turned the meat when it had to be turned and checked if it was ready. Under the grill we also had some really good chicken wings, which took a bit more time. After two rows of pork and the chicken wings it was time for vegetables and finally pieces of octopus with some spicy peppers on them.

The octopus was a bit too spicy in my opinion, even my Chinese colleagues thought it was spicy. Which means that it really was spicy, but apart from that the diner was really good. And I have to say it was a bit better than most gourmets I had in Holland. But the Chinese take their food just a bit more serious than us. I guess there’s some truth in; we (Dutch people, maybe the English as well, definitely not the France or Italians though) eat to live, but the Chinese live to eat.

On a final note, for the people who are wondering if I never miss European food in China. I’ll admit that I do miss normal bread and cheese, especially in the morning. However so far I’ve only been to the McDonalds once and that was, apart from the price a disappointment. In the French supermarket Auchan, they have all kinds of imported food and I had a piece of Dutch cheese in my hands, but when I looked at the price, I saw that it was about twice the Dutch price, and well for that money you can have a really good meal in a restaurant here. Which on its turn would be quite expensive in Amsterdam or anywhere else in Holland.