Public evidence record
Published podcast speaker
Claim ledger
50 transcript-backed records
01 / commitment
“There’s this assumption that foreigners won’t be able to handle certain foods. I’ve sometimes had to have an argument and just say, “Look, we will eat it.”
02 / belief
“I think also it’s about not repetition. That’s the key thing. If you have a dish with one ingredient or one style, you just want to make sure the other ones are as contrasting as possible.”
03 / belief
“I think one problem — and this maybe comes back to economics again — but in England, for example, I think now the door has opened to massive public interest in regional Chinese food, and people are really open to trying now eating Sichuan, Xi’an food and so on.”
04 / uncertainty
“Like in Germany — I don’t know if it’s a certain region — they have Mett, which is raw pork.”
05 / belief
“I think we have to partly use imagination, and there are some continuities in ingredients and techniques.”
06 / uncertainty
“Again, I don’t know about India, but China very early on — like in the Song Dynasty from about 12th century — had a really lively and developed and diverse restaurant scene with restaurants at different levels.”
07 / belief
“I think more of it is just practice, just writing, having a notebook, writing your impressions.”
08 / belief
“I think, perhaps, when people have this obsession with texture, there are certain ingredients that require fast cooking.”
09 / observation
“Sometimes what they do is, they bring street food into an area, a bit like the Singaporean Hawker Center idea. The problem is that they’re not individual traders anymore.”
10 / belief
“I think the thing about China — there was this ancient philosopher, Gaozi, who said shi se xing ye 食色性也, food and sex are human nature.”
11 / belief
“I think the problem is that with China’s modernization, there’s been this big effort to clean up the streets, and they’ve seen street food as being old fashioned and something undesirable.”
12 / belief
“I think that because the identity of Sichuanese food is in the flavors, you can apply a Sichuanese yúxiāng fish-fragrant sauce to the kind of fish that you can get, say, in England.”
13 / belief
“I think that’s maybe something that people don’t necessarily realize, that it’s not just aesthetically important, it’s also technically important in Chinese food.”
14 / belief
“I think that the Cantonese simplified model is in many places but with slight variations.”
15 / belief
“I think that the people writing about food are no longer the Confucian gentleman scholars.”
16 / evaluation
“We have gotten around proving that we can eat sea cucumbers and stuff on many occasions. It’s quite understandable because I think a lot of foreigners have a habit of ordering something that they can’t handle, and then being rude and obnoxious and just complaining.”
17 / evaluation
“There are many different ways of trying to express the regional diversity of Chinese food, all of them totally inadequate because it’s such a food-intricate culture.”
18 / evaluation
“I did have a really interesting conversation with an Indian who came on my tour to Yunnan earlier this year because I was speculating that one of the reasons that Chinese food is so diverse is that the Chinese are really open-minded, with very few taboos.”
19 / evaluation
“There’s a lot of fakery as well, so people pretending that they’re supplying Longjing tea from the Longjing hills around Hangzhou when it’s not actually that, but probably people who drink it still feel that it’s finer because of the label.”
20 / evaluation
“One of the reasons that I wrote this book is that it seems to me extraordinary that China has this exceptional cuisine which is so diverse and sophisticated and also which resonates with so many contemporary concerns.”
21 / evaluation
“There’s always this tension between — we all feel nostalgic and we love tradition, and there’s something worthwhile about trying to document classics and traditions.”
22 / belief
“We’re now just having another period of flowering, but with increased transport links, of course, it’s faster and crazier and more international. But I think you’re right that the big difference with Chinese food in the West is that you no longer have a community of mainly Cantonese American Chinese people who are catering for Western tastes and who don’t have access to many local ingredients apart from dried and preserved food, which they could import very early on.”
23 / belief
“Just to put that in context — in the ’90s, China was really just beginning to open up. So in Chengdu, this provincial capital city, there were only, I think, a couple of hundred foreigners.”
24 / belief
“I would say that when people think about Chinese cuisine, they often think about stir-fry as the Chinese method par excellence.”
25 / belief
“The first Chinese restaurant to win three Michelin stars was one in a fancy hotel in Hong Kong that did a tasting menu of courses which one person could enjoy. But I think chefs in China — as they become more internationally minded, they do feel a bit hard done by.”
26 / belief
“Then more recently, every Chinese restaurant, really — certainly in London, but I think nationwide — has crispy duck.”
27 / prediction
“I think you can see how ridiculous that statement sounds now, because I think there’s a real hunger for specific and specialized cookbooks.”
28 / prediction
“It will take over the world, yeah. [laughter] And sansho is another variety. In the countryside in China, I’ve stayed in farmhouses where people use wild varieties of Sichuan pepper, and they add them to their green tea, for example.”
29 / evaluation
“I think that sometimes the excess of Chinese dining out, with tables laden with dishes, which is something the Chinese government is actually trying to curb now — there’s a campaign to make people waste less food and eat what’s on the table — but that’s a reaction to the period of deprivation.”
30 / evaluation
“Absolutely amazing. But the only thing was, they served it with a little dish of ma la pickled radish, which is a really unpleasant flavor combination, in my opinion.”
31 / evaluation
“Since the reform and opening up in the ’90s, there are Sichuan restaurants all over the country, and people are crazy for ma la. But I think one of the reasons is that it’s so stimulating, and people now — particularly in cities — they have such a dizzying choice of different foods they can eat, and ma la is a flavor that holds its own in a very crowded marketplace.”
32 / evaluation
“Even the old Cantonese restaurants in London have to have some spicy dumplings or some spicy fish, because that’s what customers want.”
33 / prediction
“I think, if one looks at it cynically, the spread of hot pot is partly because it’s very cheap and easy for consumers, but also it’s very cheap and easy for restaurateurs because you don’t need skilled chefs.”
34 / evaluation
“I think one of the things about Chinese food is, because often you eat family-style, so with a big group, it enables you to taste a good variety of dishes.”
35 / belief
“I would say that in the early days, so 1949, the defeated nationalists fled to Taiwan with, as you were saying, the chefs and their food traditions.”
36 / belief
“I think 60 years on from that, I don’t — there are some like there’s a fantastic Suzhou bakery in this food street in Taiwan where they make really traditional Suzhou pastries.”
37 / uncertainty
“I’m just following step by step and I don’t know what it means or where it’s going.”
38 / belief
“I would say at the level of individual dishes, very interesting dishes, but China has it all already.”
39 / belief
“I would say that if you’re talking about farmhouse cooking, and the cooking actually, particularly at this region, I see a lot of affinities with Italian cooking.”
40 / belief
“Many Chinese waiters and restaurateurs that I know in London have had the experience of Westerners ordering food and then complaining that there are bones in it or that it’s fatty meat, all of which are good things in China, and then complaining and making a scene. I think people are just — it’s easier.”
41 / belief
“The other thing is, I think most of the Sichuan pepper that is exported has been exported and handled by Cantonese people.”
42 / belief
“There was an amazing series of cookery books produced around 1980, I think, when they photographed the classical dishes of four great cuisines of China.”
43 / recommendation
“I think gong bao chicken is a really good introduction to stir frying because it’s not complicated.”
44 / evaluation
“I think lots of Chinese parents now feed their children milk because they think it’ll make them grow big and strong.”
45 / evaluation
“Also, because food has, since the beginning of Chinese history, been understood as the absolute foundation of good health, there’s no difference between food and medicine in China.”
46 / evaluation
“For me, you know, as a great advocate of Chinese cooking, and I do have to admit that the desserts and sweet things is possibly one aspect in which Western cuisines might have the edge. [laughter] I think that’s because of the use of dairy products.”
47 / evaluation
“Also, because China is such a food-orientated culture, and it has been since the beginnings of history, that if you want to understand China, almost more than anywhere else, food is a really good window into the culture, into the way people live, into history, everything.”
48 / evaluation
“The reason is, I think, the methodology of Western food inspectors, which is they tend to go as individuals or small groups.”
49 / preference
“I would say there’s much greater integration of China in the West, and my personal Chinese life in my Western Chinese life, which I also like very much.”
50 / recommendation
“I would recommend some Shanghainese wontons in soup stuffed with shepherd’s purse, which is a wild variety of the brassicas, and pork, just to show you the lighter, gentler side of Shanghainese cooking.”