It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain.
I know where I was when he died (my childhood bedroom). I’ve read nearly his entire body of work (even his oddball fiction novel, Bone in the Throat). I’ve found myself cursed with this inexplicable affection for a man I’ve never met, who is no longer here, who was already 45 when I was born and just embarking on his second career as a “TV personality” (a term he hated) with the unforeseen breakout success of Kitchen Confidential. He is known posthumously as the king of travel, a once-in-a-lifetime sort of celebrity who came along to tell a story unlike (and even against) the stereotypical narratives of travel and adventure.
I was on my way to meet Ellen on the other side of the world. I packed surprisingly light, as 100℉ doesn’t require much clothing. In my carry-on, I had with me a handmade French journal (à la Accent on the É subscriber, Aunt Kelly) and a copy of Nasty Bits, Bourdain’s sophomore novel. For those non-fans, it’s essentially a collection of brief, published essays on a variety of topics and places—China included.
Sitting atop the Ritz Carlton, in Pudong Shanghai, overlooking the entire city of lights and indoor malls and excess, drinking a whiskey on the rocks, Mr. Michael (Ellen’s dad) asked me earnestly: “What did you like about him?” He now holds my copy of the book. That same morning, I had squeezed it into my army green fanny pack for a potential photo op at this restaurant, which Bourdain famously visited in the Shanghai episode of Parts Unknown. The Eat like Bourdain website ominously explains that the restaurateur only lets hopeful diners in on the basis of “looking cool” or knowing someone. We were not let in.
But I had the book with me anyway, and over drinks at the hotel bar during jazz hour, I gave him a long-winded and rambling list of the many things I admire about the chef/writer. Mr. Michael can also remember where he was the day Bourdain died, the sign of any true fan. Upon hearing the news, he dined at that same “cool” restaurant we attempted to get into, in mourning. As it turns out, he had been going to the wrong restaurant the whole time, the Tony-less place next door serving peppery crab noodles doused in hoisin sauce that does not discriminate on a factor of “coolness.”
I returned the question to him, and Mr. Michael answered simply. “He was genuine.” Traveling around the globe is a great privilege, one I’m lucky to have too. Bourdain’s sensitivity and honesty when seeing the world set him apart and gave him staunch devotees like me and Mr. Michael. The borders to Mainland China just opened to tourists this spring. Although there’s no more three-week quarantine, there’s still the travel visa hoop to jump through. Given the special opportunity to embark on such a journey as this, I felt a duty to to get to the truth of the matter.
What was true is that absolutely nothing I was told beforehand about China was true. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous beforehand. My flight from LaGuardia to Hong Kong and eventually Hangzhou, China, took off at 1:55 am on a Thursday. The entire week before my trip was dedicated to packing. I was told I’d hate the food (a pack of Rx bars and Poptarts). I’d get my stomach turned inside out (Tums and charcoal pills). I’d get my information stolen (refused to buy a burner phone, because what do I have to hide?). I don’t read the news, so instead I’d consume stories of Americans trapped overseas from my parents over the receiver. Being the spring age of 22, I was excitedly terrified.
Eight hours before takeoff, I passed by the Chelsea Starbucks Reserve with my cousin in an attempt to walk off my anxiety and tire myself out before 23 hours straight of sitting. I contemplated bailing, but I looked in my bag and saw the Bourdain book and said to myself, “f*ck it.”
A week later, I’d find myself in Shanghai’s Starbucks Reserve (the world’s largest), munching on a slice of “apple yogurt cake” and downing a Nitro cold brew served in a glass. This was the only meal I could pay for with my credit card, not knowing beforehand that the entire country (from Michelin restaurants to dinner at a farmer’s house) accepts exclusively WeChat or AliPay. The food was decidedly the worst of the trip. The cake had kale on it, and I realized once again, despite my many attempts, that I hate the taste of Nitro Cold Brew. Coincidentally, my worst meal was also my most American by nature.
Travel gives us permission for reinvention, as someone who has fled to France on more than one occasion. It was funny to see how other Americans underwent a metamorphosis upon coming to China. Hong Kong Airport lured me into their underground McDonald’s, by way of curiosity. The basement became a bustling cafeteria, orders of familiar hash brown patties next to bowls of noodles being churned out at a frightening speed. In Shanghai, Chili’s (I want my babyback babyback babyback) is a luxury destination, charging a premium for otherwise unsavory dishes to upkeep their coveted status on the Bund River. I had the best Dairy Queen of my life, a matcha almond flavor unseen in the States. And KFC… don’t even get me started. Across three separate destinations, I did not see a single location with a spare seat! And locals testify to the quality of their congee, their chicken, I’m convinced it’s become a religion and a whole different beast entirely (serving KCoffee and ice cream as well).
But I didn’t come here to talk about the chains (inevitably, the first way of experience is by comparison). I came to talk about the food. The food that tasted better than my wildest dreams could have ever prepared me for. The food that surprised me at every turn, the food that can only be described as Xiān or 鲜 (a term combining the meaning of pork and beef). The closest English equivalent is umami (even though that’s Japanese). It’s a fifth taste, that I want to describe as “deep” (?) in a flavor way.
The trip was split into three parts: Hangzhou, Anji, and Shanghai. Over the course of 10 days, on average, I’d say we ate about 3-5 “meals” a day. Naturally, the first question Ellen asks me when we arrive to Pudong International Airport for our journey back home is: favorite?
Hers was a duck soup, unbelievably Xiān in taste (a key vocabulary word for this Substack post) and my very first meal of the trip. Ellen’s sister, Emma, taught me how to absolutely own a Beijing (otherwise known as Peking) duck assembly—not forgetting to dip the crispy, fatty skin in (once again) chunky crystals of granulated sugar. Frankly, I can’t remember much of this meal, as I was coming off of a Cathay Pacific Airways-sponsored haze.
Every restaurant required QQ access to read the menu. Every street vendor spoke Mandarin over foods I didn’t recognize. Essentially, I didn’t order a single item for myself. Casting my fate as the “foodie friend” from the jump, Ellen’s family took me on a winding culinary journey of my dreams, where my only job—put simply—was to open my mouth and eat.
A 12-course meal at a Michelin restaurant (my first dinner) featuring pigeon and intestine-wrapped parcels of cabbage. A day of entirely dumplings from Shanghai’s old town, bouncing from Jia Jia Tang Bao (soup) to Yang’s Fried Dumplings (fried) to this stand inside the Super Brand Mall serving fried jaozi (mini and adorable). Sticky pumpkin balls made by the matronly proprietor of our Anji homestead, from fresh vegetables in the garden outside our window. Endless boba from indoor malls, chunks of painfully ripe mango sucked up through straws. It was delicious and it was constant.
While I told myself, purposefully picking out my flavor of Rx bar in the Houston Whole Foods, that I was only try to eat the plainest of food options on this trip, I ended up breaking my own rules in a big way. I’m white by way of Sweden and France, but I untapped a deep, hidden-away love for spicy foods. It became somewhat of a game, relatives plying me with the BEWARE (!) hotpot broths and cooked beef with peppers.
On the very last night, I met my match with this fish head, broiled in an oily concoction of fresh peppers (not dried) and completed with nests of fresh noodles. On my second helping, my body began to warm from the inside. I attempted to keep my pokerface in tact, but the eventual putting-up-of-the-huge-hair was a dead giveaway.
Once I figured out that my stomach could handle all sorts of nonsense, stinky tofu and pig’s feet, I got a little too big for my britches. That’s when I saw it, a clear plastic barrel sitting casually in the shelves behind the counter. Walking into the “restaurant” (read: the basement of a farmer’s house), I spotted the mysterious liquid completed with a massive snake of Indiana Jones’ nightmares and said, “I want.” In a way, it ended up being the only thing I myself ordered on the entire trip.
Mr. Michael and his brother looked at me nervously. “It’s for health,” the chef and owner explained, all of us now regarding the bucket, “but it also has poison.” The holding liquid was a homemade rice wine, stronger than the kind you could buy in the store, stronger than the Moutai and Tsingtao beers I’d been drinking with dinners, and definitively stronger than the watermelon juice accompanying every meal. I took my plastic sippy cup in one stride, refusing to flinch because I frankly forgot what it was and confused it with my identical water cup. The drink stung down the length of my throat, and I felt hot immediately - the strong Vodka punch reminiscent of Smirnoff days in high school.
This meal was my favorite, as per the original question. We were seated in a harshly lit and uncomfortably modern Bâoxiäng 包厢 (or private room). Zero frills - which is how you know it’s good. It was “table on the farm,” as Ellen’s dad would come to describe it. The sky grew blue outside our window, and the dark outlines of about a dozen chickens presented themselves in the fading light. As relayed to me that morning, our dinner required a call fifteen minutes in advance. Why? One of the poultry would be plucked from the rest for a fresh batch of chicken soup. In a light and simple broth, the pieces swam and so did my head from the wine.
Our meal continued with pumpkin leaves, buttery and cooked straight from the garden. There were bamboo shoots, the long green parts we’d seen pandas at the zoo tear into earlier in our day. Per request, the kitchen also cooked up some bamboo flesh with pepper. The stalk, which I’ve never ate much of before this trip, can be prepared in so many different ways it makes my head spin and I wonder why we don’t all live off this stuff? The flesh resembles a green hollow grass while the stalk looks (and tastes) more like some iteration of tofurky.
The real star of this show, however, was the rice. This rice… Let’s put it this way: two of us ended up smuggling bundles of see-through baggies, filled with this rice, back through customs. I genuinely felt more concern over this rice’s safe travels back than my own, Ellen and I promising each other of night’s in New York huddled over her apartment’s rice cooker worshiping the stuff, cooking it exactly as the farmer said (as translated to me): 15mm of water, just barely covering the rice, no less, no more. This rice came in a big salad bowl (inevitably calling for a refill). We used the rice paddle to lapp mounds of this snowy, steaming goodness into our soup bowls - mixing together with our chicken broth or the cooked egg and minced pork dish, 肉饼蒸蛋, (Ellen’s childhood favorite).
It’s as if this guy read my mind, knew my kryptonite. I live for the soft sticky texture of well-cooked rice, always ordering a side of riz vinaigre with my sushi just to have. The duration of this trip showed me black rice with peas and bamboo shoots, pork zongzi from gas stations, and pure, glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves and dipped in crunchy sugar.
As difficult as it is to describe rice in a “sexy” and “food writey” way, I solemnly swear (as a rice fiend) that this simple side dish A. Made the meal my favorite of the trip and B. Exists in a league of its own. This one’s only harvested once a year, to prevent the depletion of nutrients from the soil. The farmer ended up offering us a sizable chunk of his supply to take home… for free. During this whole exchange, which happened in Mandarin, I was too busy with the boys of the house, Oliver and Jeffrey, in an impromptu language-off. I failed miserably at telling them “I…like…pandas…” while they ran circles around me with their English, learning it from their elementary school in Hangzhou. Only by the end, when we walked out bags in hand, was I struck by the generosity.
For the next few days, I battled my inner demons of hypochondria, symptoms like a numb left cheek and a popping ear—all of which I attributed to my hasty huff of the snake juice. We moved on to Shanghai, and I forgot my ailments by getting lost in luxury malls, Thai massages, and cheesy ice cream from ZakuZaku. I got the chance to see NYU Shanghai, which only exacerbated my sadness for the trip’s unavoidable end. I mean, this thing was state of the art. They had campus security and everything. Yipee, I get to return to the dumpier campus back home! Bourdain mentions this in his TV episode. Shanghai runs circles around New York, and makes us realize we’re living in some sort of past while other parts of the world embrace the future.
Culinary tourism is a hard one. I mean, it’s easy—in the sense that eating and traveling are two great joys in life. But it’s tricky. The other (ha) Chloe’s Vittles article last week tackles Americans tanking tacos in London. It sparked an interesting discussion (on Substack’s version of Twitter lol) on who talks about what and where and why. I talk about my trip to China because I think it’s important to note the ways I was misled (to nobody’s fault) about what to expect from a country and its cuisine. It could be really a personal problem that requires an equally personal solution. You are what you eat—media, meals, and otherwise. I was what I was told until I traveled to China myself and realized I wasn’t what I thought at all. Across continents and careers and cameras, Bourdain maintained consistency in this… brave acceptance of the fact we all avoid admitting… we know nothing! And travel and eating are two of my favorite ways to teach myself that. :)
Thank you to Ellen’s family for an incredible trip I’ll never forget❤️
Chloe is China’s favorite 老外…can out spice 75% of them
Incredible trip and culinary adventure !!💕.