Michael Even after more than four years in San Francisco, we keep finding hidden attractions in the city. So, from time to time, Angelika and I disguise ourselves as German tourists: backpack on our backs, camera bag around our necks, Levi's 501 jeans, trekking shoes, and fleece jackets on! Then we blend into the hustle and bustle of the tourist area around Powell, stand in line for two hours at the cable car, and laugh at the same old jokes from the black musicians there! No, that was an exaggeration, but Angelika recently discovered that there is a tour through Chinatown that takes you to the most exotic restaurants in the area, the kind you would never enter alone for fear of food poisoning or the Chinese mafia.

We met with the tour guide in the morning at 9:00 at "Wokwiz" on Commercial Street 645 in Downtown San Francisco. We paid the hair-raising price of $70 per person and then kept eating practically non-stop until the early afternoon hours. Because of the early hour, of course, it started with breakfast, and after we had already wondered whether people in China also eat bread and jam for breakfast, we received a negative answer: There was a rice-based porridge with skin-on pork and black chunks in it. Super delicious! The black chunks turned out to be so-called "century eggs." Since the Chinese were not familiar with preservatives for a long time, they used the following method to preserve duck eggs long-term: The raw eggs with shells were embalmed with a mixture of ash, black tea, and lemon, buried in potting soil, and retrieved after exactly 100 days. "Thousand years old" is therefore shamelessly exaggerated, but that's probably just a saying. The egg white turns completely gray during storage, and the yolk becomes dark gray-green. These chunks are then mixed as a specialty with the rice porridge. Additionally, there was fried bread that tasted somewhat like donuts. Something different for breakfast! The other customers in the restaurant (by the way, all Asians) were eating the same or slurping noodle soups.

Next stop: Dim Sum. There, waitresses are pushing small carts with all sorts of delicacies through the restaurant, and you just have to point at the items to get a portion on your table. This form of early lunch (modern term: brunch) was established by Chinese businessmen who would meet for morning tea and, as it got closer to noon, developed a craving for small snacks. Angelika and I often do this on weekends; there is an excellent Dim Sum restaurant in San Francisco on Battery Street, where all sorts of things pass by on the carts, even chicken feet, with toes and all. But I don't really like those because they're so rubbery. Otherwise, I'll eat everything! Allegedly, Dim Sum places used to calculate the price of the meal based on the number of plates left on the table. The story goes that there was once a Dim Sum restaurant by a river, and guests would secretly let the plates slide into the river after devouring the treats! Nowadays, a bill is placed on the table, and the server either stamps it or writes down a price when you take a dish from the cart.

Have you ever seen those roasted ducks hanging in the window in Chinatown? They are nicely crispy brown, and the head, feet, and everything are still attached. I had mentioned in a previous newsletter that I frequent to such a place once a week to eat duck soup. Now, during the tour, we were allowed to pick a duck, then we went into the shop with the tour guide, where the duck was taken down from the rack, chopped into small pieces with a cleaver, and packed into a styrofoam box. The duck was so juicy that it splattered everywhere! We ate the delicious bites on the street. Quite fatty, but good! We needed several napkins to get our fingers clean again. Phew, how about a nice cup of tea now?

In Asian countries, it is well known that people enjoy drinking green tea. It differs from the black tea commonly consumed in the West only in that the tea leaves are not left to ferment but are processed beforehand. Green tea is therefore completely green and tastes somewhat grassy to the unaccustomed palate. However, one gets used to it, and by now we have truly developed a preference for this type of tea. And, of course, you don't just throw the tea into a pot of hot water by a tea bag and gulp it down greedily; instead, you perform the tea ceremony.

This is an old tradition where people sit together, chat, and slowly, slowly prepare the tea. A very fine tea is selected, placed in a microscopically small pot, hot but not boiling water is poured over it, left to steep for 30 seconds, and then the finished tea is poured into cups. "Cups" is an exaggeration; they are just a little bigger than a thimble. And the first round of tea is only poured to warm the cups, because immediately afterward, the first batch is discarded! The second batch is the one you drink. By the way, the cups don't have handles, because you should be able to tell with your fingertips whether the tea is at the right drinking temperature and not too hot.

We stocked up on the necessary supplies at the tea shop, although we couldn't buy the most expensive tea, as it cost $120 per pound! You probably have to drink tea for years to be able to taste that difference. You can also buy all sorts of medicinal stuff by the pound in Chinatown: ginseng roots, shark fins, everything has its significance in Chinese medicine. Angelika once knew someone who always went to a doctor in Chinatown, who then prescribed all sorts of things. And it supposedly worked wonders!

For lunch, we went to a Chinese restaurant, but we were already almost stuffed and relieved that this concluded the tour. By the way, authentic Chinese restaurants in the USA often have two different menus: one in English and one in Chinese. With the group of people I often have lunch with at Netscape, we found out through Chinese-speaking colleagues that the Chinese menu is not just a translation of the English one, but offers its own dishes! In the case of the restaurant in Mountain View, we discovered that they actually had a dish made from snake meat! We speculated about what kind of snake it might be, and a joker in the group suggested that it was probably the "catch of the day."

Back to our Chinatown tour: The best part, of course, was that we could take photos without any restrictions. This is usually not well-received in Chinatown, but in a tour group, you're just a silly tourist who is allowed to do as they please because they wouldn't understand anyway if you explained what bothers you about it. "Huh? Don't understand!". Haha, I'm happy to pay seventy dollars for that!

• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Newsletter Top Product
  	Movies and Movie Stars in San Francisco
  	Wine of the Month
  	Photo of the Month
  	Once every four years: Germany

  
  

• More topics you might be interested in:

  	Newsletter Top Product
  	Movies and Movie Stars in San Francisco
  	Wine of the Month
  	Photo of the Month
  	Once every four years: Germany