Around Asia in search of a meal

I’m recently back from my mammoth trip through Asia (though in fact I’m up in Edinburgh as I write this, visiting as a fellow of the Higgs Centre For Theoretical Physics).

I’ve already written a little about the middle week of my voyage, observing at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and I hope to get back to that soon — at least to post some pictures of and from Mauna Kea. But even more than telescopes, or mountains, or spectacular vistas, I seemed to have spent much of the trip thinking about and eating food. (Even at the telescope, food was important — and the chefs at Halu Pohaku do some amazing things for us sleep-deprived astronomers, though I was too tired to record it except as a vague memory.) But down at sea level, I ate some amazing meals.

When I first arrived in Taipei, my old colleague Proty Wu picked me up at the airport, and took me to meet my fellow speakers and other Taiwanese astronomers at the amazing Din Tai Fung, a world-famous chain of dumpling restaurants. (There are branches in North America but alas none in the UK.) As a scientist, I particularly appreciated the clean room they use to prepare the dumplings to their exacting standards:

Later in the week, a few of us went to a branch of another famous Taipei-based chain, Shin Yeh, for a somewhat traditional Taiwanese restaurant meal. It was amazing, and I wish I could remember some of the specifics. Alas, I’ve only recorded the aftermath:

From Taipei, I was off to Hawaii. Before and after my observing trip, I spent a few days in Honolulu, where I managed to find a nice plate of sushi at Doraku — good, but not too much better than I’ve had in London or New York, despite the proximity to Japan.

From Hawaii, I had to fly back for a transfer in Taipei, where I was happy to find plenty more dumplings (as well as pleasantly sweet Taiwanese pineapple cake). Certainly some of the best airport food I’ve had (for the record, my other favourites are sausages in Munich, and sushi at the Ebisu counter at San Francisco):

From there, my last stop was 40 hours in Beijing. Much more to say about that visit, but the culinary part of the trip had a couple of highlights. After a morning spent wandering around the Forbidden City (aka the Palace Museum), I was getting tired and hungry. I tried to find Tian Di Yi Jia, supposedly “An Incredible Imperial-Style Restaurant“. Alas, some combination of not having a website, not having Roman-lettered signs, and the likelihood that it had closed down meant an hour’s wandering Beijing’s streets was in vain. Instead, I ended up at this hole in the wall:

And was very happy indeed, in particular with the amazing slithery, tangy eggplant:

That night, I ended up at The Grandma’s, an outpost of yet another chain, seemingly a different chain than Grandma’s Kitchen, which apparently serves American food. Definitely not American food. Note especially the “thousand-year egg” at left (I was happy to see from wikipedia that the idea they’re cured in horse urine is only a myth!):

It was a very tasty trip. I think there was science, too.