One of the nice things about having a residence in Hong Kong is the ability to make short trips into China: to eat, to enjoy luxury hotels and to visit relatives. We took a break at the five-star Yucca Hotel (http://www.yuccahotel.com) in Jiangmen. A nice room with a free computer goes for US$64, with buffet breakfasts for two. Jiangmen is on the west side of the Pearl River estuary with frequent bus and ferry connections to Hong Kong.
The real attraction at the Yucca Hotel is the attached Food Court. The size of a football field, the long side and the two short sides are booths featuring food from different parts of China, and a booth of Japanese food. In the middle there is a kiosk for dim sum, a kiosk for Indian pancakes and a kiosk for steamed soups. The booths feature different kinds of Chinese BBQ, noodles, flavored rice with meats in claypots, seafood, and desserts. The one that takes the cake is live worms.
After you have found a table (sometimes you have to fight for one) and ordered tea, you grab your ticket and cruise the booths to order what you would like. The food is delivered to your table. The staff is in traditional Chinese dress.
Here's one meal we had:
Roast goose,
Fishhead in clay pot,
Local green vegetables stir fried,
Frog legs with rice in clay pot,
Double boiled soup with pigeon, lingtze, American ginseng and walnuts.
The cost of the meal was less than US$20.
We also went to Guangzhou to visit my aunt who is 90. We had lunch at Pasadena Restaurant (4-6 Agricultural Forest Lower Road, Fifth floor, 87611188). The restaurant features foie gras so we had a plate with six slices of sautéed goose liver, each about 1/2 inch thick. Each slice is perfectly cooked. There were asparagus and white lilly stir-fried with the foie gras. Delicious. That plate was RMB 88 or US$11.
