Everyone who has working tastebuds will surely agree that Sichuan food is the best of all food, not only in China but in the world. Sadly, many restaurants call themselves Sichuan without being the real thing. So why not avoid disappointment by learning to cook it for yourself? It's easy!
Today I want to publicly thank a Norwegian writer named Are Kalvø who in the year 2007 had a brilliant idea which inspired me no end. He would travel all around Norway and eat in each Chinese restaurant he found. I think his rule was that he would have at least one Chinese meal in each municipality.
After having meals of varying quality in 158 different Chinese restaurants all over the country, he wrote the book ‘Våre Venner Kinesarane’ (Our friends the Chinese) which my good good good friend Cecilie Maske (who knows exactly what I like), gave me for Christmas the same year.
And it was brilliant. And I decided to do what he did but to put it on film.
Sorry Are, for using your idea! Even if you want to sue, it’s probably too late.
First I chopsticked (chopstuck) my way through the USA
and then it was Australia’s turn:
And now, because of Kalvø, I spend most of my holidays abroad trying to hunt down Chinatowns of all persuasions and eating my way through that country in Chinese, filming it and writing about it. And let’s face it, even bad Chinese food is still pretty damn good. (Yes, like sex. Or so they say.)
One important part of Kalvø’s book was trying to track down the Lam family, creators of the very first Chinese meal he ever tasted in his childhood’s Ålesund. He managed in the end to find the Lams’ daughter, who moved to Norway when she was four and is now working as a pre-school teacher in Bergen. According to the book she “harbours no plans of opening a Chinese restaurant”.
However, her parents have retired in – you guessed it – Hong Kong!
Now I feel I have to track them down. Anyone know the 林 (Lam, Forest) people who used to run the 洋子江 (Yeung Tsi Gong, “Yangtse Kiang” Ocean Son River – the foreign name for the Yangzi which in Chinese is always called 長江 (Cheung Gong, Long River) in Ålesund? I want to take them to 飲茶 (yam cha, Drink Tea which is actually to eat dim sum…)
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