Mushroom Manna

Knowing I’m mostly vegetarian, my host made a point to take me out to three different vegetarian restaurants, the third for our final lunch before heading to the airport. All three were of the precious variety, the kind that spends four hours making a soup that you will take ten spoonfuls of. Each had a fixed menu of some 10 items, each one unidentifiable using exotic ingredients like flowers, juice from the birch tree and 20 different kinds of mushrooms. Served on a big plate with a little dollop in the center. 

 

I appreciated it on some level, that attention to detail that makes an art of cooking and creates nuanced and subtle flavors worthy of the most refined connoisseur palate. My favorite was a mushroom dish, two different ones with two different intricate toppings, both a semi-circle so you could have put them together on a hamburger bun and had the best vegi-burger of your life. It was most definitely memorable and problem something I’ll never find again. It was a brief visit to a heavenly mushroom manna land and a good example of the extraordinary artistry of a Chinese cooking light years beyond my chop suey and chow mein upbringing. 

Still though, I was as happy and truthfully, a bit happier, to be in that bustling ramen place yesterday with one item on the menu— a bowl of soup. And as I look forward to a return home, I believe I’ll be quite happy to revisit a good burrito, a grilled cheese sandwich on Tartinne bread and burrata cheese pizza. 

All just around the corner!    (9/1)