The Chi­nese do a lot of things right– math, gym­nas­tics, fireworks.…when it comes to food, there’s no short­age of suc­cess in Chi­nese cui­sine, either. I mean, c’mon, noo­dles? Get out of town, there is no com­pe­ti­tion for hand pulled spicy beef noo­dle soup!

Like every other coun­try, there are regional spe­cial­ties within the cui­sine. Given the expanse that is China, there are obvi­ously hun­dreds of regional delights found in the coun­try. South­ern China in par­tic­u­lar, where I am at, is known for its epi­curean bravado– some­thing that I’ve con­sis­tently thanked since I’ve been here. It’s been said that the Can­tonese will eat any­thing with legs, except a table, and any­thing with wings, except a plane. Peo­ple eat on the side of the road, they eat at all times of day, they eat not only to sati­ate their hungers but to sus­tain their health and to cure their ail­ments. Food sym­bol­izes wealth, it sym­bol­izes gen­eros­ity and hos­pi­tal­ity. The way they do food here is legit.

Grow­ing up with Chi­nese food (and here I am cer­tainly using the word gen­er­ally and inclu­sively) I’d like to say that I am pretty famil­iar with most tastes and tex­tures of the cui­sine, and don’t really get weirded out by most things. I mean, I love chicken feet, I love sweet red bean soup, I love pigs feet roasted braised in soy and star anise!!!! So last week­end, when I was in Zhong­shan and at a restau­rant spe­cial­iz­ing in Can­tonese delights, I was excited at the prospect to try some of the many famed regional spe­cial­ties– sweet pineap­ple buns, roasted pigeon, a big ball of fried dough (more on this some other time).…

hol­low globe of fried dough, the cen­ter­piece of the table.

…and meat cook­ies. I like dim sum. Rather, I love dim sum. I’ve eaten meat buns and meat bis­cuits, so when I was told there was a regional spe­cialty called a meat cookie, I fig­ured it couldn’t be too far from any­thing I’ve ever eaten. Now, in chi­nese, the locals explained this so-called meat cookie lit­er­ally trans­lates into “chicken (some­thing) bis­cuit”. But iron­i­cally, no chicken is found any­where in the bis­cuit. Rather, it is a pork mix­ture topped with a pas­try glaze. A mix­ture of salty and sweet, I was told. When this was explained to me, I pic­tured a juicy, savory meat­ball cov­ered with a fine phyllo-like pas­try brushed with a sweet glaze. Yum! Salty and Sweet, just like ket­tle corn.

Although we tried many things at our table that night, the meat cookie was sadly not one of them. But fear not fel­low food­ies! This restau­rant was part restau­rant and part foodie delight take-home play­land, where you could watch the regional delights being made as well as order them to take home. The Diplo­Man and I spent half an hour after din­ner and ended up tak­ing home half a dozen meat cook­ies, along with sticky rice stuffed in bam­boo leaves, meat dumplings wrapped in fish skin, and pineap­ple buns– quite greedy of us, yes. Regret­ful? Never.

meat cook­ies, fresh out of the oven next to a batch of pineap­ple buns

The next day for lunch, I toasted these meat cook­ies– in our Amer­i­can, Black&Decker; toaster oven (some things just can­not be com­pro­mised, my friends). They looked just like they did when they came out of the oven the first time around– warm to the touch, crispy on the out­side and slightly browned. I took a bite, chewed for a bit, chewed some more.….

It was gross. I spit it out. The meat part was a super sweet, gelati­nous piece of chewy cookie, sim­i­lar to the taste and tex­ture of a pork fla­vored jelly belly, if there was one. The sweet­ness stayed in your mouth along with an odd, fatty pork feel­ing and taste. It was the most con­fus­ing bite I’ve ever had. I stand by my state­ment that the Chi­nese do a lot of things right, but the meat cookie is cer­tainly not one of them,