Spring Festival 2014: Searching for Kaili Sour Fish Restaurant

One of the things attracting me to Guizhou this holiday season was the food.  The province is generally recognized as part of China’s spice belt, though its fiery offerings are not as famous as the neighboring Sichuan and Hunan cuisines.  All throughout my journey from the bland shores of Shanghai, I was salivating at the thought of trying something new.

My first stop in Guiyang was a place called the Kaili Sour Fish Restaurant, which served a hotpot-esque dish made famous in the nearby city of Kaili.  Kaili Sour Fish Restaurant is a top recommendation both in Lonely Planet and in China’s Yelp-esque Dianping app, so I made a beeline for it.  Once inside, a server helped me fish half a pound of live six-inch fish from a tank and took them to the kitchen to start cooking. I sat down at one of the wooden tables in the middle of the empty dining room, thinking it a little strange that such a popular restaurant was so empty at lunchtime. Maybe the diners had yet to return from their holiday hibernation?  While waiting, I enjoyed a wall mural of an ethnic minority family enjoying a pot of sour fish:

Soon a waiter placed a broth-and-fish-filled metal pot in a heated recess in the table, leaving me to watch while the fish continued to boil mixed with sprouts, greens, onions, and spicy red oil.  

I picked the fish out one by one with chopsticks and picked the meat off the bones from a small white bowl.  Forty minutes later I had a neat pile of fish bones ready to feed to the neighborhood cat.  Overall it was more spicy than sour, which suited me just fine.

It was only after leaving the restaurant that I realized I had committed a fundamental mistake in eating at famous restaurants in China: as I approached the restaurant’s address,  I had walked into the first place I saw with a Kaili Sour Fish Restaurant sign.  In fact, that was just the first of many copycat restaurants that had gone up on either side of the real McCoy, a much larger and more finely decorated institution half a block down the road.  It was packed with a line out the door.  Oh well.  Even the fake Kaili Sour Fish was still pretty good.

Phone calls from Mr. Pu

Mr. Pu has called me twice in the past week, once while I was eating lunch near the office, and again while I eating dinner with a friend at a nice Sichuan restaurant over the weekend.  I didn’t feel my phone vibrate the second time, and I had to call him back after accidentally ignoring him twice.  Both times the reason for the call was the same: Mr. Pu was having trouble communicating with the non-Chinese clientele at his restaurant.  There aren’t a lot of foreigners living in our neighborhood, but the ones that do are big fans of Mr. Pu’s place and especially its roast fish:

 

In each call I listened to Mr. Hu explain in hurried tones what his situation was and what message he needed to convey to his patrons. Then there would be pause as the phone was handed over, followed by someone saying “Hello” in quizzical, accented English.  Then I would say things like:

“Hi, the boss of the restaurants says he is out of ribs for the dish you ordered, but he can make a similar dish with boneless pork meat for the same price. Is that okay?”

or

“Hi, the restaurant owner says that you can order the roast fish for take-out, but it’s too big for a take-out container. He can put it in a metal pan for you, but you’ll need to pay a deposit and then bring the pan back later. Is that okay?”

Both times the patrons were most agreeable, and seemingly grateful to finally understand what was going on.  After taking back the phone, Mr. Pu thanked me vociferously and then hung up to continue servicing the Chinese-speaking clientele.