What you See is What you Get

In my last post, I had wrote 'that was one of the best Chinese meal I had in Japan'.....well, today's post is about the best and first Chinese meal I had in Japan.  It was at the Kyoto train station.  We were staying in Osaka and just arrived to Kyoto to spend the rest of the day here. We were starving by then and I didn't feel for anymore japanese food.  By now, we had been in Japan for about 5-6 days.

The train station is more like a shopping mall.  Lots of shops, departmental stores and restaurants.  They had endless rows of restaurants on all floors (I remember climbing at least 3-4 floors) but I had absolutely no appetite for any of them until I saw this window display.  It was chinese food and they had 'dim sum' too (we normally eat dim sum on weekends and that day was Sunday).  I studied the display carefully and they all looked delicious.  I could have ordered one of each....that was how hungry I was.....'see' food diet.... :):):).....so we decided its ok to eat chinese in japan (don't know why we were guilty... :).... the place was busy and we were glad to get a table.

When the food came, I was so please with our choice of restaurant and dishes.  They looked just like the display by the window or better.  How cool is that?  And the aroma.....that was better than expensive perfume...:)....I remember saying to myself my Lord loves me and He knew my hearts desire.:)  ...I felt loved...

After photos were taken and grace was said, I dug into my noodles and it was simply delicious....cooked by a real chinese chef using a real wok with high heat.  I was so amazed. Every dish was awesome.  I looked over to the partly open kitchen to get a glimpse of the chef.  He was wearing a white tall hat and uniform but I was not sure whether he was chinese or japanese.  He was of sumo size and knew his way about in the kitchen.  I concluded that he must have been trained in a real chinese kitchen in Hong Kong or China.  My parents would say he has 'kung-fu' (skill) to cook chinese food.  Its either you have it or not, its a gift, a skill blessed upon that person.  I think so too.

The window display of the dishes in the menu....these were not real food....

.............DH ordered this set lunch(window display).........

.....and got this .....looks better than the display I think.......it was yummy yum yum

.....I got the noodles with seafood and veg(window display)......

.....this is my dish and I dug into it before stopping to take this picture....simply yummmmmmy...

Shrimp in tomato spicy sauce(window display)

......again tastes and looks yummmy...

dim sum (window display)

.....bigger size than the display and thumbs up for taste and texture.  The 'ha gao' skin (white skin on the left) was perfectly made and you got to have the skill to make this skin/dough. I have tasted many 'ha gaos' and many have failed at the skin.  They were breaking, coming apart when you try to pick it with your chopstick and taste mushy or doughy.  This one was perfect.  Just perfect.