What the hell did I eat? D. and I went to dinner with my brother and his wife at a Chinese restaurant (Oriental Regency, Vienna, VA). We figured it was a good sign that most of the patrons were Chinese and most of the dishes unrecognizable. They had standbys like steamed dumplings and sweet&sour chicken, but we had a laugh over some of the more exotic items like fish head casserole, Maw with rape, duck blood soup. I wanted something unusual and was set to order the baby eels with white leeks, given my love of unagi maki, until my brother told me to ask if they were freshwater or saltwater eels. Good point! The waitress seemed tickled I wanted to order eel but I changed my mind when she said they were saltwater. I ordered "bean curd layers with cabbage" expecting a lasagna-like dish of tofu slices and bok choy in sauce.
The dish they put in front of me looked like a pile of skin grafts with edamame. I really thought it must be the wrong item, but figured I'd give it a try. Long strips about 1.5" wide of thin pale crumpled flimsy stuff, much more resilient than a noodle. If you tugged on a strip it was elasticy and had a subtle mesh impression on it. Definitely skin grafts. We decided it wasn't animal-based after I ate some. No one else would try it, not even my brother who was extolling the list of weird foods he's eaten. I gave up trying to figure out what it was and just enjoyed eating it, although part of me really wanted to know. Towards the end I remembered another menu item called 'bean curd skins' and realized the layers in my dish must be the same thing. Well, I wanted something unusual and eating a dish no one could identify definitely counts. I might have to buy some at Oasis for lunch sometime.
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