Snake + Cake

There is a restaurant at 115 Xingfu Road in Shanghai called Lin Lin. Lin Lin specializes in fresh snakes. It's a small, divey place and in the little courtyard behind the kitchen there's a stack of cages that hold several species of live snakes.

The waiter walked us back there to check them out and we pointed to a few of the big ones he said were the tastiest. He put some heavy thick plastic gloves on and pulled them out. With strong scissors he simply cut their heads off, and threw the bodies into a bucket. The headless bodies writhed and wriggled as blood spewed out from the top. We licked our chops and went inside.


photo by Safety Scissors

The snakes came stir-fried in a spicy mix of vegetables, chili and oil. Tastes like frog.

We were happily eating away at this when we noticed at the other table there was quite a loud party going on. Red wine, snakes, and ... a birthday cake. The party was getting louder to the point of obnoxious. Then one of the drunken gentleman came over and toasted with us -- his English was decent, but obviously he doesn't interact with foreigners often. "My two friends, it's their birthday. They are policemen! Policeman birthday! hahah!" (I think he was quite proud that they were police ... at first I was like, so what's the point? Police need to eat too...)

Anyway, a few minutes later we were standing and toasting beer and wine with these guys, and singing happy birthday songs. Then came the cake. We were given big slices of chocolate cake with white frosting. We thanked them, set the cake down on our table, and continued to eat our snake dish.

A few minutes later, the gentleman came back, blushing, and said "you should eat the cake now (wink wink). It's time to eat the cake. We are eating cake now."

"Ah yes, we will, after our snake," I said.

"You should eat cake now. We eat cake together," he said.

So we did. Cake + snake. Yum.

People from The West are uptight about what courses to eat when. Dessert goes at the end. Count me as one of those people. Cake and spicy snake don't mix. Neither does red wine with spicy snake, or light beer with cake, for that matter. But now things were completely out of control and they were all mixed up together on our palates and in our bellies.

I have a Shanghainese friend who likes to drink chocolate milk with her spicy fish. Just the thought makes me ill.

We survived. Tummies full, we bid farewell to the birthday police and walked down to Logo bar and partied with Safety Scissors, Ben Houge, and Nosaj Thing.

Pig Hoof vs. Turtle

We were up in Beijing with our favorite new band Reptile & Retard, and across the alley from the Boat club (awesome frozen mojitos!), we grabbed a nice meal at the Qingdao Restaurant. Qingdao is a city on the coast of North-East China, and it's most known for the main Chinese export beer "Tsingtao" which is the old spelling of "Qingdao" and should be pronounced "ching-dow", not "sting-tow"... The other thing Qingdao is known for is seafood, and we had some fine fish here, but I'm going to tell you about the weird stuff -- Pig Feet, and a cute little Turtle that ended up in my mouth.



The turtle -- I got to pick it out myself, alive -- was marinated in a wonderfully complex smokey tea sauce. There's not much meat on this little guy, and lots of bones, but what we did eat was super delicious! Such a bold and curious flavor. We turned it over, upside down, and ate the bits of meat from under the shell. Then we nibbled on the little creature's head and neck. Good juicy bits there!


Retard eats the pig hoof.

Then we ordered a massive plate of pig hooves, or pork feet. These were truly disgusting, but delicious. They're full of cartilage, tendon, fat, bone, and more fat. Reptile, the singer in the band, wouldn't eat them. Then Retard did after some beers, and finally Reptile dove in and enjoyed it. Crazy guy! (If you're in Denmark, go see them play live.)


Reptile eats the piggy foot.

We followed up the dinner with an awesome party at The Boat.

Snake Alley, Taiwan

Huaxi Jie, Taipei, Taiwan

After filling up on Rooster Testicles and Deer Penis Wine, we had to hit the main attraction on Snake Alley, and down some shots of snake bile.

The restaurant hosts a twice-hourly public snake feeding. They feed a mouse to a big boa and announce the spectacle on megaphones. A crowd of families form in front of a glass cage, but no photos are allowed. (I sneaked one here):



A group of tough looking dudes take a mouse and whack its head on the floor to stun it half unconscious, then they throw it in for a big hungry snake. The snake (how lazy, he needs the dudes to feed him a whacked mouse) takes the mouse and wraps itself around it to squeeze it to death. Kids oooh and ahhh as they watch death taking place in front of their eyes. After 5 minutes of intense squeezing, the snake gobbles up the little white rat and swallows it down.

All of this is done to attract customers in, to eat the snakes, to really get that feeling you're at the top of the food chain. That's what we did.



We ordered the deluxe set -- a bowl of snake soup, snake oil pills, and shots of liquor with snake bile, snake blood, snake sperm, snake venom, and snake urine.

Why would one drink this stuff? According to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), these fluids benefit you in many ways, each one a unique cure or booster. Of course, they claim to have aphrodisiac qualities as well. Some of it's good for your liver, some curbs cancer, some are good for your sense of humor. We just drank them to look macho and get drunk.

The shots all tasted like liquor and medicine, that nasty sweetness. Soon after, we discovered a snake in our pants. Ouch!

They also have these snake pills for sale...



If you're visiting Taipei, tell your taxi driver Huaxi Jie, and get ready for some shots of snake semen, yum!

Public Durian Eating #3

We were back for our monthly party in Hangzhou, China, when we ran into some durian at a fruit stall. Hangzhou is one of the top domestic tourist attractions in China. Not many foreigners have heard of it, but it's an easy 1 and half hour train ride from Shanghai, and they've got a nice lake, hills to hike, tea plantations, and an enormous Buddhist temple to gander at. Marco Polo -- that hyperbolic nutcase -- once called Hangzhou the most amazing city in the world, and scores of old school Chinese poets penned odes to the lake. They should have penned odes to my favorite fruit, durian.

Oh Durian!



Me and my boys Zig Zag, a live electro band based in Beijing, found the durian, Joey Gu from Phogger took the pics.


Checking out the durian -- does it smell ??


People on elevator not too happy about the durian stink.


We cracked open the durian by smacking it on the pavement, very cavemen-like, rawww!



Then the durian was passed around -- either turned away in disgust, or eaten with lust and passion...



















Thanks to the Joy Luck Club of Hangzhou for letting us make a mess.



What's this all about? Check out Public Durian Enemy #1 and Durian Eating #2.

[Random Rant:] For some totally bizarre reason, they only have Bud Ice beer on the train. Who drinks this stuff?