I love spicy food and winter is the best time to have food so hot you'll singe your eyebrows just looking at it! And last night, I had so much spicy food I could breathe fire! We were at Xie Lao Song 蟹老宋 , a local eatery that's famous for Mala fried crabs and prawns. My local colleagues brought me here 2 years ago and since then I've returned several times with other spice eating Singaporeans for a dose of inexpensive seafood.
Spicy Crab
Between 5 people last night, we polished off the prawns ( 58RMB for 500g), crab ( 68RMB for 500g), fried chicken wings, cucumber with salty bean dip, century egg with tofu and glutinous rice pastry stuffed with lotus paste. I liked the prawns because they were easier to eat. The crab meat sticks to the shell so you end up chewing on shell most of the time. That's akin to putting a bunch of sharp blades into your mouth!! They aren't anything like the giant Sri Lankan crabs that we have in Singapore. The chicken wings were very tasty and fried to crisp perfection-reminded me of Singapore's Prawn Paste Chicken- while the glutinous rice balls were of the right chewy texture but could do with more lotus paste filling. The bill was about 250RMB including several bottles of fire dousing beer.
Belgian beer at The Tree
After grub, we headed to The Tree for Belgian beer then hopped on to Yu Gong Yi Shan, a live music venue which features on occasion, Chinese bands, foreign guest DJs etc. We stumbled on Hip Hop open mic night. Hoodies, baggy pants, skate shoes and beanies seem to be de riguer among the predominantly male crowd. I had fun despite being unable to understand a word of what was being rapped ( it was in Mandarin). Alright, to be fair, I caught the words "Beijing" every now and then. This place had a huge dance floor but strangely, most of the folks seemed to be watching these 5 lively guys dancing rather than shaking their own booties. I tried to see if the guys were doing any stunts but they weren't!
Midnight came and went. After a night of drunken revelry, we had to have supper ( aiyah... any excuse to eat is good). Off to Ghost Street we staggered - a strangely sober me with 3 rowdy boys in tow who kept talking really loud to the harassed cab driver. We settled for a small place then proceeded to eat with much relish... mutton kebabs ( similar to satay), grilled chicken wings, hot & sour soup and a huge bowl of mala bill frog. Thinking back on it now, I feel somewhat sick to have eaten that much!! But spicy food really jolts the system and warms you up. It was the perfect end to a fun filled night.
Vims & Bernard drunk on Hot & Spicy soup
Spicy Mala bullfrog
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