Dalian update: Belgium coffee

Last week Dalian was hit by yet another cold spell, which made everyone's life quite uncomfortable. The city's central heating system had been switched off already at the beginning of April so room temperatures dropped considerably... in my case to a mere 12 degrees in the evening! That's too cold to sit around, no matter how many clothes you put on so the only solution was to flee to a bar or coffeeplace somewhere in town. On Wednesday two of the French exchange students, Emma and Claire, had somehow found out during the day that the latest Martin Scorsese movie "Shutter Island" was being shown at a coffee bar called Kaffeecoast. In its original English version! Perfect. Henry and I accepted their invitation to join and as such discovered the best coffee bar in Dalian (to this day)! In fact, the place looked like a cafe in Antwerp with plush sofas, mahony tables, armchairs, bookshelves containing all sorts of stuff to read, a grand piano, a wine rack and even an Illy espresso machine. "Shutter Island" was shown via DVD on a big screen in a separate room, again filled with doubleseaters, low wooden tables with plates of free nuts, seeds and crisps, and free flasks of hot lemon water. Oh, and if you want a beer or cola, please pay 10 kuai ( = 1 euro). i guess we have a new base :-)

After the film had ended, I got into a conversation with the Chinese owner of the place, a middle-aged rather sophisticated woman who was happy enough to try out her English skills and put up with my Mandarin. She moved down there near Wusi Square (one of Dalian's main shopping districts) only last autumn after having opened a similar coffeebar on dongbei lu for five years. Then she asked where I was from. Belgium? She went to the counter, took the menu and offered it to me. As I opened it, the first thing I saw were big black letters that said "BELGIUM COFFEE". I did not even know there was such a thing as Belgian coffee, at least not anything worth marketing. The woman must have noticed my surprise and she pointed to a strange looking piece of machinery on a shelf behind the counter. A Belgian coffee press machine (see picture). To be honest I had never seen such a coffee maker before in my life. Turns out this was indeed used in the distant past by the Belgian royal family and other men of authority and status in Brussels. Most definitely bourgeois in any case. I cannot recall I have ever been served coffee prepared via this piece of equipment, but I will most certainly give it a try in the days to come.

Then, we still walked around the local night market for a while with a keen interest in the food stalls offering all kinds of odd satés and soup mixtures. When I travelled through Sichuan in 2004 I was a big fan of the cheap Tibetan food stands, but over there everything is spicy enough to make it interesting. Here in Manchuria, however, the food is generally not spicy at all so a skewer with squid, octopus or some kind of meat is exactly that. Then Henry pointed out a food stall that offered...chicken heads on a saté stick! Well well, how on earth do you eat the head of a chicken? The next day Ma laoshi surprised me over lunch: chickenheads are very tasty, she said, and many local people eat them on a regular basis. The heads are boiled, and can but don't need to be, fried afterwards and marinated with some sauce for extra flavour. Normally you eat them like you eat a crab. You need to dig out the nice pieces. Her brother loves boiled chickenheads.


In any case, the Chinese make the most of it when they slaughter an animal!

Meanwhile, I have also started teaching Dutch to a local young Dalian woman who works for an international business consultancy firm. The previous weekend she had taken me to a Russian restaurant full of Soviet nostalgia and Putin TV inside. For me it was the second time to try out Russian cuisine, and I have to admit that for the second time after Harbin in 2008 I was most certainly happy with the taste of the ordered dishes! Chickenliver on a bed of mashed tomatoes and carrots and a mayonaise topping...mjam mjam! The borsch was good, too, and the main chicken and beef dishes that came with an interesting sauce or flavouring were all a welcome alternative to my almost daily Chinese food.