The name of the restaurant translates to Si Mao Wild Vegetables Restaurant, although it serves more than vegetables.
Si Mao Ye Cai Guan (Si Mao Wild Vegetables Restaurant) sits on a corner in the south of Kunming, Yunnan, China, in a little alley-crossed neighborhood that hosts several interesting restaurants. Not many foreigners come this way, so when I rode my electric scooter into the alley, everyone turned and stared. Si Mao‘s claim to fame is that it serves fresh food from Yunnan Province. What this translates to, for a Western foodie, is a great opportunity to eat some very well-prepared, exotic foods. I asked one of the ladies standing at the entrance if I could look at a menu. “Meiyou caidan,” she replied, which means, “No menu.” It was then that I knew I was in for a special evening.
Yunnan Province.
Yunnan Province has several unique traits. First, it is in the extreme south, and borders the countries of Southeast Asia. Second, it is home to the largest number of ethnic minority groups in all of China. And third, Yunnan cuisine is known for making the most of the enormous variety of wild, natural foods found within its borders. In fact, Yunnan is especially famous for its edible bugs, and fungus. So how could I, a foodie, resist the allure of a high-quality restaurant, dedicated specifically to those things?
Warm and inviting.
Si Mao is one of those wonderful Chinese restaurants where all of the ingredients are openly displayed for the customers to choose. I was greeted with a large wall, and several baskets, of all sorts of bright, colorful, and interesting things. Roots, vegetables, bark, insects, wild boar, deer — and that was only the beginning. When you enter, a server directs you to the ingredients selection, where you can look around, ask questions, and then finally tell them what you want, which is then entered into a portable digital device and relayed to the kitchen. I think I embarrassed my dining partner because I took so long to decide, but I could not help it: I was like a child in a candy store! Before me were, to my Western palate, the most exotic of ingredients, ready to be prepared in interesting and delicious ways. We finally settled on four dishes that, we believed, represented a good spectrum of the offerings. Take a look at these photographs, which represent only part of the possible choices:
The first dish I knew I had to try, was fried worms. To be more precise, they were caterpillars. As someone with a lifelong bug phobia, it was incredibly difficult for me to order them. But, I looked at is as exposure therapy, and I figured that, if millions of people eat them all the time, they cannot be bad. And because they were lightly battered and then fried, I knew that the frying process itself would add its own flavor, and would make the texture crisp, rather than juicy or distasteful. Add to that the fact that eating bugs is a very inexpensive, clean, renewable way to feed millions of people who might not otherwise get enough protein, and I could not very well refuse them.
Here are the caterpillars, fried to perfection.
I was not disappointed as the server brought over the plate of caterpillars, crisp, golden-brown, and fried to perfection, with a five-spice chili powder to dip them in. The only part that cause me a slight pause, was that their large, black heads were quite visible, but throwing caution to the wind, and offering a quick prayer to the culinary gods, I ate. And you know, they were quite good. They were not the squishy, revolting things that I had imagined.
I couldn’t resist taking just one corny shot of me eating caterpillars.
Instead, they were delightfully crunchy and crisp. The texture was something between that of a soft, succulent-plant root, and a light protein, maybe like a flaky, white fish. And the fried batter added its own element. The flavor was bright and very faintly citrus, even a tiny bit grassy. The dipping powder that came with them is a fairly common one that I have enjoyed with small fried fish. I am fairly certain that it include Chinese five-spice, with a healthy dose of ground mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns, and red chilis.
Just like home: okra!
The next dish was quite a delightful surprise to me — okra. Okra is the seed pod part of a flowering plant, and where I am from in Louisiana, we eat okra fried, or in gumbo. Linguistic and culinary-historical evidence indicates that okra probably came originally from Africa, but some scholars concede that it may have also come from Southeast Asia. In either case, I was really surprised to find it here in Kunming. It was served stir-fried, with some garlic, salt, and red chili peppers — a very simple method that preserves and enhances the basic flavor of the vegetable.
The texture was just about right. It was cooked well enough not to be overly fibrous and tough, but not cooked so long that it was mushy. It is inevitable that cooked okra will secrete that sticky liquid, which some people find unappetizing. Okra, like aloe vera, secretes a sucrose- and protein-based liquid called a mucilage, and it thickens when heat is applied. This is why okra is such a great thickening agent, for example in a gumbo. The only way I know to use okra outside of a thickening agent, without experiencing the mucilage, is to quickly cut and batter it, then quickly deep-fry it. I do not mind the stickiness myself.
The flavor was pure, delicious okra, with a little enhancement from the other ingredients. To me, okra’s flavor is a full, buttery, grassy combination that coats the tongue with a viscous mouthfeel. And the way that this okra was cut — on a bias and thin — assured that the maximum surface area of the plant touched my tongue, thereby imparting the most flavor. Okra also has some extreme health benefits. Not only is it very high in vitamins A, B6, and C, and filled with calcium, zinc, and lots of fiber, but the very mucilage that some people find unappealing, has been shown to help regulate the absorption of blood sugar, possibly making it a co-treatment for diabetics.
A beautiful purple broth gives this 芭蕉花 soup a rich flavor.
The next, third dish was very special to me, because it was based on a plant that I never knew you could eat. In fact, most Westerners who have even heard of this tree use it for garden shade, and have no idea that it is edible. It is the 芭蕉 (bajiao) tree, known in English as the Japanese fiber banana. The plant has traditionally been thought to have originated in Japan, but in fact, recent evidence indicates that it is Chinese in origin. This soup was based on the flower of this plant, which looks like a giant bulb or root, but is, in fact, a flower.
This is the 芭蕉 flower as it appears whole, before being shredded for the soup.
The flower was shredded, or julienned, for the soup. I am honestly not sure about all of the other ingredients, but I did notice an emphasis on green onions. The broth itself was hearty and nourishing, and had obvious, lovely undertones of garlic. As for the flavor of the flower itself, it was very, very pleasant. Like eggplant, the 芭蕉花 had a nice earthy, almost meaty taste. It was salty, savory, and warm in mouthfeel, and as a flower, it had subtle floral element. In addition, there were bits of stewed pork in the soup, not so much for eating (though I ate and enjoyed it), but more to add the meaty flavor.
The sharpness of the abundant green onions, the meaty fullness and the floral character of the flower, and the hearty purple broth, all combined to make a very satisfying dish. While the other dishes, though very good, were something of a novelty for me, I could see myself eating this soup regularly, and enjoying it as a hearty, fulfilling meal. Though it is a flower, the texture is like a thick mushroom, and while it is not crunchy (at least after it is cooked in the soup), it does have a nice, substantial feel on the teeth.
Tree bark!
The last dish was something that I insisted we order, much to my dining partner’s chagrin. After all, it is not every day that you get to eat cooked tree bark! Yes, tree bark. This, folks, is what I came to the restaurant for: unusual, natural, local Yunnan food, expertly prepared by trained chefs. And it did not fail my expectations. To the contrary, it was wonderful.
I knew that some tree bark was edible, but I knew nothing at all about it, aside from it being (in my mind) some sort of last resort for a starving hiker lost in the wilderness. The part that is edible is not the rough outer shell, but the softer inner layer (the cambium layer). And as it turns out, it is much more than a last ditch effort to fend off death from starvation. Rather, it is delicious and filling, and the texture is uniquely pleasing. The server did not know which tree this was from, unfortunately. Tree bark is very nutritious, and also has a very high fiber content, as you might imagine.
In fact, how do I describe eating tree bark? I think the texture is the most important thing. When I first saw this in the ingredients case, I thought it was snakeskin. It looks just like it! To my dismay, the server told us that they did not serve snake that night. But I have eaten snake before. It is a good thing we thought to ask what this was, or we would have missed out on a great experience. Though it looks like it would be rubbery, the texture of this bark is more like a nice, crisp lettuce leaf. In the mouth, it is crunchy and herbaceous, a bit like eating the outer parts of a Romaine lettuce leaf (not the inner core). And it was not chewy, tough, or rubbery at all. Rather, it was easy to bite into bits. And although it may have a rather wet or oily look in the photograph above, it was pleasingly dry.
Bear Grylls has nothing on me.
Purely discussing the flavor of the bark — without the other elements of the dish — it was very much like a combination of Romaine lettuce and walnuts. It exhibited a wild, woody flavor that made me feel like I was in a forest. The rest of the dish was flavored with the very traditional Chinese combination of garlic, green onions, and red chili peppers. The focus of a Chinese dish is the main ingredient, and every other ingredient is added to impart flavor, not really to eat. There is nothing wrong or offensive, per se, with eating the flavoring ingredients, but it is not the traditional Chinese way of eating. In other words, the way to eat this dish was to pick up the pieces of bark, not to pick out the small bits of onions or chilis.
And in doing so, I found that the bark was in no way overwhelmed by the pungency of the other ingredients. Instead, they complimented it very well. The garlic and green onions added a sharp offset to the mild nuttiness of the bark, and the heat from the chili peppers activated regions of the taste buds on the tongue that were not used to eating bark, so that they, too, could absorb its wild flavor. Overall, the bark really did take my mind to a beautiful mountain forest.
What drink does one pair with caterpillars, shredded flowers, okra, and tree bark? I suggest a cold bottle of local beer.
There are a few reasons why I am very excited about Si Mao wild foods restaurant. First, I always relish the opportunity to try unusual or exotic foods, prepared by skillful cooks. To me, that is part of the enjoyment of food: the novelty of exploration and discovery. During my short years on earth, I want to try every sort of food that I can, love it or hate it.
Second, I am a firm believer in terroir, both in food and in wine. Terroir (French for territory or local area) in food and wine, refers to products made with local ingredients, and the philosophy that every different locality will produce food and drink that somehow represents the place. For example, the very same variety of grape grown on two different plots of land, will produce two wines with different characteristics. So the ability to eat food that comes from the forests and mountains of Yunnan, right to my table, is very thrilling to me.
And third, the food of a people is an enormous part of that people’s culture, as important a part as language and ethnicity. When I am in a place, I want to experience everything about that place that I can: its people, its culture, its language, its history, its food, its drink. I do not want to be a stereotypical tourist who looks at another land as a sort of theme park designed for his amusement. Rather, I want to actually see how the locals live. I want to learn what makes them laugh and cry; what they get excited about, what they dread; how they live and how they love. And so, to me, during my night at Si Mao, I was able to get a small glimpse of the lives of indigenous Yunnan people, and how they live in harmony with Nature, using her gifts to not only eat, but to thrive and to enjoy.
Wild and beautiful.
Food Ergo Love 