Subgenius Digest Tue, 11 Jun 91 Volume 2 : Issue 180
Today's Topics:
Waiter, There's A Rat in My Soup - and It's Delicious
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Message-Id: <AcIsf3e00VQfE1GFEf@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 10 Jun 91 10:20:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: Chris Koenigsberg <ckk+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: Waiter, There's A Rat in My Soup - and It's Delicious
Waiter, There's A Rat in My Soup - and It's Delicious
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Source: Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1991
From: tang@iastate.edu
GUANGZHOU, China -- The Cantonese people of south China are legendary for
eating anything that moves -- and some things that are still moving. The
food market here features cats, raccoons, owls, doves and snakes along with
bear and tiger's paw, dried deer penis and decomposed monkey skeletons.
Now, this rich culinary tradition, along with rising disposable income in
this most prosperous city in China, has inspired kitchen utensil salesman
Zhang Guoxun to open what is believed to be China's first restaurant
dedicated to serving rat.
That's right: Rat. Rat with Chestnut and Duck. Lemon Deep Fried Rat.
Satayed Rat Slices with Vermicelli. In fact, the menu lists 30 different
rat dishes, even including Liquored Rat Flambe, along with more mundane
dishes such as Hot Pepper Silkworm, Raccoon With Winter Melon and Sliced
Snake and Celery. And in the six months since the doors opened, customers
have been scampering in at all hours to the euphemistically named Jialu
(Superior to Deer) Restaurant.
"I was always eating out, but I got bored with the animals that restau-
rants offered," Mr. Zhang says during an interview over a plate of Black-
Bean Rat. "I wanted to open a restaurant with an affordable exotic animal.
Then I was walking home one night and a rat ran across in front of me and
gave me this idea."
Mr. Zhang's restaurant is as trendy as they come in China. The 15-table,
two-story eatery is a mixture of blond wood furniture, stucco walls and
wooden lattice laced with plastic vines. Tonight's crowd includes a young
couple who stroll in hand-in-hand and nestle in a quiet corner for a
romantic rat dinner. Other groups include engineers, office clerks,
salesmen and factory workers.
Tonight's special is Braised Rat. Garnished with sprigs of cilantro, the
morsels of rat meat are swaddled in crispy rat skin. The first nibble
reveals a rubbery texture. But the skin coats one's teeth with a stubborn
slime. The result is a bit like old chewing gum covered with Crisco.
But other dishes are better. German Black Pepper Rat Knuckle (rat should-
ers, actually; the knuckles are too small) tastes like a musty combination
of chicken and pork. The rat soup, with delicate threads of rat meat mixed
with thinly sliced potatoes and onions, is surprisingly sweet. Far and away
most appealing to the Western palate is Rat Kabob. The skewers of char-
coaled rat fillet are enlivened with slices of onion, mushroom and green
pepper and served smothered in barbecue sauce on sizzling iron plates that
are shaped like cows.
Also on the menu: a Nest of Snake and Rat, Vietnamese Style Rat Hot Pot, a
Pair of Rats Wrapped in Lotus Leaves, Salted Rat with Southern Baby
Peppers, Salted Cunning Rats, Fresh Lotus Seed Rat Stew, Seven-Color Rat
Threads, Dark Green Unicorn Rat -- and, of course, Classic Steamed Rat.
Generally, the presentation is quite elegant, with some dishes served with
lemon slices or scallions forming a border and others with carrots carved
into flower shapes.
Experienced rat eaters, however, warn that this is no meat to pig out on.
"Watch out," warns Wei Xiuwen, a factory manager eating at an adjacent
table. "If you eat too much rat, you get a nosebleed." Several customers
take off their shirts halfway through the meal because eating rat, like
dog, seems to raise the body temperature for some reason. That's why rat is
considered a winter food. In the summer, the restaurant does most of its
business during the late-night and early-morning hours, after the weather
cools down.
The restaurant is popular -- Mr. Zhang claims profits of $2,000 a month --
because it brings people back to their roots. The restaurant's cooks, and
most customers, are originally from the countryside, where as children they
ate air-dried rat meat. "If dried by a north wind, it tastes just like
duck," Che Yongcheng, an engineer and regular customer, says wistfully of
his favorite childhood snack.
For newcomers, Mr. Zhang has color brochures, featuring a photo of Rat
Kabobs alongside a bottle of Napoleon X.O. In both the menu and brochure,
the rats are referred to as "super deer" because Mr. Zhang says he wants to
separate his fare from the common sewer rats that even Cantonese might find
unappetizing. Mr. Zhang says his restaurant serves only free range rats,
wild rodents that feed on fruits and vegetables in the mountains a couple
of hundred kilometers to the north.
The brochure explains why rats are the health food for the 1990s. It says
the rats are rich in 17 amino acids, vitamin E and calcium. Eating them
promises to prevent hair loss, revive the male libido, cure premature
senility, relieve tension and reduce phlegm. A rat's "liver, gallbladder,
fat, brain, head, eye, saliva, bone, skin" are "useful for medical
treatment," says the brochure.
The restaurant's basement kitchen is a Dante's Inferno where shirtless
cooks sweat over huge woks atop howling gasfueled stoves that shoot flames
five feet in the air. Dozens of fat, ready-to-cook rats are piled in a
bamboo basket next to a crust-covered pump that noisily slurps up a small
river of scum that runs off the stove and across the floor.
The senior chef is not here tonight. An understudy, Huang Lingtun, clad in
rubber sandals and pants rolled up to his knees, explains how the rats are
rounded up. They're captured and cleaned by farmers who free-lance as rat
bounty hunters. Some smoke the rats out by setting fields on fire and
snaring the fleeing rats in nets attached to long bamboo poles. Others
string wires across fields to stun unsuspecting rodents with high voltage
charges. The rats, each about a half-pound, arrive at the restaurant
freshly gutted, beheaded and de-tailed.
Mr. Zhang says that the traditional recipes on his menu were suggested by
Tang Qixin, a farmer honored as a model worker by Mao in 1958 for his
prowess as a rat killer. Rat eradication campaigns have been a staple of
Chinese life since Mao declared war on the four pests -- rats, flies,
mosquitoes and bed bugs -- in the 1950s.
In 1984, the last Year of the Rat, the government launched an all-out
crusade in which an estimated 526 million rats were killed. In 1985, the
government tried to maintain the momentum by promoting rat meat as good
food, explaining that "rats are better looking than sea slugs and cleaner
than chickens and pigs."
Like most successful entrepreneurs during these times of shifting poli-
tical winds in China, Mr. Zhang is quick to highlight the patriotic nature
of his business rather than the personal economic benefits. "I am helping
the government by eliminating some pests and helping enrich some farmers,"
he says.
Mr. Zhang says he's too new to the business to think about a chain of rat
restaurants. But he says he's unconcerned about anyone stealing his idea.
"My quality is tops," he says, "so I'm not worried about competitors."
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Editor of this issue: Ya-Gui Wei yawei@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu
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