Why Dalian menzi didn’t make it onto A Bite of China III

Huang He is one of the directors of A Bite of China III. In January this year, he went to Dalian with a camera crew to do a story on Dalian menzi, a famous local snack of protein-rich cubes made from coagulated potato starch.

After chatting with friends in the city he realized that this acclaimed cuisine, unlike those from out of town, pretty much precludes any kind of saccharine storytelling or the making of slobbering food porn. That afternoon, Dan Juan’er and I commandered the film crew from Olympic Plaza to Dashang Xinmat and then to Erqi Plaza on Wechat, with the quest culminating in Huang He’s reluctant forgoing of the topic. I watched A Bite of China III from beginning to end on the third day of the lunar new year when it first came on air and was struck by a vague inkling of, one might say, the inadequacy of Dalian menzi, despite its reputation, right after the first episode that recounted the stories of pea flour. Anecdotes about menzi are never scarce. There is the account of a Davos guest devouring 500 pots of menzi, then one of Laoda (boss) Menzi, a menzi shop, whose owner buys property and pays off the mortgages thanks to sakes of the dish, and that of Chua Lam, a Singaporean gourmet, who went out specifically for a smack of menzi during his sojourn in Dalian. But when presented with the authentic city snack, it was just not quite what he expected.

The making of Dalian menzi [Photo/dlxww.com]