taste buds on fire

Nathan has trouble focusing with my camera 

Two years ago, my taste buds died at Anjappar Chettinad, an Indian restaurant, in my attempt to train them to withstand more heat. It was so spicy that it didn't just burn my entire mouth, but also my lips until they were slightly numb. Luckily all that pain was not for moot!  I noticed that after that night, I was able to eat spicy foods that I normally wouldn't be able to handle. Unfortunately, since then I haven't had a chance to regularly maintain my spice tolerance simply because I'm not normally drawn towards eating spicy things (I'm a bit of a bland girl).

For some reason though, I had a huge craving for Hakka food last week. I've never really had Hakka food before, but Nathan made it sound so tasty that eventually I started wanting it as well (Nathan always says that I am very easily influenced). We had a couple places that we wanted to try together: Frederic's and China Cottage. We ended up at China Cottage because it was a bit closer and there was word along the grapevine that this place might actually be better.

We ordered one non-spicy item (a vegetable fried rice) and one spicy item (manchurian beef). First off, the fried rice was enormous! It could have easily fed four adults or maybe 3 really hungry ones. I really liked the rice for two reasons: it didn't burn and it wasn't mushy. I've grown up to believe that fried rice should be made with day-old rice to make sure that the rice doesn't stick or clump together, but there seems to be a lot of heated discussions surrounding this! As for the beef, I didn't enjoy it because it was way too spicy and it wasn't the kind of flavourful spicy that I like to eat. According to Nathan's sister, we should've ordered the crispy beef instead. Gives us an excuse to go again! I think some of my friends who like the heat would love this place.

So I think Nathan and I are officially over our Japanese food craze...for now.