Fuzhou feast

Once upon a time, a scholar was traveling, with his food contained in a clay jar used for storing wine. One day, he warmed his food beside a monastery with high walls. A monk living in the monastery smelled the food warming and jumped over the wall to look for the source of the smell. It was originally called “A Buddhist monk jumps over the wall” but over the years came to be known as “Buddha jumps over the wall”.

Cebuanos don’t need to jump over the wall to have a taste of this soup; all they have to do is head over to Tea of Spring at Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort and Spa and feast on the dishes specially prepared by Chefs Tacky Zheng and Yang Jianxi, who flew over from Fujian province in China to share their culinary prowess with us, in Tea of Spring’s Fuzhou Food Festival, ongoing from August 8 to 16.

With ingredients such as quail’s eggs, noodles, abalone, scallops, shark’s fin and sea cucumber, one would expect the taste of “Buddha jumps over the wall” to be quite exotic. Not so, as the flavor of the soup is actually quite subtle. It’s neither sour, nor spicy, nor sweet, but a combination of flavors and textures that there is only one way to describe it: very delicious.

Aside from “Buddha jumps over the wall”, some recognizable Chinese dishes are also available, but with special touches from Chef Tacky and Chef Yang. The double-boiled minced meat dumpling and fishball soup might be mistaken in looks for the common pancit molo, but that’s where the similarity ends. The soup has pork dumplings as well as fishballs, but the fishball is bigger than a golf ball, and when you bite or cut into it, you’ll discover that it’s stuffed with minced pork.

The wok-fried egg noodles looks like, yes, pancit, but again, the two Fujian chefs make this somewhat common dish taste heavenly. Dessert can be pretty surprising, as most Pinoys usually have birds’ nest soup before the meal. In this case, the birds’ nest soup was served as a dessert, and warm at that. The most surprising thing is that this particular kind of birds’ nest soup had grated, toasted coconut, making it taste like binignit!

Most of us have pretty much taken Chinese food for granted, but for those seeking new horizons in dining, a visit to Tea of Spring this coming week should be in order. James Hilton, in his book “Lost Horizon” described Shangri-La as mystical yet harmonious. With the dishes at Tea of Spring, the author’s vision of paradise on earth is reflected, and like the inhabitants of the mythical Shangri-La, diners at Tea of Spring may want to stay for good.