We have a cooking thread and snacking/drinking at home threads, but I couldn't find an eating out thread anywhere.  Forgive me if I've missed it.

Eating is both one of the great pleasures and great stresses of touring.  We're often working within a tight schedule of travelling, rehearsing and performing.  Making sure we have a chance to have proper meals at appropriate times is sometimes difficult.  (Try convincing a restaurant in France or Italy that you need lunch after 2:30 or dinner before 7 - ha!)  But a fine or unusual meal abroad can leave a lasting impression, particularly if there's been little time to sightsee.

The food in Beijing was extraordinary.  The festival put us up in a very posh hotel with fantastic breakfasts, so those who wanted the comfort of western-style fry-up/muesli/toast/pastries etc could have it - OR we could have freshly made wonton soup, steamed dumplings, buns and northern-style breads, rice porridge with fried dough and pickles, thousand-year eggs, chilled greens with sesame and peanuts...

Other things I ate:

•First day: bought a huge bag of preserved plums to snack on, more tender and delicious than any I've bought in any Chinatown (10 yuan or 86p).  Inside the Forbidden city, snack of chicken curry on rice (25 yuan/£2.15) and a coffee (also 25 yuan).

•First night: huge feast at a restaurant specialising in Hakka cuisine - duck cooked in three flavours, salt-baked shrimp, whole fish wrapped in a parcel with a piquant sauce with vegetables, golden needle mushrooms with bean threads in a very spicy sauce although not a chilli was to be seen, sliced beef tongue braised with five-spice flavour, various kinds of dumplings and buns and spring rolls, beef with garlic cloves wrapped in lotus leaves, silky tofu in a delicate broth with all sorts of mushrooms/fungi, something else (chicken?) in a spicy chilli sauce - all topped off with warm wine (either rice or sorghum, not sure) in which shredded ginger and preserved plums had been steeped.  Cost: 100 yuan per head (£8.60), I think - I was very tired, it could have been 200 yuan but no more.

•Second day: dumpling lunch - one friend and I shared - and couldn't finish - two huge plates of dumplings, one boiled and stuffed with mutton and spring onion (particularly good, and very typical of northern regions to cook with lamb/mutton), the other fried and stuffed with pork and Chinese chives.  Plus a plate of steamed? or parboiled? greens, chilled and mixed with bean threads, lightly dressed in a mild vinegary dressing.  Tea and mineral water.  Cost: 30 yuan each (about £2.60).

•Second night: lavish post-concert banquet hosted by a generous benefactor of the AAM for the entire orchestra and chorus.  Four stages to the meal.  First, cold starters, including shredded jellyfish (I normally don't like this but it was delicious, although some people struggled with the crunchy texture), sliced abalone? (it might have been conch, but was more tender than that) in chilli, thousand-year eggs, a sort of meat terrine with jelly, a couple of other things (something involving peanuts, something involving very dark fungus/mushroom?), and a hot-and-sour soup with seafood.  Next, Beijing duck - absolutely sumptuous, crispy skin, plum sauce not too sweet, thinnest pancakes I've ever seen.  Then a succession of dishes - scallops, another whole fish, asparagus with caramelised walnuts, fried pork with chilli, ending with a platter of shrimp fried rice.  Followed by platters of fresh fruits - melons, some crunchy little apple-like things they called Chinese dates, oranges.  All the beer, water and very nice old world wines we cared for.  Cost: unknown, probably a lot.

•After that blow-out I was abstemious the next day, had a large breakfast and skipped lunch.  Before the concert I went with a friend down the street in search of snacks.  He had a steamed intricately-folded bread that I didn't fancy (cost: 2 yuan or about 17p).  Then we spotted the "crêpe" stand.  The woman poured a ladleful of batter onto a crêpe griddle, spread it about with a spatula, cracked an egg on top which she then scrambled a bit, flipped the whole thing over, lightly painted the other side with four different sauces (one of them was definitely a fermented bean paste, one of them may have had a bit of chilli in), and then folded the whole thing around a thin crispy bit of something not unlike a poppadom with some fresh spring onion and coriander.  Absolutely delicious.  Cost: 3.50 yuan (30p).  As we watched her make the crêpe, it occurred to us that watching the same process on the street in Hampstead would have set us back at least £3.50.  I also bought a wonderful pastry with sesame seeds on the outside and an unknown mildly sweet filling (2 yuan).  Some fruit as well.

NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM

I have had to read that three times and still am reeling!!!  Goodness, apart from the jelly fish it all sounds wonderful.

All of us are very envious of you Strina! My goodness.

Glad your back safe and well Strina!! A few mre 1ls?

All of which serves to remind me that i am hungry!

Strina, last year I ate Limpets in the Azores - they weren't very nice!  I wondered if Abalone was similar - fishy, tough and rubbery?  Also, I once wrote to a fish restaurant to ask them if i could have the shells and they never got back to me! 

Incidentally, the only British species of Abalone (it's found in the Channel Islands) is Haliotis tuberculata and it has now been introduced into Cornwall for farming purposes.

I could be wrong here but I think that Abalone may be known as Ormer in this neck of the world. The shells are lovely. I remember my grand-parents had them as decorations in the garden. I've never tasted one though. Yet...

Ok, lest we get stuck on my Beijing nomming (fabulous though it was!), I'll ask the assembled company for their memorable eating-out experiences.  (NO TOMMO, DON'T SAY IT)

Have you been to a restaurant/café/deli/street stall lately that you can either recommend or tell us to stay away from?
Did an eccentric wealthy aunt or a friend on an expense account treat you to an extravaganza years ago that you couldn't forget if you tried?
Did you ever stumble across a dirt-cheap unprepossessing hole in the wall with no name that served you manna from heaven?
Are you about to travel somewhere unknown, or take out a visiting guest, and would like some recommendations?
Do you have any memorably bad dining-out experiences that might be funny in retrospect?

When I was about 15, my parents and I went to a restaurant in Quebec that was playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons on a loop (that should have been our cue to leave immediately).  The food was fine, but the service was so slow we heard the entire set of concertos nearly four times.  We still joke about the dinner that lasted four years...

How could you tell?

  (Don't mind me - I'm in a weird mood today.)

I'll get back to this thread later...