Traveling in Sips & Bites

Friends Road

The wok twirls atop a makeshift stove, clashing against its metal rim. Flames lick the sides as bean sprouts leap and spinach wilts. Nearby, recycled plastic containers filled with sauces and spices await the chef’s ladle. A spoonful of oil, a smidgen of chilies, a half-scoop of ginger, garlic and soy. The chef's secret though lies in the belly of the wok, seasoned black over the years, containing the DNA of every dish he’s ever made.

He cooks inside a tent on Youpeng Lu, Friends Road. The air is steeped with sauteing onions and smoldering coal when my friends and I enter. The chef's wife chuckles, pleased that we have returned. She is hearty and compact with a face like a plum and fingers burnished by years of peeling and paring. We order lunch then squeeze our way to the only available table.

The table has no heads, just sides, and the only plates will go in the center. We pour tea into stained cups and sip slowly. Hot tea helps with digestion, my Chinese friends insist. Even in summer cold drinks are out of season. Today we are celebrating a birthday, so we drink baijiu alongside our tea. Baijiu is a white spirit with a haunting flavor of overripe fruit, but it's the only cheap liquor in Qufu. We toast to the birthday girl, lowering our cups to show respect. Baijiu sloshes from our cups, which are nearly on the ground as we vie for humility.

The first of many dishes arrive—fried eggplant speckled with Sichuan peppercorns, a numbing spice that makes the fiery ones more amiable. We pick through the minefield, avoiding a sensation still too sophisticated for our palates.

The dishes come fast but the meal is slow. The food is large enough to grasp easily with chopsticks yet small enough to chew without halting conversation. As we pluck the last morsels from the plates, the chef offers cigarettes to my male friends. We linger until the cigarettes grow short, saying nothing but knowing that words aren’t the only things that bring friends together.