Weekend in Xiamen part 3

Xiamen Island is small, so getting to everywhere we wanted to go was pretty easy. There is more to the city than the island, but we were not there long enough to explore the outer reaches, and we really didn't care anyway. We mostly went for the grocery store. That was on the other end of Yundang Lake. We could have walked to it from the hotel, but then going back with all those groceries would have been too much.

We actually went to the grocery store twice. The first time, they were out of too many of the things we wanted. They said another shipment would come in on our last day in Xiamen, so we went back just before we left the city. It would have been ironic if the main reason we went to Xiamen was a bust, but that's the chance you take when you go somewhere for a single reason.

Across the street from the American grocery store are two Chinese Italian restaurants, Duole and Mamma Mia. We did not try either of them the first time we went to Xiamen because we were on a cruise ship full of free food, or at least food that was already paid. This time, we had to find our own meals, so we went to one of the Chinese Italian restaurants on our first night and the other one right next door on our second night.

From the outside, both restaurants looked basically the same. You could tell they were two different restaurants, but there was nothing that distinguished one from the other. From the inside, one definitely looked more like a traditional Italian restaurant than the other. We assumed that one would have the better food. We were completely wrong.

The restaurant with the more generic café interior, Duole, had much better food. I don't know who runs either restaurant, but I would be surprised if the chef in Duole was not Italian, or at least trained in Italy. The pasta was as fresh as could be and the sauces were excellent. Almost every single Italian restaurant in China serves dried pasta. The better places put more effort into the sauce. The worst places just slap ketchup on top. Duole served us fresh pasta that was probably made that day. The best part, to me at least, was the garlic bread. I love garlic bread. It is one of the hardest things to find in Hong Kong. Lots of places have Chinese bread. Some places have what they call garlic bread. No one has genuine, fresh bread with genuine garlic and genuine olive oil. Who knows why. Bread is not a Chinese staple, but we have fresh garlic all over the place.

Even if you find a place that says it has garlic bread, it is usually Chinese bread, which is nothing like Italian, French, German, Dutch, American, Canadian, Irish or Scandinavian bread. Sometimes they will put Chinese butter on it or Chinese vegetable oil. Chinese butter tastes nothing like what I think of as butter. I don't know how they make it, but something is just off, like vegan cheese. Chinese oil is usually corn or peanut oil, which is not always a bad thing, but is not ideal for garlic bread. Olive oil is more expensive and not a traditional Chinese ingredient, so few places will use it.

Cheaper places use something called gutter oil. The less said about that, the better. Foreigners can usually tell which places use gutter oil since you will have a dramatic reaction to the food right away. My rule is if any food comes out of me right after I put it in, I never go back to that place.