For most of the time that I’ve lived in Philadelphia, Chinatown has been my favorite place to go out to for lunch. For well over a year now, I’ve enjoyed following up that lunch by going just across the street and enjoying a nice bubble tea at my favorite teahouse.Chinatown has also for a while been my destination for certain groceries that I just can’t get anywhere else – all the way from my favorite brand of powdered green tea to the sour paste that I put into my hot and sour soup.
However, recently, my eyes have been opened to just how narrow a slice I’ve been enjoying of all that Chinatown has to offer.
This past week, I took a food tour of Chinatown organized by Philly Food Adventures. Even though I’ve been coming regularly to Chinatown for over three years now, this experience was an eye opener.
In addition to all the restaurants and grocery stores, Chinatown is also home to a number of bakeries and pastry shops. I should know, because I’ve walked past them countless times. But this tour was the first time that I ever recall setting foot inside any of them.
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| I didn’t expect that the pork bun actually had a center of pork baked into it. |
This time, however, with the tour group, I went into one of those bakeries. Even though I could see right away that a lot of the pastries offered were things that I had never tried before, I had no idea of the treat I was in for until Jamie (our tour guide and owner of Philly Food Adventures) ordered us some pork buns. I was expecting buns flavored with pork, or which are meant to go with pork in a meal. Instead, I found that they are buns of delicious bread with pork baked inside in the middle.
We also got to experience a number of different dishes in a Szechuan restaurant – including a really yummy fish-based entree served in one of those fancy dishes that keep the food hot at the table with a flame burning underneath it.
As the tour went on, we went to a number of other food establishments in Chinatown. We didn’t stop at the restaurant that I usually eat at. There simply are too many places in Chinatown for the tour to cover them all. But we did stop at my favorite teahouse for some popcorn chicken. Though (unlike most of the foods we tried) I had already had the popcorn chicken before a number of times, I was still happy to have it yet again.
When you’re exploring the food that a historic neighborhood has to offer, there are two advantages to taking a guided, group tour. One is that dividing entrees and other dishes among several people allows you to sample a greater variety than you could on your own. The other is that, if the tour is organized by a good service, you get shown around by someone who really knows the place – and my experience is that Jamie of Philly Food Adventures really knows Chinatown.
Of course, the same restaurant and the same teahouse will probably remain my usual haunts in Chinatown. But there are so many other things, both included on the tour and not, that I will probably try now from time to time that I might not have were it not for this tour.
