Funny Chinese Dishes: Dead Man’s Coffin, Wild Speculation Beef Salamander and More
I did a lot of thinking over the last week.
All this was sparked off by the long comment that Dyn made which I made it into a blog post called Why Do Whites Accept Japanese and Thai Cuisine Over Other Cuisine. I posted it because it was controversial and thought our readers would love to read of it. However, little did I expect that Dyn’s notes sparked off a series of very long, thought provoking comments from other readers.
That got me thinking over a few comments made regarding bad translations in Chinese Menu that puts off diners who are not familiar with the cuisine. So I did some more research on the internet and in one discussion forum, there was a discussion how a western menu differs from a Chinese one.
Menu from The Cannery, Vancouver
In western menu, the dishes often describes the ingredients and the way it is prepared.
Menu from Sunway Restaurant, Richmond
On the other hand, with Chinese dishes, you will not always be able to picture the dish if you are not familiar with it. Traditionally, many Chinese dishes have a 4-word (syllable) names and some of the names have no relevance to the dish. Sometimes they even sound poetic when spoken.
Anyway, Suanne and I thought that over the weekend we just go and check out two funny sounding menu items that we know of. These are from our past restaurant visits that our readers had pointed out which we did not realize. The plan was just to go into these restaurants and order just this ONE item and do a review of them.
Suanne was kind of “mm hoe yee see” going in and ordering one item for the two of us. Taking pictures in a restaurant already catches attention but going in and ordering ONE specific dish, taking pictures and then leave quickly sure got the attention of the restaurant. But that is what we did.
Here is what we tried:
Dead Man Coffin from Sunway Restaurant
Anyone has any idea why this is called the Dead Man’s Coffin? I can only guess it is because it is … shaped like a coffin with a lid on it. No, Chinese coffins are not square if you are thinking that. Traditional Chinese coffins looks like this if you are curious.
 Dead Man’s Coffin is actually a very tall piece of deep fried toast filled with seafood in creamy sauce. The bread is deep fried and hollowed out for the fillings. |
 #1: The first item to eat is the coffin lid. It is thin and amazingly crispy. |
 #2: The seafood filling includes imitation crab, prawns and mussels. I am quite surprised that this is only $6 considering the work put into making this and the ingredients too. |
 #3: Next is the creamy soup which has onions. We appreciate the fact that it is not too rich and thick. |
 #4: And once the coffin lid and the coffin ingredients are done, we devoured the rest of the coffin. The coffin is slightly different from the coffin lid. While the coffin lid is dry and crispy, the coffin proper soaks up a bit of the soup giving it a very nice balance of crispiness and moist with contrasting flavours. |
We had never heard of the Dead Man’s Coffin before, let alone eaten it until now. But this is one dish worth checking out. It is fun and tastes great to. Here is the link to the write up of our previous visit to the Sunway Restaurant.
Wild Speculation Beef Salamander from Bushuair Restaurant
Earlier to going to Sunway, we went to the Aroma Garden to try the Wild Speculation Beef Salamander. We went in and was surprised that it is no longer the place we remember it. Instead, everyone was having hot pot!
We asked the waitress who told us that they had moved to the strip mall where Hon’s is on No 3 Road. She passed us a card saying it is just 5 minutes walk. But the new restaurant is no longer called Aroma Garden but it is now known as Bushuair Restaurant.
Walking into Bushuair, we can immediately confirm that it is the same restaurant with a different name as Aroma Garden … which in turn used to be called Gordon Park! There were these unmistakable portraits (portraits, not portrait!) of Mao in the restaurant and also the same octagonal lanterns we saw the last time we were in Aroma Garden.
What really piqued my curiosity is why they changed their name so many times when Gordon Park was already establishing a name for itself as a good restaurant in Richmond.
Bushuair is located at the same location where the Harvest Moon Szechuan Restaurant used to be. The picture menu at Bushuair is 100% identical with Aroma Garden from what I can see. Good thing is that they still serve the mysterious Wild Speculation Beef Salamander which was the reason of our visit.
Our waitress did not even bat an eyelid when we said we wanted one dish with one bowl of rice. So, this is it … the Wild Speculation Beef Salamander!
Can anyone help with the translation here? Any idea how the Chinese name gets translated to Wild Speculation Beef Salamander?
Anyway, this dish is for the brave. It is super, super hot! All caused by these pickled chili peppers.
Look at it … they even have the seeds in it. This is not a dish for everyone. It is not choking kind of spiciness but it brings numbing, throbbing heat on the lips and tongue. Suanne said she can even feel the heat down to her stomach. We did not even finish half of this dish as we could not stand the heat anymore. To add to it, drinking hot tea will sear your tongue and lips more.
But did we like the pain this dish brings? He he he … yes, we did. But we should have other dishes to balance out the heat. Having just this with steamed rice is not a good idea.
So, there you go … two of of the funny named dishes we know in Richmond. Let us know if you know of any local dishes that came into your mind. We might just make a visit to check them out.
And More …
I want to leave a few interesting links for you that I found in the course of writing this post:
- Crazy Chinese Food – a video
- May I Take Your Order – a comprehensive list of wacky menu
- Chinese Dishes With Proper Translation – a huge list; I wonder if this is the list of approved translations that the Chinese government enforced prior to the Beijing Olympics.
- How To Order Chinese Food – a nice guide for those who wants to learn cuisine of the Middle Kingdom
Click yellow thumbie on the left if you like this post
coffin bread is the proper name for it, it’s a taiwanese night market item that initially was in a longer shape like a coffin. the one that you see isn’t like what you can find in taiwan though. i’ll post some pics on what it looks like from shihlin night market in a few days.
The restaurant with three names. I actually know that restaurant more by the name “Gordon Park – Xiangcai Museum”.
(Xiangcai was the clue that it served Hunan which is also known as Xiang.)
The “Aroma Garden” was a new one to me – it was only ever on the sign at the entrance of the driveway.
Hi Fmed: The name “Aroma Garden” was also on the receipt. I cannot recall if it was on the menu too but during our visit it was very much Aroma Garden except for the signboard on the outside which confused us. Ben
Yes totally confusing – I will never know what to call it. Here is a pic of the front cover of their menu….this was when the “Aroma Garden” sign was up….but it had been called “Gordon Park” for at least a year (or two) before that.
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_7DNl7oAyDI0/SqMJ0xpg-iI/AAAAAAAAMaE/pmUhkAYy8-4/s640/DSCF0392.JPG
Don’t know about beef salamander … but if it’s alive and moves, we eat ‘em ! ;-)
Other dishes that always get the bad translations on menus:
“Ants on a Tree” (or “Ants Climbing a Tree”): Mung bean thread noodles stir-fried with ground beef:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ants_climbing_a_tree
“Singing Chicken”: Sizzling Chicken (usually served in a clay pot)
Now here’s one that I always *thought* was a bad, comical translation: “Bible Tripe”. Until recently, when I discovered that “Bible” refers to beef omasum, also known as “bible tripe” ! :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omasum
This place has to be the tops for Crazy Chinglish. Along with the “Salamander” dishes (there are more than one) there is the “Wild Speculation” dishes (eg “Wild Speculation at the Center of Garlic”. And don’t forget that the little clay dish rice is “Immortal” LOL – which unfortunately does not mean All You Can Eat rice as there is so little of it.
Hi Fmed: How did you know all these names? Do you happen to have their menu by any chance? There were so many pages to their picture menu that I did not take a picture of them. Ben
I just posted a reply but it didn’t take….here is a pictorial from a recent visit:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/gustibus.maximus/GordonPark
He he he … Fmed. I must say that I have not seen a person so dedicated to the subject to food that you. I would not have taken so many pictures of the menu but you did! Ben
“Wild Speculation Beef Salamander”, according to your receipt actually reads as wild mountain peppers fried with beef. I have no idea where salamander came from! Maybe from the somewhat (but not really) similar pronounciation?
The chinese characters for “mountain” and “pepper/chili” (山 and 椒, respectively) is commonly a compound noun for “salamander” – not the legendary lizard, but the amphibious kind that’s more closely related to frogs than reptiles. I have no idea where the “speculation” comes in. *facepalms*
sounds like the place just ran its entire menu through some sort of babelfish program and didn’t bother proofreading. XD You have now seen how Engrish is born in hawt smexy awkshun!
Wait, on second thought, I DO know where the speculation comes in.
The chinese verb for fry, (炒）is commonly used as the action verb for speculating in fluctuating liquidables – such as stocks and bonds. There you have it.
Hi Suanne and Ben:
What a hilarious experiment. I laughed out loud when I read the menu items that you tasted. What funny, yet aptly titled menu names.
It seems like North American chefs have a certain knack for jazzing up the descriptions of food on their menus.
For example, a menu item like a delectable plate of prairie oysters with chanterelle mushrooms are really a bowl full of bull testicles. An assortment of sweetbreads is really intestines.
I think that Chinese menus describe their dishes in a blunt and unpretentious way and some times, this may lead the patron to have an unappetizing visual of the food product and be discouraged from trying it.
Monkeysmile: Sweetbreads are not intestines; sweetbread refers to the thymus gland of the cow. Love them!
Oh my god – they use “speculation” instead “fry/stirfry”!
LOL “Speculation at the Center or Garlic”
Awesome post, Ben & Suanne!
I’m up early, reading old Chowtimes posts.
野山椒炒牛肉, yěshānjiāo chǎo niúròu, “wild speculation beef salamander,” as someone said should be translated as “wild mountain peppers fried with beef.”
I have a feeling the translation of “wild speculation” comes from crappy translation software misreading the 炒 chǎo and thinking it must mean the same thing as 炒热 chǎorè, which means “fry hot,” but is the term for wild speculation on stocks, driving the price up.
Looking at all the possible ways to refer to salamanders and newts in Chinese, I can’t find anything to lead to that translation. There’s a piece of popular Chinese-English translation software called Kingsoft that’s notoriously bad and I think it’s probably the culprit.
But what the heck is up with the new name Bushuair? The Chinese name has been the same but they’ve changed the name three times, four times? Bushuair seems to have nothing to do with their Chinese name, which is and always has been Jùxiāngcūn (or yuán, sometimes) Xiāngcài Jiǔlóu. The only place in the world that the word “Bushuair” occurs is in the English name of a Hunan restaurant in Vancouver！
Some weekend amusement befitting the thread topic :-D
(warning: this site is addictive …..)
http://www.engrish.com/category/menus/
http://www.engrish.com/category/menus/page/2/
(bottom pic) …… dare try some “bombing enema” ?
I went thru all 20 or so pages of menu ones. I love it.
Lots of uses of “wild speculation,” too. You know, once you read enough of them, you can figure out what it is. Just remember, if it says “wild speculation,” it means it’s stir fried.
FYI, just this past week,a Hong Kong Chinese Restaurant made the headline news b/c of the English translation on its menu, e.g. beef tripe(牛栢葉) is translated as ‘albert yip’.
For the longest time, I thought the Cantonese menu item “Bible Tripe” was either a typo or a really bad translation. Turns out, it’s for real:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripe
“Beef tripe is usually made from only the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach: the rumen (blanket/flat/smooth tripe), the reticulum (honeycomb and pocket tripe), and the omasum (book/bible/leaf tripe).”
Who knew ??
Cool, I can totally picture it now! “Bible/book” because of the flaps that are like pages of a book. Wow, makes so much sense now.
I saw that. There are pictures of the menu, or one of the menus, here: http://thosewerethedays.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/
I’d like to try “Mexican hand fighting fish” and maybe “Hand pills to fight pork.”
[...] However, Aroma Garden has now moved to a new location 5 minutes walk away and is now known as Bushuair Restaurant. The menu in Bushuair Restaurant is identical to Aroma [...]
Marike: Any special recipes for the omasum? I’m cooking it now and will fry it up with onions…hmmmmmm! Cheers!