Lu Xun lived in Xicheng in Beijing at that time, and his meals were in the neighborhood. He often went to Tongheju, one of Beijing's famous "Eight Great Houses", to cook Lu cuisine. Its famous dishes are fried fat intestines, nine turns of fat intestines, three non-stick. Even its famous dish of fish. Lu Xun's favorite dish here is shrimp ball, because this dish belongs to the Shaoxing flavor, which is a new dish introduced by the northern restaurants during the fusion of north and south. Also Lu Xun likes to bake steamed buns here, which means brushing a layer of oil on the buns before baking them.
Nowadays, Beijing is talking about "oriental food". At that time, Lu Xun also ate a lot of good food in the East City, but because he worked in the West City, he went to fewer places. According to the diary, the famous restaurant was Dongxinglou. Lu Xun and Hu Shi ate twice in the East, both times in the East Building. Once Hu Shih invited Lu Xun, and another time Yu Dafu invited Lu Xun and Hu Shih. Lu Xun's diary on February 27, 1932: "Hu Shizhi went to the ministry in the afternoon, and in the evening went to the Dong'an market, where the East Xing Building recruited Yu Dafu. Half of the wine has been returned. "It seems that this unpleasant food may have been one of the beginnings of the argument between Hu and Lu.
Lu Xun didn't have a good meal, and Yu Dafu chose the authentic Dongxing Building. The building opened in 1903. Originally located in Beijing Dong'anmen Street, closed in 1944. 1982 in Dongzhimennei Street to resume business. It was one of the "Eight Buildings" in Beijing in the early years of the Republic of China. Lu Xun visited most of these buildings. Although each building has repeated dishes, each one has its own specialties. For example, chicken with sauce, a favorite dish of both Lu Xun and Hu Shi, is the best dish in Dongxing Building. It is said that Dong Lou was opened by a eunuch named He in the Qing Palace. He combed his hair, so the palace produced a lot of chefs, such as chicken in sauce, bear's paw in casserole, bird's nest and shark's fin.
Stir-fried chicken in soy sauce is a kind of home cooking that everyone makes, but palace practice requires that the chicken be as tender as tofu, with a full range of colors and flavors. There is a lot to be said for the dish to be tasty, such as deep-frying it in lard and using yellow sauce instead of sweet noodle sauce, but both of these are difficult for many restaurants to achieve nowadays. I have always emphasized that food culture has to be innovative, but the basis must be to preserve and inherit the tradition first, otherwise it will be a mess.
A restaurant in Xicheng called Hutchison Whampoa was Lu Xun's regular haunt, basically the equivalent of his work canteen, just across the road from the Ministry of Education where he worked. The food here was good and cheap. Lu Xun mentioned in his diary on January 23, 1918, "Little snow. In the afternoon Second Brother came to the Ministry and invited Chen Shizeng and Qi Shoushan to Hutchison Whampoa." In fact, Hutchison Whampoa was famous for selling beef and mutton. Lu Xun liked to eat the clear soup and beef noodles here. It's a pity that such noodles are rarely eaten in Beijing nowadays. We are not as good as Lu Xun.
Lu Xun often took Chen Shizeng and Qi Shoushan to a small restaurant called Long Haixuan at the west end of Chang'an Street for lunch. Lu Xun liked to have some wine at noon. The house's signature dish was soft fried liver tips, his favorite snack. The dish is made by slicing the upper part of the pig's liver, marinating it for some time with salt, cooking wine, and monosodium glutamate (MSG), hanging it in an egg batter, and then frying it with peanut rice that is 70% to 80% hot. When the paste on the surface has just solidified, it is removed, the oil in the pan is heated to boiling, and then the liver tips are put down and fried. The liver tips that have been fried twice in this way are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.
Lu Xun frequented restaurants, including Nanmeicun and Yuchunlou in Huaiyang, Fujian Restaurant in Roaring Sky, Henan Restaurant in Houde Mansion and Guangdong Restaurant in Drunken Qionglin. Lu Xun recorded in his diary on September 11, 1912, "I invited Hu to drink with me at Nanwei Zhai that night, with nine people at the same table." At that time, Nanwei Zhai, Chunhua House and Xingchunju were all famous hotels in Jiangsu. The specialties were sweet and sour yellow fish and shrimp. Lu Xun also mentioned in his diary on September 27, 1912: "When I drank at night in the persuasive field, Dong, Qian Daosun and Xu all sat down, and the food was embarrassingly difficult to eat. Those so-called red ones and bad ones were not good."
Lu Xun did not seem to be accustomed to Min cuisine, and seldom mentioned his dislike of "food" in his diary. In fact, one's appetite is related to one's personality. For example, a stubborn person always likes to eat what he wants to eat. If he eats something else, he says it's not good. A person who is open-minded, on the other hand, has a wider range of diets. Judging from the bad comments about food in Lu Xun's diary, he was not really an open-minded person. When he got angry, he often started writing articles cursing people.
The Zhimei Mansion was also one of Lu Xun's favorite of the Eight Great Buildings. The Meilou used to serve Gusu cuisine, opening in the Qianlong era, closing in 1948 and reopening in 1980. Its specialties include fried chicken, fish, and deep-fried pork. This says that the chefs of Mei Mei Lou are highly skilled, because the cooking techniques of sliding, grasping, frying and pulling test their culinary skills, and they can't do it without competence.On April 23, 1984, I collected a banquet menu for Mei Lou. One side of the menu had the signature dishes printed on it and the other side was blank. When ordering, depending on the needs, someone would fill out the menu on the spot with a brush in clerical script. At the top of the menu are the words "Zhi Mei Lou's Specialties," inscribed by Jeff after the reopening of the restaurant in 1980. In my collection, there are two palace dishes on this menu. One is called 'Prince and Dancer' and is made with chicken and squid. The other is called 'Spiked Fish', which is sautéed with shredded fish, shredded pork, shredded mushrooms, and shredded bamboo shoots. This dish is very difficult to make.