The best food in China? That's a tough one

BEIJING, Nov 16 (Reuters) The best food in China? Well, where to start? There is the meal I shared with millionaire peasants in the booming east and a particularly delicate mushroom quiche sampled at a French restaurant on Shanghai's historic Bund waterfront.

Or it could be a dish I ate in Xian, home of the Terracotta Warriors. It was a simple bowl of ''yang rou pao mo''; a Chinese Muslim dish of tiny pieces of bread, vermicelli, lamb, chili, coriander and lots of pickled garlic in a steaming broth.

Not that there isn't plenty of bad food and bad service too.

A new fad for charging to use chopsticks in some restaurants is particularly annoying, even if it does cost less than 25 US cents.

In a country of 1.3 billion people with more than 50 different ethnic groups and a climate that ranges from desert to rainforest, there was never going to be any sort of unified cuisine.

The staple food in northern China has traditionally not even been rice, but noodles and steamed buns made of wheat flour.

Chinese food is not a concept recognised by any Chinese person.

The sweet and oily Shanghainese fare is a world apart from the spice of Sichuan cooking or the hearty stews of the frigid northeast.

The Chinese are, however, obsessed with food.

People talk about it constantly and a business deal is never complete without the obligatory banquet celebration.

WESTERN DELIGHTS Given that, I'm almost ashamed to say that the new clutch of high-end Western restaurants in Shanghai would be top of the list of dining experiences that have stood out.

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