Playing with your food

Three things always make food taste better. First, if you’re somewhere amazing. Second, if someone else is paying. Third, if your meal comes with a little bit of a show. 

I recall special occasion family meals at the venerable Peking Garden in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui. Multiple times every evening a chef emerges from the kitchen with an elegantly appointed cart and a single lump of dough. Stretching and pulling, twisting and twirling, he turns it into two strands, then four – and then in a magical reveal, a fistful of beautifully springy la mian noodles. The thwack of noodle on chopping board bounces around the restaurant and reverberates in my memory. There’s a more modern take on it at hotpot chain Haidilao, where your server will spin and dance with the dough as it grows ever longer and thinner – and then lower your noodles directly into the hotpot broth.

I can thank childhood memory again for the sight of a teppanyaki chef carefully layering an onion into a cone and then flambéing it from the inside out, a volcano of fire erupting from the hotplate and searing it into my brain: this is what food can be!

Yes, a flaming allium is all for show. But sometimes, there’s a logic to the drama. In South East Asia, teh tarik – “pulled tea” – is poured in long, showy streams from kettle to cup: it cools the drink, mixes it with condensed milk, and renders up a light frothy top. Similarly, there’s the funky, flat cider of Asturias, in north-west Spain. To serve it, you take a bottle of cider in one hand, and hold it as high as you can over your head. You take your glass in the other and lower it as far as possible. The trick is to stare blankly ahead as you trickle cider into the glass, lending it a touch of carbonation. 

Most of the cider will likely end up on your shoes, but those few carbonated droplets that remain are the result of your incredible performance. They just taste better.