I love the skwon saga! I also mispronounce things once in a while, though the mispronunciations tend to be more inside jokes. For example - there’s a really great Sichuan restaurant called Han Dynasty that I simply refer to as handy-nasty and my brain can’t think of it any other way. Really jarring to folks who are new to me.
If you want to get a group of Brits *really* incensed, ask them whether they put jam or cream on their scones first. Traditionally in Devon it's cream first, then jam on top, whereas in Cornwall it's jam first, then cream!
In Australia we have sc-ons (like gone) that are definitely not biscuits! and jam first then cream. My brain hurts. I can’t tell who’s being facetious or crazy or real anymore. But yes, Britain is renowned for its mix of pronunciation and order of toppings.
Devon cream is clotted cream. It’s much like butter so would make a lovely base for jam. But Anne also puts jam on top of her cream, so I’m wondering if she just scrapes a little cream on the scone (as though it were butter) then piles the jam on top.
As an annoying graphic designer I feel I must point out that the first option is more of an illustration rather than a logo. Option D is clearly the most elegant and versatile choice!
I started to laugh when I got to the part where you were out and about asking for "skwons". My husband David asked what I was laughing at, and I said "Café Anne - she's writing about scones". He replied, "You mean scons?" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. He was born in Canada, but his parents were Brits.
The skwon madness returns! God, I love it even more the second time.
Regarding the Grand Canyon, when I was there I was wowed by the immensity of the thing; boggled. by the idea that, given enough time, a river could cut so deep; and frustrated by the fact that no matter what you do, a photograph just doesn't do it justice. Ever.
But I can understand why people who are used to being constantly entertained by a multimedia cavalcade of distractions might find it boring. It is, in fact, just a big old hole in the ground. Although that begs the question, what the hell did they expect?!
Gotta say - we visited the South Rim first, the next day we visited the West Rim (closest to get to from Las Vegas), and were similarly underwhelmed by the experience. The South Rim was so spectacular and easy to get to, and had so many amazing viewing points, that the West Rim didn’t. And they weren’t wrong about the giant tent with cheap souvenirs.
The SKWON / MOOFIN thing remains my favourite creative collaboration ever. Although I can't really take any credit, I feel like all I did was fail to recognise how utterly reckless you were when I suggested "skwon" in passing as a fun prank. *You* were the one that brought New York's bakeries to their knees. You were the one that wrenched open this colossal fault-line in the way Americans pronounce baked goods. It's on you, Anne.
I just read the entire scone-skwon bit out to my wife. First cup of coffee comedy, thank you! And thanks for the rat shout-out. I didn't even mention my affection for the naked mole rat (look that one up!). In scone news, years ago my boss at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto repeatedly told guests about the renovations that were going to be done in the Health Club fitness room. "Yes, we're finally getting new wall scones." WALL SCONES! I still snicker whenever I read about wall sconces. They will always be wall scones to me. If you'd like new twists on word pronunciations, my dad could assist. He's called quiche "kish" for years. I bet he'd love a skwon with kish, pad Thigh and a tai chai (sometimes it's a Thigh chi or cha latta--that one is ever changing). Thanks for a very fun Monday start, Anne.
“Total waste of a day” is the most magical review of a natural wonder I’ve read. I love them if they were trolling, and love them more if they meant it.
You must be a trained actor (?) to have pulled that off with a straight face. I do a pretty good deadpan, if I may say so, but that would have been far beyond my skills.
Oh, the laughs that I needed today were delivered on a platter of skwons by rats in bowties who kept them safe from a jogging pigeon on her way to the boring a** Grand Canyon. Thank you, Anne! (Although I think, if you’re willing to experiment with the pronunciation of baked goods, you might consider trying on a different spelling of your name, like the AI image who decided you need 3 N’s in “Annne”)
Not only in Blighty do we fiercely argue over the pronunciation of the word, lines are drawn between whether jam or cream is applied first to a scone, when partaking in afternoon tea.
Ok, I’m back. I put a nice layer of jam on my fluffy ‘scon’ (not biscuit which is crunchy and like your cookies) and then I put some lovely fluffy creamy cream on top. How on earth do you put jam on top of a cloud of fluffy whipped cream? Fair enough in Devon UK where they have ‘clotted cream’ which is basically butter, but everywhere else? What does cream look like in America? And how do you put jam on top of it? (This is me trying to educate myself about other parts of the world and their dietary habits. Which reminds me - what on earth is ‘half n half’!!)
Okay. If it's fluffy creamy cream on top, I'm all for this. But if its more like butter, it for sure belongs the bottom. How about the buttery cream as the first layer, and THEN jam, and THEN the fluffy creamy cream on top?
Oh, don't be daft, Anne - once you photograph it for your Insta page, you toss it into the Ninja, add some Earl Grey, and drink it like a smoothie. Duh.
I. Just. Can’t! I spit my coffee out laughing and I am on the hunt for the perfect scwone now. Also..what is wrong with those Grand Canyon people? “A hole in the ground”? “No entertainment?” Those comments baffle me as much as the recent election results. Just wow! 😮
I absolutely love that you intentionally mispronounce things. It seems easy and fun for you but for me it would be like being naked in public. One of my many flaws is that I can be pretty concerned with how others view me and I especially hate being thought of as dumb. Being forced to mispronounce words to strangers might be some kind of healthy therapy!
Years ago, the WSJ ran a big front-page feature where our China correspondent went off to the hinterlands to try a restaurant that featured 30 types of rat dishes. It was written in a tongue-in-cheek, breezy style, complete with a sidebar done up like a restaurant review. A few years later, he came through NYC and I asked him how the place really was. "F'in awful," he replied. "I had to drink a six pack before I could even set foot in the door!"
Copyright 1991 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CANTON -- Tonight's crowd includes a young couple who enter hand-in-hand and nestle in a corner for a romantic dinner. After stowing their motorcycle helmets, they chat softly and page through the menu. Before long, they are staring into each others' eyes and nibbling on tonight's special: Braised Rat.
That's right: Rat. Other options are Rat with Chestnut and Duck, Lemon Deep-Fried Rat or Satayed Rat Slices with Vermicelli.
In fact, the menu lists 30 rat dishes, even including Liquored Rat Flambe, along with more mundane dishes such as Hot Pepper Silkworm, Raccoon With Winter Melon and Sliced Snake and Celery. And in the six months since the doors opened, customers have been scampering in at all hours to the euphemistically named Jialu (Super Deer) Restaurant.
"I was always eating out, but I got bored with the animals that restaurants offered," says proprietor and kitchen-utensil salesman Zhang Guoxun during an interview over a plate of Black-Bean Rat. "I wanted to open a restaurant with an affordable exotic animal. Then I was walking home one night and a rat ran in front of me and gave me this idea."
The breadth of Cantonese fare would seem to preclude boredom. The Canton food market features cats, raccoons, owls, doves and snakes along with bear and tiger's paw, dried deer penis and decomposed monkey skeletons.
Mr. Zhang's restaurant -- believed to be the country's first dedicated to serving rat -- is as trendy as they come in China. The 15-table, two-story eatery is a mixture of blond-wood furniture, stucco walls and wooden lattice laced with plastic vines. Besides the young couple, patrons this evening include engineers, office clerks, salesmen and factory workers.
The Braised Rat on special tonight involves morsels of rat meat swaddled in crispy rat skin and garnished with sprigs of cilantro. The first nibble reveals a rubbery texture, and the skin coats one's teeth with a stubborn slime. The result is a bit like old chewing gum covered with lard.
But other dishes are better. German Black Pepper Rat Knuckle (rat shoulders, actually; the knuckles are too small) tastes like a musty combination of chicken and pork. The rat soup, with delicate threads of rat meat mixed with thinly sliced potatoes and onions, is surprisingly sweet. Far and away most appealing to the Western palate is Rat Kabob. The skewers of charcoaled rat fillet are enlivened with slices of onion, mushroom and green pepper and served smothered in barbecue sauce on sizzling iron plates that are shaped like cows.
Also on the menu: a Nest of Snake and Rat, Vietnamese-Style Rat Hot Pot, a Pair of Rats Wrapped in Lotus Leaves, Salted Rat with Southern Baby Peppers, Salted Cunning Rats, Fresh Lotus Seed Rat Stew, Seven-Color Rat Threads, Dark Green Unicorn Rat -- and, of course, Classic Steamed Rat. Generally, the presentation is quite elegant, with some dishes served with lemon slices or scallions forming a border and others with carrots carved into flower shapes.
Experienced rat eaters, however, warn that this is no meat to pig out on. "Watch out," warns Wei Xiuwen, a factory manager eating at an adjacent table. "If you eat too much rat, you get a nosebleed." Several customers take off their shirts halfway through the meal because rat, like dog, seems to raise the body temperature for some reason. That's why rat is considered a winter food. In the summer, the restaurant does most of its business during the late-night and early-morning hours, after the weather cools down.
The restaurant is popular -- Mr. Zhang claims profits of $2,000 a month -- because it brings people back to their roots. The restaurant's cooks, and most customers, are originally from the countryside, where as children they ate air-dried rat meat. "If dried by a north wind, it tastes just like duck," Che Yongcheng, an engineer and regular customer, says wistfully of his favorite childhood snack.
For newcomers, Mr. Zhang has color brochures, featuring a photo of Rat Kabobs alongside a bottle of Napoleon X.O. In both the menu and brochure, the rats are referred to as "super deer" because Mr. Zhang says he wants to separate his fare from the common sewer rats that even Cantonese might find unappetizing. He says his restaurant serves only free-range rats, wild rodents that feed on fruits and vegetables in the mountains a couple of hundred kilometers to the north.
The brochure explains why rats are the health food for the 1990s. It says the rats are rich in 17 amino acids, vitamin E and calcium. Eating them promises to prevent hair loss, revive the male libido, cure premature senility, relieve tension and reduce phlegm. A rat's "liver, gallbladder, fat, brain, head, eye, saliva, bone, skin" are "useful for medical treatment," says the brochure.
The restaurant's basement kitchen is a Dante's Inferno where shirtless cooks sweat over huge woks atop howling gasfueled stoves that shoot flames nearly two meters in the air. Dozens of fat, ready-to-cook rats are piled in a bamboo basket next to a crust-covered pump that noisily slurps up a small river of scum that runs off the stove and across the floor.
The senior chef isn't working tonight. An understudy, Huang Lingtun, clad in rubber sandals and pants rolled up to his knees, explains how the rats are rounded up. They are captured and cleaned by farmers who free-lance as rat bounty hunters. Some smoke the rats out by setting fields on fire and snaring the fleeing rats in nets attached to long bamboo poles. Others string electrified wires across fields to stun unsuspecting rodents with high-voltage charges. The rats, each about 225 grams. arrive at the restaurant freshly gutted, beheaded and de-tailed.
Mr. Zhang says that the traditional recipes on his menu were suggested by Tang Qixin, a farmer honored as a model worker by Mao Tse-tung in 1958 for his prowess as a rat killer. Rat-eradication campaigns have been a staple of Chinese life since Mao declared war on the Four Pests -- rats, flies, mosquitoes and bedbugs -- in the 1950s.
In 1984, the last Year of the Rat, the government launched an all-out crusade in which an estimated 526 million rats were killed. In 1985, the government tried to maintain the momentum by promoting rat meat as good food, explaining that "rats are better-looking than sea slugs and cleaner than chickens and pigs."
Like most successful entrepreneurs during these times of shifting political winds in China, Mr. Zhang is quick to highlight the patriotic nature of his business rather than the personal economic benefits. "I am helping the government by eliminating some pests and helping enrich some farmers," he says.
Mr. Zhang says he is too new to the business to think about a chain of rat restaurants. But he says he isn't concerned about anyone stealing his idea. "My quality is tops," he says, "so I'm not worried about competitors."
Moofin.
MOOFIN
I love the skwon saga! I also mispronounce things once in a while, though the mispronunciations tend to be more inside jokes. For example - there’s a really great Sichuan restaurant called Han Dynasty that I simply refer to as handy-nasty and my brain can’t think of it any other way. Really jarring to folks who are new to me.
Oh I love this Eden!
We have a "Yu's Chopsticks" in our town -- say it fast, and... ewww...
LOL, I'll never see a Han Dynasty the same way again!
Haha I’m sorry but also, you’re welcome
If you want to get a group of Brits *really* incensed, ask them whether they put jam or cream on their scones first. Traditionally in Devon it's cream first, then jam on top, whereas in Cornwall it's jam first, then cream!
Wot??? Jam then cream is f’d up!!!!
#teamjamfirst
In Australia we have sc-ons (like gone) that are definitely not biscuits! and jam first then cream. My brain hurts. I can’t tell who’s being facetious or crazy or real anymore. But yes, Britain is renowned for its mix of pronunciation and order of toppings.
Anne's inner Aussie exposed. Skon indeed.
STEADY, DAVE. WE HAD AN ENTIRE WAR OVER THIS. STALE SCONES KNOCKING PEOPLE OFF BIKES, SMASHING THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF POLICE CARS...
DO YOU WANT THIS ON YOUR CONSCIENCE, DAVE? DO YOU?
DROP IT.
DROP IT LIKE A HOT SCONE.
Never! Jam first! Jam first!
EXPLAIN YOURSELF SIR
I'm utterly confused by the Devon folk. The weight of jam would make the cream ooze into a mess.
Devon cream is clotted cream. It’s much like butter so would make a lovely base for jam. But Anne also puts jam on top of her cream, so I’m wondering if she just scrapes a little cream on the scone (as though it were butter) then piles the jam on top.
Oh interesting. So it’s a bit heavier than jam.
👍
Completely agree!
As an annoying graphic designer I feel I must point out that the first option is more of an illustration rather than a logo. Option D is clearly the most elegant and versatile choice!
I had the same reaction to option A, Laura. And why what looks like a patriotic l
fried chicken bucket?
🎯
I started to laugh when I got to the part where you were out and about asking for "skwons". My husband David asked what I was laughing at, and I said "Café Anne - she's writing about scones". He replied, "You mean scons?" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. He was born in Canada, but his parents were Brits.
LOL so funny BA! Hello to David!
The skwon madness returns! God, I love it even more the second time.
Regarding the Grand Canyon, when I was there I was wowed by the immensity of the thing; boggled. by the idea that, given enough time, a river could cut so deep; and frustrated by the fact that no matter what you do, a photograph just doesn't do it justice. Ever.
But I can understand why people who are used to being constantly entertained by a multimedia cavalcade of distractions might find it boring. It is, in fact, just a big old hole in the ground. Although that begs the question, what the hell did they expect?!
Gotta say - we visited the South Rim first, the next day we visited the West Rim (closest to get to from Las Vegas), and were similarly underwhelmed by the experience. The South Rim was so spectacular and easy to get to, and had so many amazing viewing points, that the West Rim didn’t. And they weren’t wrong about the giant tent with cheap souvenirs.
Lucy Conway: does not suffer the West Rim gladly!
So funny, right?
My response when I went to the Grand Canyon, Justin, was just “no.” I was so overwhelmed!
The SKWON / MOOFIN thing remains my favourite creative collaboration ever. Although I can't really take any credit, I feel like all I did was fail to recognise how utterly reckless you were when I suggested "skwon" in passing as a fun prank. *You* were the one that brought New York's bakeries to their knees. You were the one that wrenched open this colossal fault-line in the way Americans pronounce baked goods. It's on you, Anne.
This is what I will be saying in court.
But wasn’t it you, Mr. Sowden, who then suggested I take it a step further with “scho-nay”? Hmmm?
"Nice try. My client denies everything, up to and including existing."
- Mike Sowden's lawyer.
I just read the entire scone-skwon bit out to my wife. First cup of coffee comedy, thank you! And thanks for the rat shout-out. I didn't even mention my affection for the naked mole rat (look that one up!). In scone news, years ago my boss at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto repeatedly told guests about the renovations that were going to be done in the Health Club fitness room. "Yes, we're finally getting new wall scones." WALL SCONES! I still snicker whenever I read about wall sconces. They will always be wall scones to me. If you'd like new twists on word pronunciations, my dad could assist. He's called quiche "kish" for years. I bet he'd love a skwon with kish, pad Thigh and a tai chai (sometimes it's a Thigh chi or cha latta--that one is ever changing). Thanks for a very fun Monday start, Anne.
I am laughing so hard at “wall scones” Jules and can’t wait to employ this myself!
Glad you enjoyed the issue!
God grant me the confident audacity of an AI that will spell however the hell fits.
So funny Ada! Yes, there is a certain swagger to this total disregard of all convention.
“Total waste of a day” is the most magical review of a natural wonder I’ve read. I love them if they were trolling, and love them more if they meant it.
I’m with you DD!
“Does it DO anything?”
Yes! I really want to know what that reviewer does for excitement.
Following skwon with moofin was brilliant
Haha one of my better moments I agree CL!
You must be a trained actor (?) to have pulled that off with a straight face. I do a pretty good deadpan, if I may say so, but that would have been far beyond my skills.
Oh, the laughs that I needed today were delivered on a platter of skwons by rats in bowties who kept them safe from a jogging pigeon on her way to the boring a** Grand Canyon. Thank you, Anne! (Although I think, if you’re willing to experiment with the pronunciation of baked goods, you might consider trying on a different spelling of your name, like the AI image who decided you need 3 N’s in “Annne”)
Thanks Laura! I actually do mispronounce my name a lot but not on purpose. Sort of with a drawl and it comes out “Aye-yun.”
Not only in Blighty do we fiercely argue over the pronunciation of the word, lines are drawn between whether jam or cream is applied first to a scone, when partaking in afternoon tea.
You are the second person to mention this, David!
Could someone please explain how spreading the jam first makes any sense whatsoever?
Ok, I’m back. I put a nice layer of jam on my fluffy ‘scon’ (not biscuit which is crunchy and like your cookies) and then I put some lovely fluffy creamy cream on top. How on earth do you put jam on top of a cloud of fluffy whipped cream? Fair enough in Devon UK where they have ‘clotted cream’ which is basically butter, but everywhere else? What does cream look like in America? And how do you put jam on top of it? (This is me trying to educate myself about other parts of the world and their dietary habits. Which reminds me - what on earth is ‘half n half’!!)
Okay. If it's fluffy creamy cream on top, I'm all for this. But if its more like butter, it for sure belongs the bottom. How about the buttery cream as the first layer, and THEN jam, and THEN the fluffy creamy cream on top?
THIS SOUNDS PERFECT! Butter, jam AND cream! Why haven’t I thought of this?
Also, I don’t care how you pronounce scone, but I’ve never ever heard of a cranberry one until today!
Oh cranberry scones are the BEST!
I don’t know where to buy buttery cream. Though I guess if you whipped it for long enough, it becomes butter? Hmmmm….
I think stateside, we should apply them side-by-side, as an homage to the iconic NYC black and white cookie.
JEB you are out of your mind. Unless you sort of folded it in half and ate it like a sandwich?
Oh, don't be daft, Anne - once you photograph it for your Insta page, you toss it into the Ninja, add some Earl Grey, and drink it like a smoothie. Duh.
LOL. Got it.
I. Just. Can’t! I spit my coffee out laughing and I am on the hunt for the perfect scwone now. Also..what is wrong with those Grand Canyon people? “A hole in the ground”? “No entertainment?” Those comments baffle me as much as the recent election results. Just wow! 😮
Life!!! PEOPLE!!!!
I absolutely love that you intentionally mispronounce things. It seems easy and fun for you but for me it would be like being naked in public. One of my many flaws is that I can be pretty concerned with how others view me and I especially hate being thought of as dumb. Being forced to mispronounce words to strangers might be some kind of healthy therapy!
Exposure therapy! Absolutely Larrondo!
Years ago, the WSJ ran a big front-page feature where our China correspondent went off to the hinterlands to try a restaurant that featured 30 types of rat dishes. It was written in a tongue-in-cheek, breezy style, complete with a sidebar done up like a restaurant review. A few years later, he came through NYC and I asked him how the place really was. "F'in awful," he replied. "I had to drink a six pack before I could even set foot in the door!"
Oh man, that’s fantastic, Aaron.
Cantonese Cuisine Expands to Embrace Rat du Jour
The Wall Street Journal (Asia Edition)
James McGregor
Staff Reporter
6 June 1991, 1196 words, English, PAGE 1
Copyright 1991 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
CANTON -- Tonight's crowd includes a young couple who enter hand-in-hand and nestle in a corner for a romantic dinner. After stowing their motorcycle helmets, they chat softly and page through the menu. Before long, they are staring into each others' eyes and nibbling on tonight's special: Braised Rat.
That's right: Rat. Other options are Rat with Chestnut and Duck, Lemon Deep-Fried Rat or Satayed Rat Slices with Vermicelli.
In fact, the menu lists 30 rat dishes, even including Liquored Rat Flambe, along with more mundane dishes such as Hot Pepper Silkworm, Raccoon With Winter Melon and Sliced Snake and Celery. And in the six months since the doors opened, customers have been scampering in at all hours to the euphemistically named Jialu (Super Deer) Restaurant.
"I was always eating out, but I got bored with the animals that restaurants offered," says proprietor and kitchen-utensil salesman Zhang Guoxun during an interview over a plate of Black-Bean Rat. "I wanted to open a restaurant with an affordable exotic animal. Then I was walking home one night and a rat ran in front of me and gave me this idea."
The breadth of Cantonese fare would seem to preclude boredom. The Canton food market features cats, raccoons, owls, doves and snakes along with bear and tiger's paw, dried deer penis and decomposed monkey skeletons.
Mr. Zhang's restaurant -- believed to be the country's first dedicated to serving rat -- is as trendy as they come in China. The 15-table, two-story eatery is a mixture of blond-wood furniture, stucco walls and wooden lattice laced with plastic vines. Besides the young couple, patrons this evening include engineers, office clerks, salesmen and factory workers.
The Braised Rat on special tonight involves morsels of rat meat swaddled in crispy rat skin and garnished with sprigs of cilantro. The first nibble reveals a rubbery texture, and the skin coats one's teeth with a stubborn slime. The result is a bit like old chewing gum covered with lard.
But other dishes are better. German Black Pepper Rat Knuckle (rat shoulders, actually; the knuckles are too small) tastes like a musty combination of chicken and pork. The rat soup, with delicate threads of rat meat mixed with thinly sliced potatoes and onions, is surprisingly sweet. Far and away most appealing to the Western palate is Rat Kabob. The skewers of charcoaled rat fillet are enlivened with slices of onion, mushroom and green pepper and served smothered in barbecue sauce on sizzling iron plates that are shaped like cows.
Also on the menu: a Nest of Snake and Rat, Vietnamese-Style Rat Hot Pot, a Pair of Rats Wrapped in Lotus Leaves, Salted Rat with Southern Baby Peppers, Salted Cunning Rats, Fresh Lotus Seed Rat Stew, Seven-Color Rat Threads, Dark Green Unicorn Rat -- and, of course, Classic Steamed Rat. Generally, the presentation is quite elegant, with some dishes served with lemon slices or scallions forming a border and others with carrots carved into flower shapes.
Experienced rat eaters, however, warn that this is no meat to pig out on. "Watch out," warns Wei Xiuwen, a factory manager eating at an adjacent table. "If you eat too much rat, you get a nosebleed." Several customers take off their shirts halfway through the meal because rat, like dog, seems to raise the body temperature for some reason. That's why rat is considered a winter food. In the summer, the restaurant does most of its business during the late-night and early-morning hours, after the weather cools down.
The restaurant is popular -- Mr. Zhang claims profits of $2,000 a month -- because it brings people back to their roots. The restaurant's cooks, and most customers, are originally from the countryside, where as children they ate air-dried rat meat. "If dried by a north wind, it tastes just like duck," Che Yongcheng, an engineer and regular customer, says wistfully of his favorite childhood snack.
For newcomers, Mr. Zhang has color brochures, featuring a photo of Rat Kabobs alongside a bottle of Napoleon X.O. In both the menu and brochure, the rats are referred to as "super deer" because Mr. Zhang says he wants to separate his fare from the common sewer rats that even Cantonese might find unappetizing. He says his restaurant serves only free-range rats, wild rodents that feed on fruits and vegetables in the mountains a couple of hundred kilometers to the north.
The brochure explains why rats are the health food for the 1990s. It says the rats are rich in 17 amino acids, vitamin E and calcium. Eating them promises to prevent hair loss, revive the male libido, cure premature senility, relieve tension and reduce phlegm. A rat's "liver, gallbladder, fat, brain, head, eye, saliva, bone, skin" are "useful for medical treatment," says the brochure.
The restaurant's basement kitchen is a Dante's Inferno where shirtless cooks sweat over huge woks atop howling gasfueled stoves that shoot flames nearly two meters in the air. Dozens of fat, ready-to-cook rats are piled in a bamboo basket next to a crust-covered pump that noisily slurps up a small river of scum that runs off the stove and across the floor.
The senior chef isn't working tonight. An understudy, Huang Lingtun, clad in rubber sandals and pants rolled up to his knees, explains how the rats are rounded up. They are captured and cleaned by farmers who free-lance as rat bounty hunters. Some smoke the rats out by setting fields on fire and snaring the fleeing rats in nets attached to long bamboo poles. Others string electrified wires across fields to stun unsuspecting rodents with high-voltage charges. The rats, each about 225 grams. arrive at the restaurant freshly gutted, beheaded and de-tailed.
Mr. Zhang says that the traditional recipes on his menu were suggested by Tang Qixin, a farmer honored as a model worker by Mao Tse-tung in 1958 for his prowess as a rat killer. Rat-eradication campaigns have been a staple of Chinese life since Mao declared war on the Four Pests -- rats, flies, mosquitoes and bedbugs -- in the 1950s.
In 1984, the last Year of the Rat, the government launched an all-out crusade in which an estimated 526 million rats were killed. In 1985, the government tried to maintain the momentum by promoting rat meat as good food, explaining that "rats are better-looking than sea slugs and cleaner than chickens and pigs."
Like most successful entrepreneurs during these times of shifting political winds in China, Mr. Zhang is quick to highlight the patriotic nature of his business rather than the personal economic benefits. "I am helping the government by eliminating some pests and helping enrich some farmers," he says.
Mr. Zhang says he is too new to the business to think about a chain of rat restaurants. But he says he isn't concerned about anyone stealing his idea. "My quality is tops," he says, "so I'm not worried about competitors."