How about a dish of
seal penis?
Mary-Anne Toy in
The Sydney Morning Herald -
July 29, 2008
DOG may be off the menu for the Olympic Games, but
adventurous gourmands can still choose from a dazzling array of culinary
delights in
The banning of dog from official Olympic eateries, most of
which seem to be in the 112 designated Olympic hotels, is just one example of
the lengths the authorities are going to make foreigners welcome and safe.
Not only have standard English translations been introduced
for hundreds of the most popular Chinese dishes in Beijing, a sophisticated
food monitoring system is promising that if a food-borne illness occurs at an
Olympic site, the source can be tracked within 10 minutes.
The ban on serving dog, by the Beijing Catering Trade
Association, is not binding on the rest of the city's thousands of restaurants,
but they too have been urged to take canine off the menu in the interests of
not upsetting too many foreigners.
Locals may be grumbling after some of the city's favourite eateries were forced to close for two months
because they are considered too close to venues, but others such as
The Guolizhuang penis restaurant,
which has now expanded to five franchises after opening in the capital three
years ago, offers such delights as lobster with donkey penis, horse penis and
testicles with chilli dip, and the speciality: "Head Crowned with Jade Bracelet". A
dietitian is available to explain the many health benefits and which dishes are
best avoided by female diners.
Seal penis costs 3288 yuan (about
$A500) and banquets can cost from 2000 yuan to
100,000 yuan for tables of 10-12 diners, but set
menus featuring penis hotpot and several other dishes start from just 200 yuan per person.
For those less worried about variety and novelty,
To allay fears of a food-induced disease outbreak, organisers have developed an Olympic food monitoring system
using GPS and barcodes to track produce from the farm to Olympic canteens. The
system, which is meant to ensure any disease outbreak can be tracked within 10
minutes of someone falling ill, was developed with the help of the NSW Food
Authority, which was responsible for food safety at the Sydney 2000 Games.
Farms supplying Olympic food are also strictly monitored for
use of fertiliser and pesticides — in many cases,
organic pesticides and physical insect traps.
However, authorities obviously decided that some measures
were being taken too far when they slapped down the Games' exclusive pork
supplier for making extravagant claims about rearing Olympic pigs in luxury
conditions.
The firm's director, Liu Yanyun,
caused a storm last August when he boasted that his pigs were being raised free
of preservatives, steroids and hormones that could theoretically cause athletes
to fail doping tests, and were being fed natural herbs and Chinese medicines
and got to listen to music while they had their daily two hours of exercise.
For those wanting something a little less challenging than
reproductive organs, Beijing also has some of the world's best Chinese cuisine,
from restaurants specialising in Beijing roast duck
and Beijing hot pot (which you can order without brains or stomach or other
internal organs), to Imperial-style restaurants serving the menus of emperors
and revolutionary restaurants where waitresses, dressed in Mao suits, serve the
favourite food of Mao Zedong and other revolutionary
leaders.
For Westerners pining for something more familiar,
There is even an Aboriginal art gallery and Australian cafe
due to open in
smh.com.au