Late Lunch at Zhou Zhuang 周庄

We were supposed to meet at three in the afternoon at the bus to go back to Shanghai, it was only one in the afternoon so I still have a lot of time to spare. I was hungry already but I didn’t want to eat the suspicious fried fish or shrimp at the village. It was quite pricey too so I decided to find some place to eat outside the village. One of the specialities which I saw all around the village was this red braised pork hock or knuckles. They were a rich red in color and looked really appetizing.

Despite my hunger, I didn’t have any at the village itself where it cost around CNY 45. It had to be cheaper outside. And true enough there were a few eateries in the area which had that costing only half as much. Proud of myself at having found this place, I sat down and ordered one portion. I decided to have the leg instead of the foot as I don’t really know how to eat it. This is called the Wansan Pig Hoof 万三酥蹄. I assumed that this was boiled in hot water with soy sauce to soften the meat giving it that color. I also ordered some rice to which the lady at the store looked at my strangely. It seems it is not normal to eat rice with this.

Anyway, she found some rice in her kitchen, probably leftover from their lunch and sold it to me. The pig leg wasn’t as tasty as I thought it would be. It was much tougher than I expected it to be too. I was expecting this to be falling off the bone type of meat but it wasn’t. It wasn’t the sinful and greasy meal that I was expecting either. Anyway, since it was quite tough, I could hardly get any meat out of it, fortunately, the lady already cut up the meat for me, saving me the misery of picking the meat.

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