Chicken tastes better in Asia

I just have to blog about this. As I was enjoying some delicacies with the host family at a fancy, exclusive Hong Kong club, one of the adults, as she put some meat on my plate (in Chinese families it's customary to put food on each other's plates, adults to do it to children or younger people, and for adults/younger people to do it to grandparents/senior citizens, and usually, at least among polite company or family, you serve each other the choicest morsels, which was good for me), remarked, "Can you taste the difference between chicken here and chicken in America?"

"Really, it tastes different?" I said. I swallowed whatever I had been chewing and selected a piece of curry chicken from the plate in front of me. I ate it slowly and focused on tasting it fully and letting the flavors soak into my taste buds.

She was right. The chicken was soft and infused with natural meat juices. It was not over- or under-cooked. It was divine. It had absorbed the flavors of the curry but it exuded its own flavor, the flavor of real chicken essence. Chicken actually does have a taste, which I think we often forget in America because it's such a staple, or is breaded or fried or baked to dry blandness.

So, I still haven't explored much of Hong Kong, but I have eaten really well so far on this trip.