The congee confusion

It was the year 2002 when I left India for my studies and the restaurant chain selling overpriced, mediocre, toned-down, localized, and yet self-proclaimed Chinese food had not gained as much popularity, and was not affordable for a poor student. Hence, I left India unscathed by the bastardized food. If you are reading this blog, I am sure you are smart enough to guess which particular big-name restaurant chain I am talking about.

Forward to 2006, I just moved to Michigan with my then girlfriend and started to indulge in our culinary inclinations. It was one late summer evening in Ann Arbor, MI, that we ended up at a cheap Chinese take out joint somewhere in the Packard Street or its vicinity. It is one of those very common neighborhood joints which sells $5 lunch specials and has a huge one-page menu printed in red.

My girlfriend got excited seeing a particular item on the menu and readily ordered it. The elderly lady behind the counter looked very surprised by the choice and tried her best in her limited English skills to convince us that it was not really a good idea, and if we were really, really sure that we wanted it. The dish was "CONGEE".

While our order was getting ready, my girlfriend told me how she had that dish in that "revered" restaurant's branch in Bombay and it was thinly sliced lambs fried and tossed with a spicy sauce. Our conversation was interrupted by the whirling sound of the mixer and we got suspicious. When the order was packed and delivered to us we were standing with a big translucent plastic can of semi-thick rice soup. Those of you who do not speak Bengali, please excuse me for the next sentence. The concoction we were given was a hybrid of "phena-bhaat" and "panta-bhaat". It was a quasi-bland blend of overcooked rice and water and that is how it exactly tasted like.

Dumbfounded we came back home and my girlfriend was visibly embarrassed and had to endure more than a fair share of focused and sharp teasing from me.

Google and other internet sources told us that what the what we had in the form or a rice soup is the congee, and not a lamb or chicken dish as she thought. I then also spoken to my thesis advisor, who is from China. He also confirmed that it is a bland rice soup mostly served to sick people as an easy to eat and digest food.

Years passed by. Around 2009 or so we found ourselves in one of the Calcutta branches of the same "authentic" Chinese restaurant. She was no longer only my girlfriend by then. And, not to much surprise, there was the dish "Konji crispy lamb". It can be guessed now that we did order the dish and was served a dish of crispy lamb and not even a trace of rice in the dish.

So, the theory that the konji crispy lamb was figment of my girlfriend's imagination or mistaken identification was no longer valid. As years passed by we had seen (not necessarily tasted) two versions of the congee. One in "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India which served lamb or chicken fried crispy and then tossed in a sauce. The other is a rice soup/porridge in Chinese restaurants and street food carts outside India. Anyone in India who is somewhat frequent to Chinese restaurants are quite familiar with the crispy protein dish.

So the confusion was never resolved. By confusion, I do not mean the definition of congee. It was obvious that it was the rice porridge. The confusion was as to why these "authentic" and other Chinese restaurants in India would serve something with the same name and that is so different.

So the confusion continued, until last week. We went on a food trip to Viet Nam. There will be other stories and articles that I will write in here in days/weeks to come. So we were staying that the Novotel Saigon Center in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). At the breakfast buffet they had quite a large spread which was a mix of European and Asian food.

When we went to check out the soup options, one of them was congee: a big black vessel filled with rice porridge, evidently bland looking. And next to it were a few toppings that you could take with the congee. And voila!!! there was crispy lamb.

And, no, we did not have the appetite for the congee-crispy lamb.