Mongolian Milk and Melamine?

Ok so there is a major milk contamination incident in China with tainted Mongolian milk has claimed the life of 31 babies and caused sickness in tens of thousands of children. So why is this in Bens blog? Because I cannot survive without latte in the morning and in this neck of the woods Starbucks is the place unless you want dripolator or service station push button machine coffee, so Starbucks has NO milk. Oooh what will I doo?

So converting to Chinese tea isn’t a bad alternative anyway “when in Rome”, One thing I struggle with though is that I desperately want to get some great local food into me Guangzhou is the heart of famous canton cuisine creators of dim sum and yum cha, however as I am a international western chef everyone I meet desperately wants to highlight their western food usually in the form of a buffet, a very popular beast in Asia, and this hotel isn’t an exception. One thing that really bends the mind though is seeing dishes I have designed and been cooking for years served in a buffet by different cooks in a different climate with completely different produce, oh yeah and next to a scaled down model of the Sydney harbour bridge and a bevvy of fearsome koala’s armed with boomerangs..

The staffing levels are over the top here in China with the average wage for junior service staff and cooks about $160 a month, there is no shortage of service in the dining room actually it kind of borders on the annoying when as soon as you take a mouthful of water it is replenished immediately by a force faster than the speed of light that your vision naturally cannot follow, I thought I had found the fountain of life!

One thing I can say for sure the hotel kitchens are immaculate you could eat of every surface, and every chef is immaculate and works immaculately. This is in part the product of labour costs, also the staff are very proud so respectful and tend to stay at a workplace a very long time. White Swan has been open 26 years was Chinas first 5 star hotel and was given to the Chinese Gov, and they still have a lot of people that have been here since opening.