Beijing Restaurant & Spherification

I have been here to get bubble tea, twice, and this time, I was here for lunch with my Advanced Genetics/Molecular Bio professor and 4 other students, at Beijing Restaurant. Penn has some sort of program that dishes out money to professors so that they can take students out to lunch, in order to know students better. It's pretty nice because in a class of 6, 40, or 200, it's really difficult to actually know your professor (and vice versa) if you only get to see him/her for 3 hours a week for some 14 weeks. Since I've been busy for the whole semester so far, I chose to have lunch after class on Tuesday (before the Thanksgiving break) since the only homework I have is programming (well, okay I have studying... but I'm not thinking about that right now)

So, I got a brown rice + vegetables + mushroom + tofu dish which had the name "Buddha" in it (I forgot the name on the menu) and we all talked about biology classes, graduate school, and hobbies. Quite pertinent to me, as I'm interested in grad school... and I never knew that the Rockefeller University was top-notch in the biological sciences! There are just so many possibilities in "food science"...

1. Research genetics of flavour/taste/receptors

2. Molecular gastronomy

3. Food engineering

4. Flavour creating

5. Food safety

6. Food policy

7. Nutrition/research/obesity...

8. Food-related diseases

9. Food companies.

Um, anyway, the rice and shiny glutinous vegetables were pretty nice.

In addition, I found out what the bubbles-filled-with-mango-goo is, in the "poppy soda"  from the Cube Cafe, where I visited this summer. There is a process called "spherification" in molecular gastronomy... in which sodium alginate is mixed with the liquid (mango pulp/juice in this case?) and calcium carbonate or calcium chloride is added to it, to form some sort of outer membrane. Alginate comes from brown algae, and calcium, chloride, and sodium ions are pretty safe at this amount, so I don't see anything wrong with poppy soda at the moment. Either way, I haven't researched this enough and this is a reason for pursuing food science. Not sure where the computer science falls in, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherification

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alginic_acid

Beijing Restaurant (大学城)

When my dad was driving me here to my internship, we passed by Beijing At Penn, an American-Chinese restaurant. My dad said, "这里有个大学城！" which translates into "There's a University City here!"

So, for the first time, I shifted my gaze away from the neon "Beijing" at the window, and read the Chinese characters beside it. "大学城". "University City".

Apart from the fact that the name in English and Chinese are inconsistent, the cuisine is also American-Chinese-Taiwan. First, of course it's mixed to tingle "American" taste buds. It's situated at Penn! In America! People don't want authentic Chinese restaurants here! (Authentic = Chinatown, for sure). However, the hint of Taiwan is the bubble tea.

When TBowl opened next door and started selling bubble tea for some $3+, Beijing suddenly decided that they also sold bubble tea, for $2.15 (tax is 15c). This is pretty shocking to me, because in NY, bubble tea is at least $2.50, and if you want a cool flavour, you'd better have at least $3.50 with you! The fact that Beijing sells bubble tea cheaper than Chinatown in NY definitely means that something is up.

Today, I asked the friendly waitstaff for a mango bubble tea.

The best part was that the bubbles were perfectly cooked; they were soft and slimy on the outside (pardon the negative connotation of "slimy", but that's how I would compliment them. Yes, I mean this positively), and chewy and gelatinous in the center. I also liked that there wasn't too much ice.

I suppose the problem with this flavour is that it's not real mango, and there is no real tea. It's mango flavouring, and it tastes a bit like mango, but there is no mango pulp and no tea-like bitterness. The flavour is shallow and extremely sweet. In other words, the bubble tea is just a bubble drink, akin to drinking soda or MinuteMaid pink lemonade with tapioca (hmmm I wonder if anyone's tried sparkling water + real milk tea + tapioca?!!??!?! Sounds amazing!!). As S said (who I met today at the PennMoves sale), there's no real tea taste in Beijing's bubble "tea".

I think that I like this cheaper version of bubble tea though, and as I've yet to try the milk tea and thai tea flavoured ones (along with the other flavours) I can't really judge Beijing. I'm still pretty happy that it was only $2.15!!

Beijing Restaurant (大学城), 37th & Spruce St. Philadelphia