Restaurants in Hong Kong have a strange obsession with an otherwise "no-body" salad-green. It's not romaine. It's not iceberg. It's not the green onion. It's arugula - otherwise known here as "rocket." I bring this up because tonight Eric and I went to what has become one of our more normal spots for eating out - Pizza Express. We don't have a "Regal Beagle" yet but there are some contenders, but I digress...
Rocket is everywhere in Hong Kong. It's the only leaf in many salads, it's the topping on a sandwich, in pasta sauce, and of all places, it's at home with a wide variety of pizzas. This is nowhere more the case than at Pizza Express where it regularly covers the cheese on a couple of their varieties and tonight was the main ingredient in a bruschetta that I ordered. Now, I am open to a lot of things, but I must protest that I am getting a little tired of my salad invading my other courses. I like a little bit of a separation in genres here, but I seem to be losing my battle. This blending of groups is not without precedent in foreign cultures, as I remember from traveling to Japan that they had a somewhat similar obsession with corn and western food. Anytime you saw a pizza in Japan, it seemed to corn on it. I even saw a corn soup at Wendy's in Tokyo.
Rocket. Blah. I've had enough.
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