Text: Geography Hot Speaker
Edited by a geographic hothorn
Preamble:
As the top dinner on earth, what are the good dishes at the state banquets of various countries? Are all our state banquets full of Manchu and Han people? And which countries are "food deserts"? Today, let's open our eyes together.
1. Chinese State Banquet
In fact, it is not as exaggerated as everyone imagined, for example, at the Belt and Road Summit Forum, the state banquet menu only has 4 hot dishes: family portrait, scallion beef, Peking duck, and assorted fresh vegetables. A "family portrait" is actually a hodgepodge of meat, seafood, and vegetables cooked together.
In addition to these four main dishes, the rest are desserts such as ice cream and cookies, as well as Chinese snacks such as potstickers and siu mai, as well as drinks such as coffee and alcohol. Among them, the liquor is much more luxurious than the dishes, such as Changyu dry white and aged Moutai, both of which have strong Chinese characteristics and are of high quality in taste and flavor.
You may think that this kind of specification is not up to the level of a state banquet, and it is not even as good as the home-cooked dinner we ate during the Chinese New Year. This is indeed the case in terms of dishes, because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has regulations that not only cannot serve the full banquet of Manchu and Han, but in principle, Chinese food is only four dishes and one soup, while Western food is two dishes or three dishes and one soup. Converted into a price, that is, the average cost of each table cannot exceed 1,500 US dollars, which is about 10,000 yuan.
This standard can be pushed back more than 40 years, especially since 1978, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also carried out reforms, the standard of four dishes and one soup was set at that time, and the cost of the table that year was even less, per capita can not exceed 60 yuan, important foreign guests do not exceed 80 yuan.
Some people wonder how many dishes can only be made for such a small table fee? It is not worthy of the image of our great country at all! It does not show our enthusiasm, and it does not allow international friends to appreciate Chinese food culture! Why is there such a rule?
Because the high-standard reception expenses are too large, it will also cause unnecessary waste. Especially after the reform, we are in line with international standards, and we have more and more exchanges with other countries, and the number of state banquets has also increased. If they are all received according to the standard of Manchu and Han banquets, no amount of budget is enough to spend, and the extravagant style is easy to be over-interpreted by foreign countries to have other meanings, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs simply set the standard after the reform.
In fact, before the 70s, the state banquet was still more in line with everyone's impression of the Manchu and Han banquets, but since the introduction of the regulations, no matter how big the scene is every year, the state banquet has basically maintained such a simple and atmospheric standard, such as the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 Shanghai World Expo State Banquet, the 2014 Asia-Pacific APEC Summit, and this year's Belt and Road Summit Forum State Banquet, will not be very extravagant and wasteful.
Let's compare:
First of all, in 1949, the first banquet of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to entertain more than 600 foreign guests stationed in China that night, the banquet was set up in the most luxurious Beijing Hotel at that time, and dozens of tables were set up. Each table is served with 8 hot dishes, 1 hot soup, 4 cold cuts and a variety of snacks. Such a high configuration, based on classic Huaiyang dishes such as braised lion's head, crystal meat, and roasted four treasures, also integrates other cuisines such as Shandong cuisine, Sichuan cuisine, and Cantonese cuisine, such as braised prawns, braised grilled duck, etc., and the specifications are very luxurious.
When it came time for the 2008 Olympic State Dinner, it was 4 main courses and 1 hot soup: lotus steak, Bird's Nest vegetables, cod in sauce, Peking duck, and melon cup matsutake soup.
The 2010 Shanghai World Expo Gala Dinner also consisted of only 4 hot dishes, an appetizer and cold cuts, plus a snack and fruit. Among the hot dishes are: carp in the pond of shepherd's cabbage, lobster with black fish roe, a product of snowflake beef, and fried bean sprouts with spring bamboo shoots. Dim sum is a traditional folk snack Shanghai wonton, and the fruit is just strawberries, mangoes, grapefruits, etc., which are made up of coconut milk.
The standard menu for the 2014 APEC summit state banquet is four dishes and one soup, plus snacks and fruits, as well as ice cream and tea. Four of the main dishes are jade lobster, snowflake beef with lemon juice, chestnut choy sum, Peking duck, and the hot soup is the soup ringing conch.
In addition to the simplified specifications, our dishes have also changed. With the deepening of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries, some Western food elements were added to the state banquet, such as red wine, beef, black pepper, fish roe, etc., reflecting the inclusiveness of Chinese culture. And on the tableware, knives and forks are provided in addition to chopsticks. In terms of dining style, the Chinese meal system has changed to a Western meal sharing system, and the staff will divide the dishes into one person in advance and serve them to each guest, fully considering the respect and friendliness of foreign guests.
2. American State Dinner
If the Chinese state banquet is a fusion of tradition and modernity, Chinese and international food culture and diplomatic etiquette, then the American state banquet is about "doing what you want", to put it bluntly, there is no order.
Lao Mei's state banquets are basically held in the White House, and the host's house is the previous presidents who live in it, so their state banquet menu is basically drawn up by the president and the first lady, and what the guests can eat depends on the personal preferences of the president's family. In other words, the dishes you eat may come from international celebrity chefs, or they may just be made casually by the president's own cooking aunt.
For example, President Truman from Missouri, as soon as he took office, fired the original White House chef and replaced it with his own aunt, and every state dinner was served with Missouri specialties such as fried turkey, barbecue, pickled vegetables and apple pie;
Later, after Eisenhower took over, he gave full play to his tough-guy and straight-man style of decades in the army, and the state banquets were all toast, crackers and cheese and other foods that could be eaten simply and efficiently;
When Obama was in office, his wife always liked to prepare hometown dishes for guests, the Japanese came to serve sushi and sashimi, the Koreans came to serve kimchi, and when our delegation passed, we could also drink Shaoxing rice wine.
From this point of view, there is no unified standard for the American state dinner, and the main focus is a free and capricious.
3. Wonderful state banquets in other countries
Food Xi around the world are different, sometimes very different, and some dishes that seem very traditional to the locals may become dark dishes in the eyes of others. For example, the former protocol officer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs recorded a lot of "wonderful" state banquet ingredients in his memoirs.
The first is North Korea's "all-dog feast". Since ancient times, the people there have loved dog meat and all things dog-related. To this day, dog meat is the most nourishing ingredient in the minds of North Koreans. In 1970, when Premier Zhou led a delegation to visit the DPRK, he ate their top all-dog banquet, such as dog blood sausage, braised dog meat, stewed dog meat, dog soup and other dishes, all of which were put on the table. Fortunately, they received a Chinese group, the Chinese food culture is broad and profound, and the Chinese are more tolerant. If it were a Western group, it would definitely be fried on the spot.
There are many extreme animal protectionists in the West, and most people generally regard dogs as friends and relatives, and they can't accept dog meat on the table at all. It's just that North Korea has never liked to deal with the outside world frequently.
And South Korea, which has the same origin as North Korea, is miserable.
Koreans also love dog meat, so this dietary Xi is often condemned by Westerners. For example, the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the 2002 South Korea-Japan World Cup were all boycotted on a large scale because of the appearance of dog meat on the menu of the state banquet. has been scolded a lot, and Koreans have no choice but to admit it, although they still will eat dog broth, but they will not say it explicitly, but call it "nourishing soup".
In addition, the "shabby" of Korean state banquets is well known, and the delicacy in their eyes is as if a variety of pickles and kimchi are in a meeting. For example, the "nine-section board", which is regarded by Koreans as the top court dish, is actually a large disc divided into 9 small grids, and each grid is shredded cooked vegetables, which are the specifics? Usually shredded kimchi, shredded carrots, shredded cucumbers, shredded bamboo shoots, shredded mushrooms... A little better is the shredded beef, the big grid in the middle, and the dough is placed. At a glance, I didn't know where the monk came from and thought that he was in a meeting.
In 2022, when the incumbent President Yoon Suk-yeol came to power, the state banquet menu was ridiculed by the Associated Press. Their appetizer is pickled vegetable rolls, steamed vegetables are cabbage dumplings, tofu soup and various shredded vegetable bibimbap, and the kimchi next to it is very rich, and there is a large table of kimchi, but it can't get rid of the fact that they are just kimchi. As far as the eye can see, there are only a few beef ribs that are taken out, and eating the whole table is enough to make people feel pure and soar on the spot.
Some people are curious, what is eaten at the state banquet in the United Kingdom, which is known as the "food desert"?
You must know that there are some things that you can't be curious about, and once you know about them, it's enough to lose your appetite. The menu of the British state banquet makes people feel "full" at a glance: roast beef, roast venison, roast chicken, grilled fish steak, clam bisque, fudge potatoes, battenberg cake... It doesn't matter if it's delicious or not, but the portion size is undoubtedly quite solid.
In contrast, the menu of the French state banquet is much more pleasing to the eye and looks delicious. For example, French baked snails, foie gras, poached salmon, French chicken soup, cheese platter, nice salad, and colorful macaron desserts, as well as cherry wine ice cream, are easy to whet your appetite and hardly step on the thunder spot of most people.
If you look at the Ethiopian state banquet, this one is more challenging. They like to eat raw beef, and the host will find a good beef cow in advance, slaughter and peel it, cut it directly into a cold salad in the banquet hall, and then give each guest a table knife, which part they want to eat, either directly gnawed raw, or pureed meat and eaten with seasoning, or rolled with a thin pie crust. Either way, it's all freshly killed raw beef.
Let's take a look at Mexico, in addition to the regular ingredients such as tacos, beef, and fish, their state banquet also has a very distinctive "high-end dish", that is, bugs! Can you believe that Mexicans put a fried grasshopper burrito at the state banquet? In addition, there are ant egg burritos, and even worm burritos! In short, in their opinion, everything can be rolled, and it is very easy to raise cattle and fish, in contrast, raising and collecting bugs is purely human hard work, and eating bugs for your guests can show Mexico's enthusiasm to the world.
If you had the opportunity to attend a state dinner, what would be your favorite country? Would you dare to nibble on beef raw and then eat a bug feast with a smile?