Bird's Nest

Funky food experiences in Hong Kong resume! I had a mango drink on Saturday while walking in Causeway Bay. Mango is one of my favorite tastes and I never refuse mango. This time, however, it wasn't just mango in my drink. There was an old Chinese add-on in the drink: Bird's nest.

The name "bird's nest" as a spice sounded a bit weird to me, but I just thought it's one of those Chinese things.

The drink was ok. And I was told that bird's nest has numerous health benefits like aiding digestion, raising libido, improving the voice, alleviating asthma, increasing concentration, and an overall benefit to the immune system. Not too bad.

Well, what is bird's nest, then?

I took a piece of paper from the shop explaining numerous details about bird's nest - it failing to mention what it actually is. Well, seeing I got no help from there, I turned to the help of my trusty friend Wikipedia.

"The edible bird's nests are among the most expensive animal products consumed by humans. The nests have been traditionally used in China for over 400 years, most often as bird's nest soup."

Animal products, eh? Ok.

"Bird's nest soup is a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. A few species of swift, the cave swifts, are renowned for building the saliva nests used to produce the unique texture of this soup."

Wonderful. So, my mango drink was mixed with expensive bird spit. I'm glad I didn't know this beforehand - albeit had I known, I wouldn't have had the drink in the first place. It's a good thing Chi recommended me this one. Ha. Well, that's how life is here. Always new things. Never thought they'd make food of bird saliva though. Everything else I could've pretty much imagined.

Wikipedia on Bird's Nest Soup

So, that's one more thing for the menu.

Intestines, skin, bones, funky sea-creatures, saliva.

Only thing left untested is insects. I'm glad they're not big of a fad nor a tradition.

On other food-related things. Saturday was also the first time I went to IKEA's "restaurant" where they also have a small food's shop. To my sheer amazement and joy, they had Estrella potato Chips, DAIM chocolate, Hyvää Makumaasta bags of candy and all sorts of familiar sweets and foodstuff. I almost went bananas there. If only I wasn't on a diet of "If you don't need to eat it, don't eat it". So I only bought one bag of chips for Chi to try. She liked.