I'm not sure if this topic belongs in the Foodie Bee Hive but it is food-related and something I thought was interesting.
Originally uploaded to Bilibili.tv
So Genshin Impact is a game I've been playing and today we got a new event about cooking. In the middle of the story the restaurant, which is a fictionalized Chinese restaurant, is visited by people from a French-based region. Now the cuisine of this Chinese restaurant based on how they describe it through dialogue is probably Sichuan or Szechuan style which is known for being very spicy. French palates aren't known for enjoying spicy so, as the visitors were our friends, the chef supervising us came up with a dish that was savory instead and also seafood which fit with their tastes.
The first thing I'm wondering is:
Would a dish like this really work with the French palate? According to the description given in-game it is a shrimp stir-fry seasoned with a sauce made from crab roe. Based on how it's said to be mild I would imagine they don't use soy sauce with it. It's probably a mixture of the crab roe with tapioca powder for thickness and then flavored with salt and herbs like cilantro. The texture should be thick and smooth.
The second thing I was wondering about is just something I found interesting. I had no idea seafood was actually popular in France. According to answers on Quora it's because France has such a long sea border. One popular dish happens to be plat de fruits de mer which featured in the movie Mr. Bean's Holiday. That was also interesting to me because the literal translation of this dish or rather seafood itself from French is "fruits of the sea." (fruits de mer) It's cool what you can learn about a place that defies your expectations.
On the flip side what this game event's story brought up with Chinese cuisine was that it was spicy. Actually, Chinese cuisine is mostly not spicy though it's difficult to talk about like this because "Chinese" cuisine is a misnomer. As it's a very big place that's also very old each region within it has dramatically different tastes. For example the spicy style comes mostly from the Sichuan area as mentioned before. Its neighbors like Hunan and Hubei also prefer spicy. On the other hand, Chinese cuisine is often known for its seafood but in these specific regions which are landlocked, seafood isn't really that big. Instead seafood just like I discovered about France, is popular in regions along its sea border like Canton who prefers mild flavors. That makes the dish cooked in the game today pretty realistic if we go with Canton style rather than Sichuan style.
Anybody else have experience with these two regional cuisines?