Huizhou: Food Poisoned at Also-Milo...

I'm usually pretty proud of my stomach. Most of the time... I can eat through most things and still come out fine while friends and/or colleagues get crazy stomach pains or food poisoning. Street food doesn't scare me and I love raw food (except oysters... that I still need to learn to like), so the chances of me getting sick is even higher, but I've always somehow been okay. Unfortunately, little did I know I would get food poisoned so bad that I could barely eat for 3-4 days at a restaurant called Milo Coffee in 惠州 Huizhou.

Huizhou is another city I visit quite frequently for work. It's one of the biggest city in Guangdong province and many considers Huizhou to be a tier 1 city in China. Of course, being a big modernized city doesn't mean its standards are up to par, so you still need to be careful with where you eat. We decided, for dinner, at a HK-style cafe in Huizhou, figuring that it would be pretty clean and that the food should be somewhat more familar. WRONG.

米夢咖啡 Milo Coffee

广东省惠州市江北碧水湾金碧苑

Jiang Bei Bi Shui Wan, Jin Pi Yuan

Huizhou City, Guangdong Provice, China

www.alsomilo.com

Milo-Coffee is actually a big chain of cafe in China, serving both Chinese and Western food.

Sample of the menu.

Meal started off with Chinese chicken soup, which was actually really good since I haven't had Chinese chicken soup in a long time.

For Chinese chicken soup, there's always plenty of interesting ingredients that make up the distinctive flavor of the soup.

I decided to go with a chicken steak combo, which is something all cafes serve. Comes with a sunny-side-up egg, bokchoy, and rice. Thinking it would be pretty safe, I took this picture and just ate without worry. However...

It wasn't until I got home and edited this picture I realized that the CHICKEN was the cause of my food poisoning episode. It's still PINK in the middle!! Damn. For the rest of the trip after this meal, I was so certain the egg had salmonella or something since it was still runny. It never occurred to me that it was the chicken that got me sick. The chicken rested on a piping hot teppan plate and it had this charred flavor to it so I didn't even think twice when I was eating it. It also didn't help that it was semi dark at the restaurant so I couldn't really tell that it was still pinkish in the middle -___-

This black pepper sauce that it came with certainly helped disguised the undercooked chicken :[

The funny thing was that my co-worker said "Ordering stews and braised items are the safest way to go in China since you know for sure that it is cooked for a loooong time." So he ordered a Taiwanese braised beef set, and I scoffed at him, saying, "Why would anybody order Taiwanese food in China??"

Sigh.

I should've recorded my own reaction when I was editing my pictures and found out that it was actually the chicken steak that owned me. It was joy, sadness, and anger all at once. Happy that I finally figured out what cause my sickness, sad that I was betrayed by my beloved chicken steak, and angry at the stupid restaurant and at myself for not being more careful.

I'm still gonna eat everything... just... I'll be more careful next time around, especially with chicken :P