Master chef Luan places a platter of smoked fish on the table and says it's a "little appetizer". The slices are tender and savory and the palate is awakened by the oddly sweet smokiness of the skin. Accompanying the fish is a pile of bright green sprouts, which the chef says are grown from black beans.

It was the next dish, however, that captured my total attention.

Richesse Chinoise

The presentation was nothing fancy and it looked like a stir-fry Mama can turn out in her kitchen, but the first taste told me different.

Lengths of water Artemisia, stripped clean of any leaf, had been simply tossed with the little lake shrimps. This is my second day in Nanjing, and already my palate was luxuriating in the all-natural sweetness of Nature's bounty. The shrimps exploded in the mouth like puffs of sugar, and the vegetables added crunch that neither overcame nor was overwhelmed.

I am ashamed to say that though other dishes came in quick succession, my chopsticks kept going back to the luhao and shrimps. It was the only clean plate sent back to the kitchen that afternoon.

During our marketing, Meng had bought a curious bunch of vegetables that I thought had a familiar floral scent. He served this up next in a very light soup, and contrasted the dark deep green with an egg drop using only the white.

This is what the Nanjing folks call chrysanthemum leaves, and it is indeed a relative of the flowering variety. The very aromatic leaves had a pleasantly pungent scent and worked well as a palate cleanser after the intense pleasure of the shrimps.