New section “Shanghai PPl ” is BuzzandtheCity introduction of people behind remarkable projects in marketing & advertising, technology & communication, luxury, art & design, and of course entertainment.
Wiley Kestner for BuzzandtheCity
BuzzandtheCity What’s on the Menu ?
Wiley Kestner China Menu is the first iPhone application independently published by my company, Prairiedogg International Limited. I was the main developer and content editor for the app. It represents about two years of independent research and exploration of restaurants all over China. I also enlisted the help of many friends from all over the world to help me beta test, copy edit, and market the app.
BC What’s the story behind the idea?
WK Before I came to Beijing in 2002, I had no idea how good real Chinese food was, or how poorly it is done in the United States, where I’m from originally. The freshness of ingredients, thrillingly unfamiliar new tastes like Sichuan peppercorn, and seemingly inexhaustible regional variety were just a few of the things that made me fall in love in with Chinese cuisine.
At the same time, I realized that it was incredibly difficult for foreigners to order well at Chinese restaurants. Chinese menus are impenetrable, even if they are translated into English. For instance, “Chicken Treasures” sounds innocuous enough, but “treasure” is often a euphemism on Chinese menus for “internal organs”.
Most foreigners only need to accidentally eat chicken heart or pig brain once before they go running back to one of three or four commonly ordered “foreigner” dishes, or simply retreat to western style cafés and restaurants.
The result is that a lot of foreigners miss out on some of the most amazing (and incidentally, inexpensive) cuisine in the world.
So in 2007 I decided to make a website, chinabites.com, that helped introduce the amazing cuisine of China to a foreign audience. I placed special emphasis on photographing and cataloging my favorite dishes at my favorite restaurants. Chinabites.com helps people discover great restaurants in China, but I realized it was less helpful to them when they were actually inside the restaurant, where it’s not really convenient lug your laptop.
In 2008 the iPhone came along and I knew immediately that it was the perfect platform for creating an interactive menu and ordering buddy that any foreigner could carry in their pocket. Thus China Menu was born. China Menu takes all of its 220+ dishes directly from the chinabites.com database and then adds a large list of translated conversations to help foreigners negotiate all aspects of dining in Chinese restaurants without having to learn any Chinese.
BC Ambitious..How did you implement the project?
WK The most difficult part of implementing the project was the data collection. China Menu represents over two years of photography and note-taking from all over China and over seven years of accumulated experience about the most common problems foreigners face when eating out in China.
Actually putting the app together was relatively straightforward. It took about six weeks to assemble and then another six weeks of beta testing with people in China and all over the world to polish. It’s hard to quantify, but I would say China Menu became two to three times more useful as a direct result of the great suggestions the small beta test group made.
BC What’s your expectations for your baby ?
WK The larger goal of all of my projects is to help foreigners understand China. China has so much in common with the outside world and that fact is too often obscured by overly reductive rhetoric. China Menu can’t possibly be an exhaustive guide to every dish in every restaurant in China, there’s just too much great food out there. But China Menu will be a success if it can help a a single foreigner have an amazing meal and then gets him or her excited about exploring further. I’ve tried to design it with the “explorer” in mind – so in addition to all of the recommended dishes, there’s also a large section for just asking your waiter what he might recommend.
Beyond that, I really hope to hear back from people who use China Menu so I can continue to make it an even better tool.
That being said, China Menu is designed to help foreigners when they’re already in a restaurant. I would like to make a mobile client for chinabites.com that helps foreigners find a great restaurant in the first place. In particular I would like design it so as to encourage people to share restaurants and food that they’ve discovered with their friends.
I look forward first and foremost to building on and improving China Menu itself based on the feedback from users all over China.
BC One serious question : what’s your favorite Chinese dish ?
WK Fried Bananas, or, 炸香蕉 (zhá xiāngjiāo). It’s a Dai ethnic dish that can be found at many Yunnan or Dai restaurants in China (note:picture featuring on the press release)
PS : Wiley is not Shanghainese, I’m just too lazy to open a category “Kunming PPl“
