I hope you enjoyed your huo guo! (Or was it sha guo?)

I had to look up what sha guo is :) 沙鍋, or claypot, right? Last night's dinner was 火鍋, at the place where the photo on this post was taken. There were 18 of us, and it was really really brilliant.

The meatballs (牛肉丸 on the menu) were not as homogeneous as the fish/prawn balls — I'd been wondering if perhaps 丸 without the 子 meant that the protein component was really finely pulverised, but apparently not.

I used the magic of the Internets to find some pictures! Do a Ctrl/Cmd-F for the word "wan" and you'll find 大丸子 at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=759334&page=4

I used the magic of Flickr to find the host pages of your pictures :) 東北川大丸子 and 東北煎丸子, yes? They totally look like faggots, you're right! Particularly the pan-fried ones.

And I found tangcu xiaowanzi at http://www.foodeats.cn/group_thread/view/cps-8/id-3896 -- though I hope your character-reading is better than mine.

Sadly, I cannot read actual prose, just menus. I may do something about this in the future.