Shanghai July 28

The food adventures never end in this city...

The other night we went to a "typical Shanghainese" restaurant called Bao Luo - small and unassuming at the entrace, but you walk back into a cavernous room with bright lights and loads of people smoking (many people eat while they are smoking). This place was particularly messy - the waitrons had greasy dingy clothes - but the food was delicious - we had broccoli simmered in broth with whole garlic cloves, salty eggwhite (a little like feta cheese) and ginger, a plate of steamed kale with crab meat, tofu and egg (looked a little revolting, but tasted great), and swiss steak - Mr. Grumpypants and I weren't sure if it was meat, but then realized it was closer to a salisbury steak than a grilled sirloin. Very strange texture. We were not brave enough to order the "mater convulvulous with tofu" (eh?). The tea they served with the meal had the taste of chamomile and corriander seed - quite yummy.

One of the exquisite meals we ate this week was in an elegant place called Yin. The style of the restaurant was old Shanghai with wood floors, chinese style furniture - with natural wood finish and screens separating the tables. The food was also elegant - the cold starters included: soy bean and lotus salad, melt in your mouth duck, beef with spicy orange sauce. The mains were chicken in Shouxiang wine sauce -thin wine broth with loads of spice, pork ribs in a savory black bean sauce and duck with orange sauce.

We attended a concert on Wednesday - Mr. Grumpypants was recording, but I got to go to the pre-concert reception - wine was served (the first I've had since we got here-though not Chinese wine - some Aussie Shiraz.) The snacks were fab - pumpkin flan with a coconut milk tapioca served in a Chinese spoon, bite size morsels of spring roles, eggplant and pork satay, and perfect little dragonfruit tarts! The service and presentation in Shanghai is unbelievable. The concert was 3 hours long - whoa - good thing the musicians were all so amazing! Then at midnight we were ushered off to a shopping mall where a sit down dinner service was to take place. Traditional Shanghai food - the starters: pig's ear (done like a terrine and sliced)the flavour was delicious but the mixed texture of soft pork and chewy cartilage was strange (it was absolutely stunning to look at - a little psychadelic), small fish (size of sardines) deep fried with a sweet sticky coating - delicous, lotus seed and dates, chopped kale, and jellyfish (very rubbery crunchy - ooh - I don't think I liked that!)

The mains seemed endless, almond encrusted prawns-yum, scallops with huge slices of pickled ginger, dried scallops stuffed into green mellon, combination plate of roasted duck, chicken and pork, bok choy greens simmered with bamboo shoots, roast chicken, etc...most people had given up eating by the 5th plate - they finished with a warm coconut milk tapioca - not tooo sweet, but delicious.

Ok - so one more and I'll stop this blog: Last night we went to an amazing Japanese restaurant called Shintori. First we had a cocktail at People bar(with a puzzle door to get into the place). These are sibling establishments - the designs are similar with concrete surroundings, industrial steel tables and very dark. The restuarant is enormous - black tables and chairs, wooden ventetian blinds between tables creating a modern style tatami room. There must have been 30 chefs in the open kitchen on the main floor - we were on the second floor - and the food was sent upstairs in a glass elevator (modern dumb waiter). The food matched the surroundings - we had plates of sashmi served on granite slabs, or rough fired ceramics, the foil dish was served on a super heated volcanic rock, and the beef sashimi was perfect, served on a bamboo platform atop a crushed ice mound! The sake was chilled and delicious. I'd go again tonight, but I must try something new!

Shanghai, July 21

Hangzhou was a whirlwind trip - I think the highways here are a scary - I thought it was bad in Calgary - but the cars are nuts and change lanes so quickly and closely that you're sure the bus you're in will hit it. (Actually there was a horrible bus accident the day before we went) I'm thinking trains will be the way to go. Hangzhou is famous for West Lake - a beautiful lake with gardens surrounding most of it and the city to one end. The best was the amazing Lingyin temple that seemed to go on forever. You enter the temple area through a grotto where Buddhas are carved into the rock face. There are paths and stairs to them along the small river. You finally reach the temple buildings which are numerous and house enormous Buddhas. Mr. Grumpypants and I climbed to the very top temple building to find three Buddhas carved from wood with their clothing and lotus flower seats painted white. These Buddhas must have been over 25 m.

Enough about the sightseeing, the lunch was also amazing. This area is famous for its tea plantations thus a delicious dish of pork in a light gravy made with tea - now I'm thinking the tea was the Pu-Ehr type - a little earthy, kinda like sweet tobacco and very tasty. Also prawns (in the shell) loaded with salt and pepper, sweet and sour pork - on the sour side, yum, snap peas, chicken wings, tomato soup, bok choy, fish with green onions and crab legs with ginger, green onion and glutinous rice sitcks.

We also visited a tea plantation where they grow green tea. In the style of a wine tour we wandered around the grounds, then had a demonstration on the roasting of tea, and how to make a proper cup of green tea. We were served the spring tea - delicious and fresh tasting...it's called Dragon's Well.

Long blog today because of the spectacular meal last night. We were on the 9th floor of an insanely large shopping centre (someone said the largest in the world and I wouldn't doubt it- I think it was called the Super Brand Centre). We ate in the fanciest place I've seen here- called Yuga - over the top - black slate floors, or wood inlaid with stone, sculptured glass walls and many individual sunken private rooms that you step down into or elevated dining rooms hovering above a ground surface of rocks.

The tables were set with a few dishes when we sat down - here's the list:
deep fried anchovies (or some other small fish) into a crunchy slightly sweet morsel, smoked mackeral (or some other fish) presented emerging from a banana leaf wrapping, edamame, lotus (covered in a thick semi sweet goo), pickled cucumber and slices of what I think was a chicken loaf stuffed with italian sausage. So that was the starter.

Next came the rice wraps with duck, green onion and celery (make your own), sweet and sour pork, chicken in a light sauce covered in shaved ice, white fish (like halibut in flavour and texture) covered with green onion strips that had been flash fried to a delicious crispness, beef with garlic chips, enormous prawns (lightly battered and deep fried with a sweet sticky sauce), prawn heads stuffed with a ground meat mixture, ginger pork with strips of pineapple, served inside the carved pineapple, - oh here's an odd one, slow cooked lamb with mashed potatoes and those small white onions, offal soup with peculiar but tasty fungus, croissant like veggie puffs, and a sweetish, starchy soup with little sweet, marshmallow like, balls (are these bubble tea bubbles?). Oops, I forgot the frog stew - loaded with chillies and unbelievably hot. I also missed the Chinese greens with the egg - the egg white was an amber coloured jelly and the yolk was a beautiful green. I hope I haven't missed anything else, I was having a hard time noting things and keeping up with the dishes being presented.

Just a note - Mr. Grumpypants missed the whole thing because he was working, now that is something to be grumpy about!!!

oops - missed the 18th entry

Had dinner in the Pudong district last night - it's the east side of the river - thus the name (dong=east) (pu=river (I think?)). We went to a place called Shanghai Uncle on the 8th floor of Times Square...and like so many places we had an equal number of servers to the number of people dining! The specialty of this place is their slow cooked pork ribs with pine nuts - which were delicious - falling off the bone then melting in your mouth. The real treat was the veal with garlic. Again the meat was perfectly cooked and melting in your mouth and the garlic was thinly sliced and deep fried into perfectly golden toasty chips. I know I've mentioned the greens before, but I just love the bean sprouts - this time with a spicey shallotty sauce. Mr. Grumpypants loved the baked fish with a rich dark hoisin sauce and also the "five ways cooked pork" that arrived flaming on it's tin foil platter.

To top off the evening, we headed to a new bar on the Pudong promenade which affords a splendid view of the river. We were interested in the Snowbar - a room kinda like a meat locker (without the meat hooks and hanging carcasses) set at -20C. The staff outfit you with North Face down parkas (no boots - we were wearing sandals)...the bar and counters are all ice with some snow thrown around for atmosphere. They only serve vodka, but have a large selection. The poor bartender had had enough of the cold. The two Swedes with us sang a Swedish drinking song, we downed our vodka then headed to the posh bar upstairs for lychee martinis - mmmm. It's amazing to watch the huge container ships moving into the ports like ghost ships beside the touristy river boats.

I should mention that the night before (after some entertaining charades with the cab driver) we ended up in some high end club - complete with thumping music but relatively empty, drinking lychee martinis that were really more like lychee smoothies with a little booze. We ate cheese and basil pizza and beetroot ravioli - both pretty darn tasty - but odd food to be eating here.

Shanghai, July 19

Spent the morning wandering through Dongtai Antique Market - (not sure how many things are real antiques since there are an awful lot of duplicates) It's still fun to look at all the stuff - think about your favourite flea market except that everything here is Chinese - Fun. We also made it to Fangbang Road - the "Old Shanghai Road" where the old architecture is brilliant, but the area is certainly all about the tourists, so all space is occupied by shops selling their wares. By the time we made it there - the sun was high and cooking us - Mr. Grumpypants came out without his hat!

We did have a yummy mushroom ramen for lunch - at least three types of mushrooms, crunchy kelp and a delicious broth along with some lovely little dumplings on the side.

Headed back to the hotel shortly after lunch - THE HEAT, THE HEAT - I think it hit 36C with humidity...

Had dinner in the hotel Shanghai Moon restaurant...chicken (with the bone in) cut into little pieces in a rich chestnut gravy - with loads of chestnuts, a plate of Shanghai noodles, and what I refer to as the manure tofu - fermented deep fried tofu - whoa - very stinky, but Mr. Grumpypants liked it - go figure.

Off to Hangzhou tomorrow for a look at West Lake, a temple and a tea plantation.

Shanghai July 15 - or later

Went to the Museum of Contemporary Art - different from the Shanghai Art Museum - there was a pretty good show on Italian Art and Design since 1950. The experimental photos by Ugo Mulas were favourites of Mr. Grumpypants. I liked the rocking couch and the heaving felt lampshade! (oh yeah - it was moving).

Mr. Grumpypants and I headed off to the Jade Buddha Temple - a little out of the way, but the subways are fabulous and easy to get around. This temple is fantastic - not one but many Buddhas. The Jade guy is about 4 ft sitting, carved from one piece of white jade. The oddest thing about the temple is the shops that bookend every Buddha in the place. People are kneeling in prayer while 2 feet away someone is buying a Buddha ornament. The entrance is crowded with wounded people in wheelchairs and on crutches hoping for some money from the temple goers. We found a side door to exit and missed them on the way out. Mr. Grumpypants did fortuitously get a recording of the monks chanting and singing - it was beautiful.

We managed to eat some more of those crazy tofu wasabe morsels, along with barbecued duck and green beans (sliced and fried with shredded dried fish and garlic) - all the greens are really bright! love it.

I managed to get up the Pearl Tower (in the Pudong district) yesterday morning...right up to the "space module" at 350 metres. There is an elaborate elevator system to get you up and down - different elevators every time you want to get higher. It is quite the view - Shanghai never stops - even through the haze, all you can see are more buildings.

The real treat about going to the Pudong district is that you have to get across the river. You could take a ferry, but why would you if you could go under the river, in a cable car, with strobe lights, lasers, lava lamp projections and whacky announcements like "Paradise and Hell", "Fossil Variants", or "Massive Magma".

Shanghai July 12

Well I've missed a few days, but we've been eating in the hotel - getting Mr. Grumpypants back into Shanghai shape. The dumpling soup through room service is delicious so it has become the easy thang to eat.

I did sneak out and had a beer and a whacky little tofu dish yesterday. The soft tofu was smothered in wasabe, then breaded (including some coconut) and deep fried. It was served sliced open into six little dangerous morsels on the plate. I have to admit that I was scraping some of that wasabe outta the last couple of bites - whoa - my eyes were watering!!!

We went to find the Doland Museum of Modern Art today - found it, but it was closed and between shows, I guess we'll make it back another day. The treasure in that neighbourhood was the Korean restaurant. We had Bulgogi and veggies - kinda stir fried beef with veg served on a cast iron dish with a mushroom beefy light gravy, a rice cake with spicy Korean sauce - the cakes were kinda like gnocci and the sauce was tomato based and perfectly spicy with a few fresh chilies, and we also had a tempura like basket of veggies, though they were more like Belgian frittes in their skinny little way - ymmm. The meal came with an assortment of little dishes to start - roasted zuchini with hot sauce, steamed crunchy seaweed, daikon with hot sauce, kimchi like cabbage, lightly steamed carrots and celery with red peppers.

We drank big bottles of Kirin which did us in...whoa the heat - have I mentioned that it's like a big wet sauna here - oh yeah- I probably have. It takes about twenty minutes to stop sweating once you get into an air conditioned room. Shaving my head may be more comfortable!

Lotus must be in season because the street folk carrying baskets around have loaded baskets of them - they look amazing.

Yo - for some reason - perhaps censors - I cannot actually see my blog and thus cannot see any comments - If you want to send info, send me email.

Shanghai July 10 - again a little late

I'm getting my days mixed up now - I don't know what I've been eating, drinking or doing - perhaps the heat is getting to me - I've wilted!

I went on a bus tour yesterday - visiting Suzhou (gardens and silk factory) and Zhouzhuang - canal city (apparently Venice of the East). (Mr. Grumpypants couldn't make, I think he ate a bad clam at JJ Rice Hut and had to stay home to get rid of it). I've never been to Venice so I'm not sure how to compare them, but this town, while absolutely beautiful and picturesque, is pretty much there for the tourists. It was packed - being Sunday- and in the late afternoon everyone who owned a shop was sleeping, so thankfully no hard sell of products.

We had a great lunch at the Bamboo Garden Hotel - lazy Suze style - with salty greens - mmm, ginko nuts and dates, fava beans and barbecued duck as appetizers, then came the delicious slow roasted pork in a rich brown gravy with dates - the intestines were included (braided or knotted) and very tasty as well. There was also roasted chicken, more steamed greens (way less salty), steamed cabbage, snap peas with thinly sliced pork and egg drop soup. We also had some beer - always around 3.6% and tasting pretty watered down - probably the right beer for this climate.

I've bought Suntory beer for the hotel room, as well as some rice wines to sample. The wines are quite like the colour and taste of an Amontillado, though not as refined. I'm keeping it in the fridge as I don't have the energy to drink booze that isn't cold.

Today a couple of us set off for the fabric market, but ended up winding our way through an antique market - whoa - loads of great stuff. All bartering is done using a calculator - they type their price, then you type yours - its can go on quite a while - apparently Canadians don't like to part with their money so we play hard. I bought a couple of beautiful embroidered pieces from Guizhou, a funky bracelet and a fan - a necessary accessory here!

We ate lunch in a Japanese place, gyoza, fried noodles with seaweed and other greens and seaweed sesame soup.

Shanghai July 8 (oops - a little delayed)

Set off to a work function with Mr. Grumpypants, that included a delicious lunch with a large selection of hot and cold entrees. The green curry monkfish was delicious as was the roast duck (sorry Stephers - but we love duck).

Found the Blue and White Museum - It's down one of the alleys that I've been dying to explore and it's not really a museum, just a couple of rooms with some great display cabinets...it does, however, have a great little gift shop. What I really would've liked to see was the back room where all the work was happening.

Thai food for dinner - pretty close to what we can get at home, with the exception of the type of fish - we never recognize the English names they give them. But the squid is called a "fish sleeve". The other difference is that when they say it'll be spicy - they mean it - none of this guessing if the Western palette can take the heat!
The restaurant was kinda adobe style - the bathrooms had mini tv screens in them and there was a party room with chairs shaped like elephants. The mural on the wall was a beach scene, but there was also a typically Chinese limestone rock sculpture at one end.

Bathrooms have become a real point of discussion amongst travelers and knowing which places have decent ones has become important. I don't think anyone goes out without their own supply of toilet paper and we're developing our quads with the Chinese style crouchers!!

Shanghai July 7

Ok - last night's dinner was amazing. We went to this little place just up the street from the hotel called Di Shui Dong. You could easily walk by the place because it's on the second floor and you have to go up a dark stairway to get there. The room reminded me of a low budget Mexican style joint - complete with chili peppers hanging everywhere...but there's the clue - they don't ask if you like mild, med, or hot - everything you get is ...HOT.

The cuisine is Hunanese - a province inland that does not suffer from the humidity, just the heat! ha! We ordered chopped pork, lotus root, ribs, broccoli and rice. The ingredients of the chopped pork dish were: fresh chili peppers, dry chili peppers, green onions, garlic and tripe (pork stomach) - ingredients listed in descending order of quantity - whoa! The lotus root was also stir fried with chilies, garlic and chives, the broccoli was steamed in a broth with garlic and a few chilies. My favourite was the pork ribs, dry rubbed with cumin seed, coriander seed, garlic, chives and chilies with a healthy sprinkling of the mixture on top. Mr. Grumpypants was bright red and his nose was running by the time we were half way through the food. We managed to consume lots of watery beer - perfect with this food.

I'll be going back for the ribs...I've heard the skewered shrimp are delicious as well as the hot pots.

Shanghai Journal Day1

We arrived in Shanghai to a wall of heat and a smell of something like musty, slightly composted vegetables (hmm with a hint of manure) quite interesting (I like it anyway). It takes about sixty seconds for your clothes to stick to you. The bus ride in from the Pudong Airport (which is enormous) was trippy and once you hit Shanghai and cross the bridge all you can see are cranes for loading ships - they look like enormous crabs all along the river on both sides. The roads are nuts - horns mandatory - buses, bicycles, mopeds, and cars all sharing space.

First meal was in a restaurant not unlike a Calgary Chinese food place. Big round tables with lazy susan in the centre. Jasmine tea, salty peanuts, small salad (or condiment) of soy bean, chopped leafy greans and a little bit of pickle- very tasty. The tofu dishes are my favourites - creamy textured soft tofu with chillies and garlic. Greens, looked like the greens from springs onions, but not oniony. Taro root in a big soft cake broiled with panko flakes (a little heavy and stodgy), beef with sugar snap peas (yum) and chilies, shrimp in thick translucent sauce with, hmmm, melon(?), lemon chicken, barbecued squid with oyster sauce, two noodle dishes, followed by sliced melon for dessert. I'll need to learn about Chinese veggies and spices. On the whole not a departure from what we get at home and all good...

This morning the breakfast buffet was a mix of Western and Chinese food - The smoked trout was great, loads of dumplings with different fillings, congee, cereals, bacon, sausage, pancakes, mutton stew {huh?}, smoked salmon, toast, fruit etc. you get the idea. Nothing seemed to strange, though a woman at our table this morning, trying something new, made a strange noise then spat something out promptly followed by a rinse of orange juice.

We wandered the streets, drank two litres of water before a lunch of noodles and fried pea sprouts served with a broth- delicious. The subway is the best way to get around - fast, cheap and air conditioned. It's going to be short days outside - the crowds aren't so bad, but the heat and humidity is exhausting.