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.