Shanghai Food Files

This post can be summarised as 'what I ate when I went to Singapore and Shanghai'! Before I left for China I was a bit worried about the whole food 'thing'. I wasn't concerned about the actual food, but more about restaurant etiquette, understanding menus and being understood myself. Thankfully my concerns were overblown, and I didn't have any significant problems and I didn't go hungry!

Saturday
My brief pit stop in Singapore enabled me to get to Lau Pa Sat, gobble down some satays and then return to the airport. I think I had the satays from Satay Power and I thought they were better than the ones I had when I was in town at the start of May.

Sunday
I had breakfast on the flight up from Singapore. The first food I actually ate in Shanghai was some sweet/spicy coated peanuts that I had with my complementary drink as I waited for my hotel room to be ready. The peanuts were very moreish and I polished them off in no time.

For lunch I had fried dumplings (sheng jian bao) from Yang's Fry Dumplings on Wujiang Road. Shanghai has a few so called 'food streets' and this is one of them. The dumplings are shallow fried in a big pan with a wooden lid. The bottom of the dumpling is nice and crispy and the top is similar to how it would be if it was steamed. The most common filling is pork, garlic and ginger, which I assume was in the ones I ate. They were very good.

I had an early dinner at the Megabite food court in Raffles City. I ate what I think was a spicy seafood hotpot, that came with something similar to miso soup and rice. The hotpot was nice and spicy and the there were loads of prawns, scallops etc. which is never a bad thing.

Monday
I could've gone mad at the hotel buffet breakfast, but by and large all I ate was fruit, yoghurt and toast/danish pastries/croissants.

I had lunch at Din Tai Fung in the Super Brand Mall. Din Tai Fung is a reasonable sized Taiwanese restaurant chain which specialises in fairly simple Chinese food and in particular they are renowned for their xiao long bao -- steamed dumpling filled with pork, or a mixture of pork and crab meat. I ordered the the pork and crab xiao long bao and they were absolutely delicious. To 'round out' the meal I had a spicy cucumber salad and hot and sour soup.

For dinner I chose to go to an Uighur restaurant. Uighur cooking is basically the food of Chinese Muslims from the far Northwest of the country and it bears some similarities to Turkish and Middle Eastern food, especially since the staple meat is lamb or mutton. I went to the Pamir Restaurant and had a confusing time trying to understand the translated menu. All I knew was that I didn't really want to try 'Mutton Interiors'! More by luck than judgement what I did order was very tasty. I had mutton fried with nan bread, stir fried cabbage and some noodles. It was a very non-Chinese Chinese meal all washed down with Xinjiang Beer and accompanied by waiters who would burst into song every now and again!

Tuesday
I had my regular buffet breakfast and for lunch it was time for more xiao long bao. This time from the Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant at Yu Yuan Gardens. I went for the take out option, and after a 20 minute wait in the queue I was rewarded with 16 steaming dumpling filled with pork and crab meat. Add to this a liberal dash of soy sauce and vinegar and it made for a very filling and cheap lunch (RMB10 which is about 65p).

That night I had dinner at Shanghai Uncle. Again this is a small chain with a few other restaurants around town and is owned by a Shanghai American who is the son of a New York Times food critic. The guidebooks all say this is the place to go for good contemporary Shaghainese food. I ordered the traditional Shanghainese dish of cold, smoked fish was really good and very different to smoked fish in the U.K. It had a gingery sweet flavour but you had to be a bit cautious about the fish bones. After the fish came Perch with red and green peppers, stir fried 'Petals' with vegetables and chicken soup. I was stuffed. This was a reasonably upmarket restaurant and I ate a lot of good food, but my bill came to less than £11.

Wednesday
Breakfast as above.

Today I went to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch (New Age Veggie restaurant in the Super Brand Mall) . In China vegetarian food can also be described as 'mock-meat' food - the chefs take tofu and make it taste and even resemble meat or fish. I ordered a fish hotpot set meal. The hotpot came filled with vegetables and 'fake fish' as well as loads of dried chillies! The rest of the set meal was made up of a cold salad to start, soup, rice and watermelon as a palate cleanser at the end.

In the evening I went to an acrobatic show and then had dinner afterwards at Bi Feng Tang, a very busy place serving all kinds of Chinese food. I had a basic but tasty meal of fried noodles and a plate of scallops.

Thursday
Today it was a celebratory lunch as I'd got a text message earlier telling me that my nephew had been born! I had been sheltering from the rain in the Super Brand Mall and decided to give Blue Frog a go. There are 4 or 5 Blue Frog bars around Shanghai and I figured that I should try one before I left. I think the one in the Super Brand Mall is pretty new and at lunchtime it was practically deserted. I had a nice cold pint of Tiger beer (they didn't serve Tsing Tao) and a big bowl of Fried noodles with pork. An ideal combination!

I had an early dinner as I was flying back to Singapore later in the evening. For my final meal in Shanghai I chose Din Tai Fung, but this time the one at Xintiandi. I had xiao long bao, which were again exquisite, fried spinach and garlic and a pot of oolong tea. This 'branch' was reasonably busy for the time of day (5.30pm ish) and there were quite a few tables with solo diners.

At the airport I camped out at the Singapore Airlines Silver Kris Lounge. Here I had the most disgusting, unintentionally cold dim sum thing. Yuck. So yuck I had to wash the taste out of my mouth with several cans of Tsing Tao!

Friday
Breakfast was courtesy of Singapore Airlines. I wasn't particularly hungry when they came round at about 4am and I only ate about half of the chicken and fried rice.

I went for a swim in the morning and then had an early lunch of fried carrot cake followed by some papaya at the Wisma Atria food court. I kept my strength up during the course of the day with a couple of trips to Old Chang Kee for a curry puff and squid stick. I also managed to find some room for some 'octopus balls' and a mango and honeydew melon juice from the Takashimaya food court.

I had a couple of late afternoon beers from Brewerkz and then later had an Indian meal from the Saffron Bistro. By this time I was starting to feel incredibly tired and although the meal I had was really good I don't think I fully appreciated it as I just wanted to get back to the hotel and get some sleep.

Saturday
Today's excellent breakfast buffet was at the Pan Pacific hotel. Again I showed a degree of restraint, but any gastronomic purists might have blanched at me consuming a couple of yoghurts, a big plate of fresh fruit and several pastries and egg tarts! I had a decent walk afterwards to use up some of the calories.

The rest of Saturday's food was served on small trays at 36,000ft on my way back to London....