Category Archives: Shanghai

Saturday Lunch at the Grumpy Pig

17 May 2013

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The last time we went to Grumpy Pig (on a Sunday), there was only the brunch menu. This time, we had the regular menu.  All to ourselves.

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So we ordered the things that we missed very, very much.  Green papaya salad with orange and watermelon, pulled pork summer rolls, and Shanghainese spring rolls.

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I’d been hooked on the summer rolls (stuffed with pork, mushrooms, and cabbage) since last autumn, when I powered through six (by myself) while waiting for Myra and her parents.  When I need to pass the time, there are often food items involved.  Sometimes six of them, even.

After our warm-up, we ordered the barbeque ribs and, my favorite, the pork dumplings.  By we, I mostly mean yours truly.

DSC_0011 DSC_0012 DSC_0015The ribs were interesting – beer-braised, with a cumin-heavy dry rub, then “ghetto-smoked” in some contraction the Grumpy Pig kitchen figured out.  Not bad, actually – the best barbecue ribs I’ve had in Shanghai, for sure.  I could’ve used a more liberal dose of BBQ sauce.

And my favorite pork dumplings were as delicious as ever, overflowing with juicy chunks of pork.  Essentially the opposite to the thin-skinned soup dumplings so popular in Shanghai.  A much-needed boost of pork.

And that’s basically what I look for in life.  Pork.  In its various, amazing, God-given forms.

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Yet Another Pun – Pho-Tastic on Wuding Lu, Shanghai

23 March 2013

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Myra and I have been frequenting the new Vietnamese place down the street from our apartment.  It must be a prerequisite of all Vietnamese places, namely pho shops, that the name of the restaurant be a lousy pun.  Before they can begin to think about the menu and location and all the other silly little details, any Vietnamese restaurant owner must first find a reasonably punny title for their upcoming pho project.  Sorry, any self-respecting pho shop owner, that is.

Frankly, I just want a good reliable Vietnamese restaurant without having to feel like an idiot when referring it to friends or typing the name out on any device with a screen.

So I resolve to type it out once and then not to refer to the place by name in the rest of the post: Pho-Tastic, on 1097 Wuding Lu across from Laowang and down the street from Enoterra, Le Cafe des Stagiaires, Lab, etc.  Right next to the gas station.

We ventured upstairs once but the staircase is a dauntingly steep and not worth the fuss if there are seats downstairs.  As for the food, I suppose I’ll have a much better point of comparison in about two weeks when Myra and I head to Ho Chi Minh City, but I found the beef pho and the pork chop (the other thing I usually order, with either rice or bun noodles) to be pretty reliably tasty.  The soup isn’t complex or unique, but a squeeze of lime and some peppers help you deal with it.  The noodles are consistent, slightly salty, and the beef balls are potently savory in that fried garlic sort of way.

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So Much Madison – Sunday Brunch

23 March 2013

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I’d heard a lot about Madison’s infamous brunch over the past year, so it was exciting to get a shot at it.  The only setback was that we couldn’t get a table (for eleven people) until two-thirty in the afternoon.  Which then meant that many items (food & drinks) were sold out, including orange juice (oddly, for a brunch establishment).  Noted, I suppose, to come (much) earlier.

Either way, the country-fried wagyu steak (with chorizo gravy) and the chicken waffle sandwich were still available, so I ordered them:

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Henkes – Reel Mall, Shanghai

23 March 2013

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Henkes is a relatively new addition to the Mr. Willis group of restaurants, in an expansive space in Reel Mall in Shanghai’s Jing’an district.  The lighting and ambiance is very similar to the Anfu Lu Mr. Willis, dark on the whole, with bright spotlights over the tables.  It did help make the cavernous space feel somewhat more intimate; I hardly noticed the other tables, as had been the case the last few times I’d come to Henkes.

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Our friend Fanny was back in town from Hong Kong, so a small group of us gathered for a relatively late dinner.  We started with a few things to share – grilled king prawns (with apple and fennel salad), fried calamari with pistachio, a caprese salad of sorts (with pine nuts), and a cheese platter (taleggio, asiago, and gorgonzola, with walnuts and dried figs).  The prawns were quite plump and tasty, with a good dose of smokiness to contrast the thin, very tart slices of apple in the salad.  The calamari was passable, appropriately crispy but the squid itself was too thin and flavorless to notice.IMG_0286 IMG_0280 Continue reading »

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Christmas Eve Dinner at Madi’s – Shanghai

31 December 2012

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I thought it would be a nice way to gather our merry band of expats and (hearty) eaters.  On a festive night we in past years usually spent huddled with family, some of Madi’s butter-blessed American comfort food would help us overcome our collective nostalgia.

The more formal (and significantly less lit) half of Austin Hu’s Fenyang Lu location was up and running, although only serving a Christmas chef’s menu – and with our group’s appetite and adventurousness (and our lack of patience and abundance of hunger), Madi’s seemed like the better bet.  I was also comforted by the fact that some Christmas specials were added to the usual à la carte menu, at least a nominal sign that not the entire kitchen’s attention was devoted solely to the chef’s menu.

Our dinner in sum was delicious.  The griddled short ribs really surprised us, and the first plate (we ordered two) was made really well – a lot of umami, just the right amount of char.  The broccolini salad and the brussels sprouts were also very tasty, cooked to just the right level of crunch.  While I liked the composition and texture of the burger, and while I appreciated the toasted brioche bun and that it wasn’t cooked beyond a juicy pink in the middle, it was nevertheless too salty to get any condiment or bread flavors beyond the beef (which by itself was quite good).

The spicy hot chocolate is firmly established in my canon of desserts, due solely to Madison’s version.  At face value, we ordered the brown butter ice cream (who can resist brown butter) but it turned out tasting more yogurt-y, without the depth of flavor that one might hope for.  But the apple tart, hot, thin, and crisp, and topped with a scoop of goat cheese gelato, helped end the night on a strong note.

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In truth, I was somewhat disappointed that the regular Madison menu, to which we still had access on my last visit to Madi’s, was not available.  The coppa ham, fig, and burrata salad (from the regular Madison menu) had been a highlight of my last meal, so I was hoping to mix-and-match a bit tonight as well.

Still, Madi’s and its homey and warmhearted offerings were perfect for what we wanted most at the end of the day, a window-side view of a festively adorned Christmas tree and long table to host the boisterous company of good friends.

Madi’s
Bldg 2, 3 Fenyang Lu (near Huaihai Lu), Shanghai
汾阳路3号 (近淮海路)

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Hotpot at Laowang – Shanghai

31 December 2012

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A great way to shake out the cold in your bones is to plop down with some friends at a good hotpot place and fill your stomach with warm soup and a wonderful array of meats, seafood, veggies, and anything you can cook in a boiling vat of delicious.

Shanghai has a whole range of hotpot restaurants, from the fast-food (Little Sheep) to the kitschy (Haodilao, well-known for its service, pre-seating manicures, and in-house auteurs of performance-oriented noodle-tossing) to the high-end organic (Qimin).  Laowang, which I’d first visited some months ago, is a Taiwanese brand doing Cantonese-style hotpot, has a location close to my place in Jing’an, and is my go-to place for such chairbound exercise in heat transfer (and overindulgence in cheese-filled shrimp balls).

DSC_0716-001Laowang has a self-service sauce bar, and my usual mix is a scoop of diced garlic, lots of salt and a heavy, heavy pour of sesame oil, modeled after the side bowl of sesame oil I kept seeing in Sichuan spicy hotpots in Chengdu.

DSC_0711-001DSC_0692-001As we waited for the non-spicy half of the soup (which is supposed to be drunk first before cooking anything) to boil, we tide ourselves over with a pitcher of fruit-and-vegetable tea and a delicious claypot of rice, seasoned with bits of sausage and full of charred bits (like bibimbap).

DSC_0696-001DSC_0702-001DSC_0703-001The ingredients for the hotpot are a diverse mix of raw and pre-made things, cooked and uncooked: egg dumplings, mushrooms, noodles, tofu, and so on and so forth. Continue reading »

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Old Jesse – Shanghai

27 December 2012

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I’d heard quite a lot about the original (Old) Jesse, famous for its spot-on Shanghainese classics and its nostalgic environs (on an unassuming, leafy side street just off a busy former French Concession intersection).  From the sidewalk, its handing placard felt almost saloon-like.

DSC_0717Ducking down through the door and descending the narrow stairs into the first floor dining room felt like walking into somebody’s house, even more cramped than my previous encounters with regional cooking at other hole-in-the-wall sort of places.  Those joints, namely Little White Birch and Restaurant Art Salon, felt roomier and kitschier, respectively.  Jesse’s bare brick walls and its steep staircase to the upstairs tables, squeezed together economically, breathe quite claustrophobically.  Yet, by noon on a Monday, coincidentally the timing of both my visits, the place is starting to fill up, a few tables already mid-meal.  The bare simplicity of the arrangements also recall a step back in time, as do the cabinets, faded china, and chipped claypots.

On both my visits, we chose dishes from the first page of specialties, mixed in with some random picks from the remaining pages.  The first trip, we started with two cold appetizers, salted chicken and jellyfish in scallion oil.  Shanghainese cooking features a heavy dose of sweetness, often in a soy sauce braise or stir-fry, and two of our next dishes – grandma’s pork with bamboo shoots, and stir-fried long beans and potatoes – both had this flavor profile.  We also added a mapo tofu, because we wanted to see its Shanghainese interpretation and to have an element of spice.

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Aux Jardins – Hotel Massenet, Sinan Mansions (Shanghai)

25 December 2012

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In recent weeks, I’ve been to at a fair number of Western restaurants, mostly as part of some ongoing research for a restaurant project I’m working on.  A number of Shanghai’s restaurants ran the gamut of different ways to be underwhelming.  It was hard to find much excitement in the city’s offerings, the few exception being Madi’s, and surprisingly, Aux Jardins, the hidden-away French restaurant at Sinan Mansion’s leafy and serene Hotel Massenet.

From the hotel’s gates on Sinan Lu just past Fuxing Lu, Aux Jardins is hard to find, tucked behind the hotel’s other onsite (Chinese) restaurant.  I had to ask a nearby guard, but once found, I filed up a slender staircase and entered past the small reception (which is really just a staircase mezzanine), and into the quiet, carpeted dining room.  As it was, primarily candlelit, and swathed in gray tones, the interior would’ve been more welcoming with a handful more guests and a few more notches of volume.  But it was a Monday night, and even expats who adore Jose’s cooking (an Alain Ducasse alum, he’s the head chef here) don’t typically venture this early in the week.

Our introduction to Jose came via a French wine vendor named Jean-Marc, who seemed to like the simplicity and execution of the chef’s food, as well as the nostalgia it conjured of Jean-Marc’s Provencal upbringing.  Jean-Marc met us for dinner that night, a bottle of Hauvette rose and red in each hand, and Jose prepared a chef’s tasting, most of which we shared.

We started with grilled octopus (with a side of green bean, artichoke, and egg salad), seared foie gras with mushrooms, soft-poached egg, and black truffles, and scallop carpaccio with black truffle.  The octopus was tender and warm, and the salad alongside it was fresh and crisp.  The black truffles were surprisingly nice – not that truffles aren’t, but they are sometimes pungent, sometimes overwhelmingly so – but these were thinly sliced, fragrant.

DSC_0672-002DSC_0674-002DSC_0673-002Next, black cod Provençale, atop a bed of thinly sliced potatoes in a light chicken stock with tomatoes.   Continue reading »

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The Grandma’s – Shanghai

24 December 2012

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The Grandma’s is a humongous restaurant on the top floor of a somewhat dreary, half-filled shopping mall on Nanjing Xi Lu, an odd place for a place as busy as it is.  We’ve never really tried to make reservations there, but I suppose it’s possible, but some of the fun / insanity is braving the wait.  This is because the waiting area, thronged with hungry Chinese people (a scenario that is always pleasant), has some random year of the Victoria Secret fashion show projected on the wall on loop.  Not only that, the automated intercom consists of a little girl’s high-pitched voice, at a very loud volume, announcing numbers of parties in wait: “Number [whatever], Grandma says it’s time to eat!”  That repeats about three or four times per minute, on top of the constant hum of people.

Luckily, there’s a big Muji store downstairs that fills the time.

It’s somewhat a paragon of excess: the space is like a maze of tables (there must be several hundred seats) and the menu is Cheesecake Factory-esque in length and variety.  Each menu is fashioned after a couture or design magazine or a coffee-table book, in that way that only a Chinese restaurant can manage.  And in spite of that, we keep coming back.  The draw of Grandma’s is two-fold: one, a number of comfort food dishes that are consistently good, and two, the incredibly reasonable prices.  Myra had been to the Hangzhou outpost some time ago with coworkers, and the first few times I went to the Shanghai location, we’d gotten a few (greasier) things that we didn’t order on this particular visit.

We started with pickled turnips (one of those childhood favorites for me), and then moved on to pork ribs (a bit too hands-on), grilled eggplant, sauteed cauliflower, stir-fried beef udon, garlic scallops (on the shell), black pepper veal, and finished with a peanut shaved ice dessert (not pictured).

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On previous nights, we’d also gotten the Grandma’s roast pork, which comes in a claypot filled with grease, bamboo shoots, and smoked fish (the latter accouturements I am particularly fond of), but with just three less-than-starving diners this night, it was a difficult sell.

It’s easy to fill up at Grandma’s.  By dessert, we’d long passed the safe harbors of fullness and were busy ushering ourselves into the sweaty pirate coves of overindulgence.  On our way out, lingerie-clad angels showed us to the elevator doors, a casual reminder of the vagaries of dining experiences in Shanghai.

The Grandma’s
Rm. 701, 818 Plaza, 818 Nanjing Xi Lu / 南京西路818号7楼

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Ji Heng Beef Noodles 吉亨面馆 – Shanghai

20 December 2012

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Shanghai has gotten considerably colder in the past month, which is something my pampered face, spoiled and babied after years in Los Angeles, is not at all adapted to.  With that, two things.

One, I gave myself the license to regrow my beard as long as possible.  Which means I’ve gotten a lot of questions from security guards and people sharing elevators about where I am from.

Two, certain foods have jumped to the top of the list of cravings and necessities.  If such a list did indeed exist, it would be namely exactly that: cravings and necessities.  And the list would include bacon.

Think of said list as the Rick Dee’s top 40 of seasonal Chinese food in Shanghai.  What’s hot right now is noodle soup, big steaming bowls of bone-warming broth and slurpable noodles (I like mine thin, but Ji Heng also offers a thicker, more dough-y variety) to warm up the various nooks and crannies that the cold has managed to seep into.  Beef noodles are in general pretty popular in Shanghai, and this restaurant called Ji Heng around the corner from my place, does a mean beef brisket noodle soup, and also offers an array of soup noodles, small-plate appetizers, wontons, and other comfort foods.  The soup is satisfying and flavorful, without being too thick or salty, even when I add my usual dollop of pickled veggies and chili.  I usually go without cilantro, but that’s another available option.

IMG_1195IMG_1196The little side dishes are good accompaniments to the noodles, seasoned strongly and differently enough to stand out and actually enhance your noodle-slurping experience.  The hard-boiled eggs are particularly good, and the garlicky sliced cucumbers are another personal favorite.  The other dishes go well with an added element of spice: wontons and beef tendons come in a sheen of chili oil, with that distinct peppercorn spiciness, and the tofu (covered in chopped scallions) also comes with a side of chili dip.

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The other thing I’ve really liked about Ji Heng is its prompt service and the consistency of the food; unlike some of the other places I’ve blogged about in Shanghai, I’ve been able to frequent Ji Heng a few times, and each time I’ve come away satisfied and ready to head back into the Shanghai winter.

Ji Heng Noodle House 吉亨面馆
1021 Kangding Lu, Shanghai (Jing’an) / 康定路1021号, 上海静安区