What would a blog about Shanghai be with out mentioning the food (From Barbara)

[Note: Barbara wrote this post, but here I am, Bruce, adding a bit, as I see she included a photo I took of my favorite bakery's little buns.  The filling is sweet bean paste; the crust is tasty and sturdy, covered with sesame seeds.  The bakery was on the same street on which pianos and string instruments have been sold for generations.  It took me a couple visits to realize that "my" buns usually weren't out of the oven until around 1:30, when the young woman would set a tray on the counter to cool for a while before loading them into the case for customers.  Like myself.  Lurking about and waiting!]

Shanghai is a food lovers paradise. So much variety at almost any hour of the day, including a bunch of foods I might try once but would probably not eat on a regular basis. Bruce has already talked about our hotel breakfast. If we didn't want to eat at the hotel (with the benefit of free coffee and tea, and all you can eat veggies, yams, rice, congee and watermelon), all we have to do is walk out to the street and take our pick from a multitude of street stands, with fresh options every step.

At one shop a man is spreading a crepe batter on a flat burner, then cracking an egg on to the crepe, sprinkling it with various veggies, sauces and other chopped but unknown to me, foods. Then it gets rolled up, burrito style, eaten as is, as you walk down the street. Next door they are frying small dim sum (little dough wrapped ground pork), and next door you can buy a piece of watermelon or fruit, or a hard boiled egg, and down the road you can get some rice gruel (congee) with spicy, sweet, hot, salty, crunchy things to spoon on top for additional flavor.



It continues for blocks and blocks. You can also get fruit juice, bubble tea, milk tea or milk coffee at separate stands. (The only thing we have had trouble finding is lovely pots of tea. We havent actually gone to a tea house, but in less expensive restaurants asking for tea is responded to with bemused grins.). All of this is available every day, although it seems to peak on Sunday mornings.

Later in the day, there are a multitude of fried foods: flat fish, chicken, spring rolls and of course more dim sum - you can get these any time of the day it seems. Other food includes noodles, noodles and more noodles. Noodles can be eaten any time of the day apparently, in soup, dry, with Szechuan spices and peanuts, or mild with scallions and lots of other variations. Most appear to be freshly made or pulled (unfortunately for me- Barbara- most are made of wheat not rice.) Lunch can be anything from a fancier 'government' restaurant (often on the second floor of the building, where you can select from a variety of dishes to be shared by everyone at the table), or a smaller private place, which is small with tiny tables, often handwritten menus, and where it seems that you can just say what you want and they will make it for you- fresh on the spot. In these places you can have soups, noodles (of course) rice and a meat cooked in a clay pot or (big surprise) a huge array of dim sum. 

Dinner is the same as lunch. This evening we stopped at a hot pot restaurant (on the way to the subway, we pass a street of hot pot places, so it seemed appropriate to try it before we left). We sat down and the very helpful waitperson handed us a list of ingredients (in English, so I didn't have to use my handy cellphone translator). We picked some veggies, wontons, and fish (the waitperson let us know when we had ordered sufficient for two people). Following that a large chimneyed tureen was placed on a hole in our table. It was incredibly hot (it has glowing charcoal in the chimney core), the tureen filled with broth (from meat, onions, and other spices I couldn't recognize) and boiling violently. The various foods we had ordered arrived and we submerged them in the boiling broth to cook. Later we fished out the cooked pieces to dip in a sesame/hoisen sauce to eat- once it had cooled down. A great and fun meal, except if the day is hot and humid (we both got very red-faced being so near to the heat). The photos is of a very tired and hot Bruce with the hot pot chimney slightly visible. 

Another interesting meal was suggested by the brother of a friend who runs an art gallery in Shanghai. (He is Canadian.) This restaurant had a very Japanese feel but was filled with optical illusions. It is officially called People 7 in the French Concession.  To enter, you need to know that you have to run your hand between two pieces of carved metal, to open a large gate. Once past that entrance, there is a second entrance, also a gate, before you enter the restaurant. Inside, the lighting is subdued and the steps up to the restaurant are glass so it is hard to know what's a step and what is not. Once seated, we were surrounded by trees and greenery. Suprisingly for Shanghai, suddenly it was quiet, dark and I felt like I was in a tree house. The food was amazing- a variety of dishes mixing Japanese, Korean and Shanghaian foods. One particulary challenging part was that the bathrooms had walls of mirrors with dark lighting.. so it felt like I was in a maze, and it took some time to figure out where to go. 

Some surprises for us, as we contrast food in Shanghai with Chinese food in the US. First many dim sum places (the funky neighborhood ones) absolutely don't have tea, only beer, water and bottled juices. Rice is less present than we were expecting too. It can be ordered but it does not automatically come with meals, and often it comes at the end of the meal, rather than during.

More thoughts to come, but today is our last day, it is sunny and not too hot yet. We are off to Zhongshan Park to see and maybe join the older people dancing, doing t'ai chi, water brush paintings and what ever else we find.