Lingbo's Awesome Blog » China

Pizza Hut Now Serving Escargots

Lingbo Li — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:27:28 +0000

Remember Pizza Hut and how it began serving pasta in 2008? It actually serves quite a diversified menu in China, where I snapped this photo of escargots for offer last summer in Chengdu. Along with one of the saddest salad bars I’ve had the displeasure of sampling, they served a variety of pastas and hot-dogged pizza crusts. Slice, take note.

Drinks at M Bar at the Mandarin Oriental

Lingbo Li — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:25:51 +0000

M Bar at the Mandarin Oriental reminds me of Shanghai’s slickly overproduced watering holes. The difference is that in China, these kinds of establishments stock only the most svelte and snowy-skinned of waitstaff, the kind with faces that inspire as much protection as possession.

(The physicality of Chinese beauty hits you in a very different way from Western beauty. Even at its most objectified, the former maintains a certain distance from its sexuality. It’s softer – it doesn’t assault you from the front so much as it circles an arm from behind.)

In honor of last summer, I ordered their Mo-del cocktail, which featured notes of rose and lychee, very Shanghai. I appreciated the generous helpings of sugared almonds and olives, which helped cut a very stiff drink.

I could almost imagine those were expat men lining the sill of the bar and spilling over the banquettes. I was never sure what to think of them last summer, to see them as so many suited malcontents, or to envy how some were mindlessly adept at making the city their jungle gym. Somehow, it felt unfair.

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International food porn – Quails on sticks, donkey meat, prawns.

Lingbo Li — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:27:41 +0000

Some underwhelming prawns at Private Kitchen 44 in Beijing.

Donkey meat in Beijing at Noodle Loft… like beef, but with a gamier, greasier mouthfeel.

A roasted quail on a stick in Chengdu.

Now with a bit of love.

The Best Hairy Crab Roe in Shanghai, or, a Shanghai Dining Editor’s Must Eats List

Lingbo Li — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:00:22 +0000

Back during my tony days interning at City Weekend Shanghai, the benevolent dining and health editor would spit out recommendations with the efficiency of a finely tuned machine. I recently asked her for some recommendations for a friend in Shanghai, and I wished I had had this list when I was there. So in case you ever make your way to the Middle Kingdom’s most cosmopolitan city, consult this guide for what you should be inhaling.

Don’t forget these babies, the best breakfast crepes ever, on Mudan Lu, close to Pujian Lu.

———-

Joanne Yao, City Weekend Dining Editor’s Must Eats List
Vegetarian – Wu Guan Tang (try the carrot and potato faux crab roe, it’s amazing; the bags of fortune for a milder palate, the 8-plate appetizer set if you’re with lots of people, and knife-cut spicy mushroom noodles).

The crab place - must tries here are the dan dan crab noodles and the “yin-yang” pastries in the dim sum section (they’re fried halves of yummy glutinous rice, one stuffed with curried crab the other with lotus paste). They also have normal food (non-crab) too, if you’re on a budget.
for photos: http://www.dianping.com/shop/2093833

Cute cafes with actual good coffee have been popping up all over the place lately, so for coffeehouses, check out the last dining cover story. Out of these, my personal favorites are the Living Room, GZ Cafe and Cafe Dan for coffee and ambiance.

There’s Jesse’s for Shanghainese, which is a must try for anybody coming here. This is a good time to try their hairy crab tofu, which is delicious. If you want to splurge, then definitely get the wine marinated crab (it’s around RMB250). It’s freaken delicious, has lots of roe (it’s bigger than hairy crab) and can be split among 2-3 people. Also try the glutinous rice stuffed dates, the grandmother’s hong shao rou and if you are going with at least two other people, the fish head cooked in a canopy green onions (order this in advance, and always make a reservation).

The best sushi buffet in town is this place in Hongqiao. It’s around RMB220 for all-you can-eat sushi and all you can drink too (they have hot and cold sake, iced plum wine, milkshakes, etc.) For quality in a buffet setting, this place is the best. They have fresh oysters on the half-shell and sea urchin, steak, etc. They don’t skim on the good stuff.

Crunchy cartilage-laden chicken

Lingbo Li — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:05:18 +0000

I stumbled upon a Cantonese restaurant this summer when I was waiting for my friend to finish up work in Beijing. I had just had the worst “soup dumplings” of my life a few shops over where they were more steamed buns with juice inside that had long since leaked out. In desperation for a good meal, I saw a few people eating something delicious through the large glass windows of this restaurant and decided to give it a whirl.

There is something intensely comforting and yes, American, about Cantonese food since that’s the root of the USA’s rendition of the cuisine. I ordered a pork congee – soothing, fragrant, and creamy. Then a platter of this chicken dish which had a tensile crunch in each bite from the soft cartilage inside. I definitely skew more Chinese in this respect, since I love have some extra texture in the meat. The peppers were a gorgeous bright red, crispy, and fried until all the heat had abandoned their mean-looking flesh. Even the rice came nicely presented in a white ceramic pot. It seemed like a good photo, so I took one.

Fried, cartilage-laden chicken with fried peppers, pork congee on the side. Ancient cellphone mine.

The Coolest Bartender Ever

Lingbo Li — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:33:54 +0000

Here’s a bartender who can really shake it doing some crazy tricks with his weapons of choice at LAN Club in Beijing. This was where I tippled on a sample of mixologist’s Mao’s summer cocktails while bonding with the super fabulous PR guy about the crappy gay expat scene in China. No matter where I go, it seems, my fag hag abilities are never wasted.

I was actually there on work. My goal: to pick a cocktail as City Weekend Beijing’s drink pick. Here’s the triage of drinks I sampled: a cool cucumber concoction, a cosmopolitan reimagined in raspberry, and my favorite – a killer kiwi number made with a fresh, macerated fruit.

They have a crazy, Philippe Starck-designed interior with all kinds of mismatched chairs, baroque frames, a bathroom fountain where a silver goose spits water onto your soiled hands, and other fantastic imaginings. I sampled my drinks sitting in a giant, red velvet throne with a golden eagle sculpture the size of an 8 year old perched on it, no joke.

Here’s the writeup I eventually sent in, I don’t know what the published version looked like since I headed back for America the next day:

There’s nothing quite like the magic touch of a good bartender. As easy as giving two parts hard liquor and one part tasty mixer a stir sounds, sometimes we need someone like LAN Club‘s Mao, master mixologist. He produces marvels like their kiwi martini (YY70), where he’s taken a whole kiwifruit and mashed it into a fine, lime green pulp, then fortified it with premium vodka, kiwi liqueur, lime juice, and flavored sugar. The result elevates a somewhat belittled, misunderstood fruit into a whole greater than the sum of its parts – and has us swooning over a simple tipple. We love most of all how there’s a bit of pulp just to make it, you know, more real. “I never taste,” Mao declares of his creations. “I don’t need to.” You can snag it for half price on Thursdays, 9pm-2am, or get two for YY70 on their Wednesday martini nights.

Starbucks in China: The Good, The Bad, and the Sugarfree

Lingbo Li — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:52:27 +0000

A Starbucks in Chengdu, China

While Starbucks is sometimes seen as a monolithic coffeeslinger to the upwardly mobile masses, the coffee chain’s branches abroad don’t entirely conjure up home. Though it’s mostly a deliciously familiar task of navigating between tall, grande, and venti, be it NYC or Shanghai, I felt alienated at times without my standby sugarfree option and decent English magazines. (I wrote about how much I adored Starbucks in my post about being culture shocked.)

Starbucks is transliterated/translated as 星巴克 (xing ba ke, literally star + transliteration of “bucks”). They’ve done an admirable and interestingly incomplete job of localizing its stores.

Overall, I will say that the similarities far outweigh the differences. Starbucks is not meant to be a Chinese experience so much as a Western one, including the quirky name scheme for different sizes, which is preserved. Its foreignness, that is to say, is a desirable quality. But the changes reveal interesting cultural differences in how – or which – people drink this stuff.

Some background: the Chinese coffee market is rapidly growing – one industry report pegs growth in the double digits – and there’s plenty of room for expansion. Per capita consumption hasn’t reached .1kg yet, while Japan, another traditionally tea-drinking nation, gulps down 3.3kg per capita. Starbucks first moved into the Chinese market in 1999 with its first store in the China World Trade Center in Beijing and has been expanding rapidly ever since.

Another Starbucks in Chengdu.

Coffee has really taken off in urban areas, where you can see expats and Chinese alike sucking down giant Fraps during business meetings. Here, it’s more a fact of daily life, but if you talk to the laobaixing (normal people), particularly the older generation and those not as well off, they’ll cringe at the idea of drinking coffee.
On foldout Beijing map distributed by the company, it not only maps every Starbucks locale (66 in total at the time of printing, 68 now), but also touts the chain as a blend of local and American culture. While the menu has a familiar slate of iced coffee, macchiatos, and lattes, I noticed major differences in not only drinks, but also the way they’re ordered.

Here’s a quick and dirty rundown of what you can expect.

What’s different.

1) There’s no sugarfree option.
Actually, the whole concept of “sugarfree” is pretty alien in China. Your only real option for sugarless drinks is diet Coke, and even then, that’s not guaranteed in most restaurants. So when you order your caramel frappucino, rest assured it comes with nothing but real sweetness. If you ask baristas about Splenda, they may look at you blankly (“Fake sugar! In yellow packets!” I tried to explain) but it is offered as a nod to those kooky Western traditions.

2) There’s less customization.
American Starbucks views a coffee drink as a make-your-own affair. The menu is not so much a menu, but a starting point for a perfectly customized, no whip, sugar free, extra shot concoction. Chinese people, however, tend to order coffee as it is labeled on the menu without lots of special requests – partly because most people aren’t that familiar with coffee in the first place. Some menus I’ve seen also have helpful, illustrated instructions on how to order a coffee, with steps like choosing a size and deciding whip or no whip.

3) Specialty flavors cater to local palates.
I tried a coffee with grass jelly concoction that would seem more in place at a bubble tea stop. Bits of black jelly shot up my straw, cool and slippery, as I marveled at the “glocalization” of a simple drink. The bill came out… a lot. Which brings me to my next point.

4) Prices are sky high.
The tall iced coffee, at 15 RMB (about 2.20 USD) is the drink closest to its US price. But since coffee is considered a luxury, lifestyle drink here, its pricing places it firmly out of the reach of many and even caused me to think twice about ordering anything but uh, a tall iced coffee. A simple vanilla latte is 30 RMB, about 4.40 USD, more than you would pay stateside. To put 30 RMB in context, a cheap entree in a Chinese restaurant in Shanghai would run about 15 RMB. A bowl of noodles is 5-6 RMB. Eat several meals or drink a latte? I would hate to choose.

5) There’s no extra charge for soy.
This is a land of soy!

6) People tend to sit and stay.
There’s a lot less takeout business (http://www.seattlepi.com/business/228728_sbuxchina16.html), and a lot more sipping, socializing, and meeting up. People stay for the experience, rather than just grabbing a pick-me-up and dashing.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: what hasn’t changed.

1) Baristas repeat the order in English.
One quirk, however, is “tall iced coffee” becomes “iced tall coffee.”

2) Similar snacks and food are offered.
There’s the same offering of biscotti and muffins, but wait: Starbucks-branded moon cakes! At insane prices!

Yep, that's 328 yuan, or $48 USD, for four decorative cakes. Or you could buy nearly 70 bowls of noodles for the same price. Or a five course meal at a very nice restaurant.

3) Tall iced coffee is pretty much the same thing – and price – on both continents.

It’s my standby cheap, low cal, caffeinated pick me up. When I was back on American soil, it was also the first thing I bought in the LA airport, waiting for my connecting flight. Some good things just never change.

4) Baristas are (bizarrely) friendly.
I have no proof that I didn’t just happen to have naturally friendly baristas. But if you’ve tasted service culture in China, you know that good, Chinese-style service tends towards deferential, not chatty. In fact, my cashier asking casually if I was late to work one morning as I dropped a bookbag on the counter threw me for a loop. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it in the US, but the day before, something similar had happened. Did they… train them to make small talk? I have to wonder.

5) There are plenty of competitors.
Just as Starbucks must contend with independent coffeehouses and chains like Coffee Beanery and Peet’s Coffee in the US, there’s even more visible competition in major cities like Shanghai where every other street sports rivals like SPR Coffee (http://www.sprcoffee.com/), Costa Coffee (http://www.costa.co.uk/), and the Coffee Bean (http://coffeebean.com/).

Happy caffeinating!

See my campy modeling spread; read my silly articles

Lingbo Li — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:17:02 +0000

Hi denizens of the world wide web and faithful readers of my blog, you might be interested to know that I’ve been hard at work updating the content. I’ve scanned a bunch of my reviews and articles from City Weekend, including my super-camp “Shanghai seduction” spread, and added some FAQ’s to answer all those burning questions. Feel free to ask more questions. I promise to post answers. Unless you are some 50 year old dude who wants to have a drink with me. Because I can tell you the answer: really now? I’m actually insulted. Is this some elaborate neg?

I had a baller meal at Gourmet Dumpling House last night, photos and commentary to come! I will also instruct you on how to eat a Chinese meal.

How to read a recipe

Capsule Review: Yak Butter Tea

Lingbo Li — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:49:32 +0000

Based on a tip by the City Weekend dining editor, I sought out something really exotic for a quick cafe break: yak butter tea. I already had warm and fuzzy feelings attached to yaks since a good friend from high school interned at Shokay, a social entrepreneurship startup that sells luxury goods made from yak down. I wondered if the strangely adorable creatures produced tasty beverages as well.

Tibet Cafe, on the famous strip of hutongs called Nanluoguxiang in Beijing, shines like a cheery orange beacon amidst the trendy boutiques and popsicle stands. I arrived around a slow lunchtime, so I took a seat in a deserted cafe. One cup of the stuff was 20RMB ($3-4), pretty damn steep for a drink, especially in Beijing.

I was pretty excited. Until I took a sip. I immediately cringed. It was like drinking salted curdled milk. It smelled like a pungent whiff of cheese, not necessarily a bad thing, but the flavoring was so strong that even when I went in for a third – and fourth – attempt, I couldn’t force it down without feeling kind of sick. The presentation in a solid black mug with the drink’s foamy white head was comforting, as were the Tibetan tapestries and bright color palette, but I just couldn’t force this stuff down. I held my breath and took a giant gulp or two, paid my bill, and left feeling kind of embarassed.

I guess there’s something for all tastes.

Photo of the Day: Beijing Roast Duck at Quan Ju De

Lingbo Li — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 01:08:51 +0000

BEIJING – You bite into the skin of this baby. The universe around you dims; the re nao din of the restaurant fades; there is only this gorgeous, golden piece in your mouth that seems solid until your teeth sink in. It melts. It slides, as sensual and full-bodied as a glass of wine; you gasp.

“This is the best thing I’ve ever eaten,” you hear yourself saying.

I

Lingbo Li — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 13:38:48 +0000

Found in Chengdu. All their restored cultural streets (where you can shop in trendy boutiques and dine in French restos) have a requisite Starbucks.

There is a cafe in Tianzifang on trendy Taikang Lu in Shanghai which is populated not by white Macbook-wielding, double espresso-drinking, tight pants-wearing loathsome hipsters, but by yeah, a lot of stuffed animals. That’s my friend Danielle embracing a popular cartoon lamb.

Here’s a prime example of “glocalization,” as we anthropologists like to say. Crayfish pizza, anyone? (Crayfish is a popular local dish which I wrote about for GoodEater.org.) Papa Johns knows that mere pepporoni is not enough to move Shanghainese through the door.

I paid 10 yuan (about 1.50USD) for this laminated photo in a tourist site in Chengdu. The girl who took it was curt and rude, declaring only the most bored and hateful-sounding of “SMILE!”s as she took a singular photo in front of several backdrops. So this was the only decent one, and I ended up giving it to my mom since she loves traditional Chinese dress. Me, I could definitely live without it. The necklines are way too high – qipaos a prime example.

Weird Eats: Bull penis and live scorpions. Also, Starbucks coffee.

Lingbo Li — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:14:06 +0000

My sojourn to Beijing was marked mostly by my daily (nay, twice daily) visits to the altar of that is holy in the Middle Kingdom: Starbucks, charmingly translated/transliterated as “星巴克” (xing ba ke). There, I soothed my cultureshock embattled soul with endless tall iced coffees; occasionally, I’d spring for a muffin or biscotti, which tasted excruciatingly American. It was like imbibing a potent concoction of NASCAR, Elvis, Old Glory, and apple pie.

When I wasn’t ensconced in Starbucks, I’d be wandering the streets, trying to find a nice, small eat. As I made my way down Beijing’s Wangfujin shopping street, I found their “xiao chi jie,” or snack street.

I knew they sold weird crap on sticks, but I had no idea that the scorpions on those skewers are actually alive. Best of all, the sellers would occasionally give the counter a slap, just so the little critters would wriggle their sad, doomed little legs. Can’t you hear their anguished cries? Neither can I.

Just to prove they’re alive, I uploaded a video.

I actually didn’t eat this, since I got a case of sticker shock. 20 kuai! For a kebab!! Of scorpions!!!

But I did what comes next: bull penis on a stick. I’ve totally emasculated that poor animal, brains, balls, and all.

Mmm. Uhhh. This is unpleasant. My male friend also gave it a try.

What does it taste like? Not very good. But it also wasn’t prepared very well – it had gotten very gummy and had an unpleasantly gluey texture. The texture varied from the shaft, which was wider and had a harder, almost cartilage-like core, to the tip, which was just gooey nothing.

I don’t think i want to repeat the experience anytime soon, but maybe I can blame it on poor preparation.

To cap it off, here are some photos from the Forbidden City, predictably overrun by tourists, including this overzealous Chinese woman covered by not only a parasol, but also a towel and sunglasses (not pictured).

Look how intense that is!!!

The perils of being Chinese in China

Lingbo Li — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 02:12:03 +0000

My China experience was often frustrating. Though I imagined myself to be extremely flexible and open-minded, living for 3 months in a foreign country, despite speaking the language, proved to be a challenge.

I am, for all intents and purposes, an American girl. If China taught me nothing else, it’s that my “Chineseness” doesn’t extend all that far below my skin tone, even if my Mandarin isn’t too shabby for a girl with her feet planted firmly on US soil since the tender age of two. When I was out with white friends, I was surprised at how the level of service was consistently higher. They were never seemed to bear the brunt of bored, dismissive glances or suffer through outright hostility. Chinese people, according to them, were so sweet and nice! Are you kidding me? I’d always reply, deeply jealous that I couldn’t slip a well-oiled path through my summer, coddled and swaddled in my foreignness.

“I think it helps that I don’t understand Chinese,” one friend admitted to me. “If I knew what they were saying, I’d just get angry.”

And I definitely had hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing moments of anger. There was the shoe repairman who ripped me off, did a shoddy job, then ignored me as I stood literally over his shoulder as if I were a statue. It was hard to explain at first why I found this so infuriating, but I eventually realized it wasn’t because of his crooked pricing scheme. I’m in the fortunate position where I can afford to get a little bit ripped off – what I wanted was better treatment in return. I suddenly hated hovering in cultural limbo and realizing at the same time how arrogant and self-serving my dissatisfaction was.

If only, I mused, I looked as white as I felt.

Let’s compare two situations: interactions with Chinese service people by myself, and when I was with foreign friends. If I was by myself, service could range anywhere from abominable to decent. It was a dice throw on however they felt that day – one time, I tried to buy a skirt and the shop girl gave me nothing but attitude, marked up the price for no apparent reason, and seemed angry my arrival forced her to get up from her chair. (It was so ridiculous that I didn’t buy the skirt.) An editor at City Weekend one time had me call up a shop in English, even though I could speak Chinese, just since by virtue of sounding like a foreign customer they’d make the effort to actually answer her inquiry.

Of course this isn’t ALL service in China. I’ve also had my share of truly friendly, professional, and memorable service experiences, particularly with good taxi drivers. But the best way to ensure prompt, respectful service is just to be obviously, blatantly foreign. People are far more helpful and forgiving, in part because the “laowai” represent the moneyed expat class. It’s a double edged sword, and one I wished I were on the opposite side of for convenience’s sake. Why see the “real China” when it’s one that’s even more unpleasant and humiliating than for Chinese locals who know the ground rules? Why would I want to sign up for a summer of waiters copping attitude when I genuinely wanted to like the culture and people?

People most of the time sensed I wasn’t really Chinese. 90% of the time, they’d guess I was Korean. One time I even just told a DVD salesman I was, only to be called out on it by another customer who asked for a Korean TV series recommendation. (Sorry, I told her, I’m a Korean girl who only watches English films.)

There’s a part of me that’s bitter about the summer I could have had. I imagine some of the more traumatic experiences might have been erased – like that time a shop girl pointed to a Chinese sign and bitchily asked me to read it, just to humiliate me with proof of my semi-illiteracy. It’d be pretty unlikely she’d try to pull that on a blonde customer with accented Mandarin. I may have seen a more authentic China, but sometimes, I found it exhausting and painful in a remorselessly personal kind of way. It’s probably why I fell in love with Starbucks while I was there, taking comfort in American drinks and Western-style service. It was a relief not to have to worry about whether they’d take credit cards, make change for me, or get my order correct. Sometimes, you just want coffee. And pizza. And burgers…

Shanghai’s Swedish Chef at T8

Lingbo Li — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:54:40 +0000

For City Weekend, I had a great meal at Xintiandi restaurant T8, billed as one of the world’s top 50 by Conde Nast in 2003, which is now headed by Swedish Chef Roger Johnsson. We ended up chatting after the meal for quite awhile and talked about the food industry, crazy eats, Anthony Bourdain, and preparations of crayfish, among other things. He’s very likable without being over the top, and is turning out a menu of T8′s signature East-meets-West cooking with a strong Scandinavian slant. It’s the kind of food that rewards a bit of thinking and slow chewing to pick up on some of the witty touches, like a sprig of dill that hints at his culinary birthright.

When my coolly elegant waitress brought over this dish and pronounced it “lobster ravioli,” I wasn’t sure what to expect. It took the most bare concepts of ravioli – filling in between two flat pieces of pasta – and used that as a springboard into some other foodstuff altogether. The toasted nut salad on top served as a spicy entree into a refreshing offering below, which married the lobster filling with a crisp bed of green mango and jicama slaw. In between bites, I sampled the sweet rice wine froth piped on the edges. It’s a lot of flavors, but if you eat it patiently, you appreciate the highwire balance between each of the components: just enough of that, just the right sweetness of this, all anchored with a cool crunch at the bottom.

Cured salmon roulade stuffed with goat cheese, sweet corn soup on the side. Those are spicy cornflakes dotting the surface of the soup!

Seafood lasagna, prawn-lobster, salmon-abalone, ginger okra, saffron sauce

Bacon wrapped scallops and crispy prawn, green curry braised leeks, purple potato pancake, orange beurre blanc. I’ve had quite a few bacon wrapped scallops in my day, and while this is a dish that is always delicious on principle (as literally anything involving fresh bacon is), I loved the golden sear on the scallop – too bad I was pretty full by this point already.

And a lighter note to end on: Peach Martini – white peach sorbet, raspberry cream, candied popcorn.

A big bite of Sin

Lingbo Li — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 03:22:25 +0000

Pick up a copy of the next City Weekend for my “I’ll regret this in a few months, but this is still pretty hilarious” appearance in the cover story. The genetically-blessed male specimen on the left is the boyfriend of the editor’s friend, who appears as one of my wingwomen (if wingwomen to short Asian girls are always so Amazonian) in the photos.

I had no part in writing the story and merely lent a pair of high heels and a permanently quizzical facial expression to ham up various portions of the sad, sorry tale of the mating dance. The kind that begins with 43 year old married bankers to whom gravity has not been kind and ends in the male being eaten alive. Oh wait, that’s in the animal kingdom. Or is it? Stay away from that serpent, Adam.

Asian wives and girlfriends