First, let’s begin this food porn journey with a blast from the past – my Bostonian past. Remember that time I ate bull testicles? (There will be a video of me saying, “Mmm! Tastes like chicken!” when I head back to school and into the arms of that devious den mother, The Harvard Crimson) I also got a cool shot of our complimentary little peanut butter fudge dessert. Thought it was worth throwing up on here when I was browsing through my 304034 shots of fried rice and cartilage on skewers.
How I ended up at a Teppanyaki place in Puxi, Shanghai one Saturday to take this phot of the grill being set on fire by a long-suffering female chef with yellowing teeth and red lipstick is another story. Often, I stop and ask myself, self, how is it that I am sitting here, outeating a group of rowdy Aussie men I do not know? Oh well, keep picking at that fried banana. Life is strange.
Eggplant is probably one of the most underappreciated vegetables. It can soak up flavors so nicely, especially in a dish like this one, or seasoned on skewers. Better than meat, I say. Found near Century Park in Pudong, Shanghai.
I adore congee. I love it like men love Megan Fox’s bathwater. This was a particularly good pot found in Shanghai’s Dingxi Lu, a wonderful food street. We had prawns and eel in it, not such a fan of the eel which seems grainy, flat, and underwhelming compared to its fatty, barbecued Japanese preparation.
Fried mantou (steamed bun) with a sweet sauce made with condensed milk. Donuts? What are those?
On 1025 Nanjing Xi Lu, find a shikumen (traditional Shanghainese townhouse) lane where there are random cafes and stores hidden amidst the residential housing. One was behind the most unassuming of wooden doors, with nothing more than a plain, lettered sign on the door. A slender girl asked me if I was hungry, so I wandered into the tiniest, dirtiest, and most cramped of kitchens.
A young man was hurriedly stir frying a handful of cabbage with giant cartons of brown eggs at his feet, fish halves, vegetables, oil, and other materials littering the counter around him, all the cutting services still smeared whatever it was before. It made me worry about food safety, so I decided to have dinner there. The waitress recommended this dish.
It was something special. Since it’s Hunanese food, it’s very spicy, but a deeply aromatic, peppery kind of spice, reminding me a bit of Sichuan peppercorn in initial flavoring but without any of the numbing effect. The heat is more insistent and persistent, but not painful. For a humble dish made of cabbage and fatty bits of pork, pretty damn good.
The remains of an epic Japanese meal. My review will be out in the next City Weekend.
Children are most adorable when they’re small, dirty, and have their Crocs on wrong.
Crocs are really, really popular in China. I especially love it when I see couples unironically wearing matching, schoolbus-yellow Crocs with little cartoon character pins in the holes. Or when people wear them as gym shoes – no joke.
Remember my Henanese restaurant friends? I caught them cutting up lamb bones one night, which have a deeply unappetizing scent when raw. These will make the bone soup I love so much. This freaked me out a lot for some reason. Especially the flying bits of debris.
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wow man that is some intense pictures right there…. the bones man.. the bones… wow.
Posted by hellothere | July 16, 2009, 4:41 pm