Food In Shanghai (Part 4)

Day four in Shanghai proved to be one of the nicer ones. Everyone has gotten to know each other a little and had fun together so its beginning to feel a little more like family. So its natural that we had lunch together (not that we didn't for the other days but i just didn't bring my camera) and dinner as well. The weather is as cold as ever and getting worse....which is great for me actually, i was pining for snow to happen while i was there. It never did however.

Is that smog? Or fog?

Honestly, i have totally no idea at all what the smokey weather really is. All i know is, if its smog, its horrible. If its fog, its awesome!!

The Building

I'm really struggling to remember what this building is called but i can't remember it. Anyway, this is where i spend my entire 5 days in from 9am to 6am. Learning new stuff and getting acquainted with my new pals never grows old actually. So 5 days simply didn't feel enough. As you can see, all the girls wore cool long coats and winter wear while the guys decked in scarfs and long johns. Not me however, i braved the world with normal daily garb and felt perfectly comfortable. I even managed to sweat in the circumstance. Imagine that. The weather holds steady between 3-9 degrees daily over there.

Pu Jing Bao Bao Hao

Our choice location for lunch today was a place that was introduced by the locals. Not that we had much choice since we only have an hour for lunch. Everything had to be had in the food street just across the road. Its a challenge to get across the road in the beginning but everything falls into place within the hour of getting to Shanghai.

Menu

218 chinese ren min bi works out to roughly $50 or so. And that price nets you 8 dishes suitable for 6 people. We had 9 people and added a few dishes which still worked out to be less then $10 a person for this entire meal. You'll never find this kind of value in Singapore for sure.

Soup

Very very bland and simple. This kinda reminds me of a dish used to wash my innards before having lunch. No discerning taste except the extremely strong taste of green veg.

Trotters Soup (meat portion)

Soup portion

This is a weird dish. In Singapore, soup dishes generally come with a whole bunch of meat and food in the dish. In China, the meat and soup are seperated. I don't know why this is the case but this arrangement will either work for you or it doesn't. It didn't work for me because the meat simply looks disgusting, needless to say, i didn't have too much of the soup. Its also worth noting that the soup itself is rather bland.

Ru Wei San Pan (combination of 3)

Eggs, peanuts, pork, beancurd and salted beef make up this cold dish. Seated atop soy based stock. The dish was very salty and a little sweet. I didn't take to the dish at all actually.

Lemon Chicken

Apart from the small and miserly portion you see here, the chicken meat was surprisingly succulent with meat juices and tender below the crispy outer layer. The lemon sauce was also a surprise because its very thick and full of flavor. A simple yet well done dish.

Stir Fried Frogs Legs

Not a dish for the faint hearted but its something i'd recommend easily. Frogs legs are known to resemble chicken meat in texture but much smoother and much more tender. This is definitely the case here. Although like everything else, the taste is definitely on the stronger side and most of the dish turned out to be fried garlic instead of the little amphibian, the dish is still good.

Stir fried green peas with beef

Note the ultra shiny texture and you get the idea of how the dish tastes like. The beef itself lacked taste actually and although the peas were light and crunchy, they have never been my favorite items so i can't say i liked this.

Stir Fried Pork with ???

Why the ???. Well, that because i've conveniently forgotten what these greens are called. The pork was chewy and tangy from the tomato sauce but otherwise forgettable. Somehow, this value meal isn't turning out as much value as it's supposed to so far.

Claypot Fish Head

This is something different for me and it would be for you too. See, the entire pot is made up of nothing other then fish head. If you look closely, you can discern the jaw, eye and assorted other parts of the fish. Otherwise, just take my word for it. Taste wise, its prepared in the same method as claypot beancurds go, which means its of the sweet variety. Other then the fact that it had minimal meat to satisfy my hunger, everything else about it was just average.

Steamed Grouper

As would be the norm in China, the fish is fresh and serving is generous yet again. The texture of the meat is soft and melts in your mouth but the preparation method this time around kinda missed a spot. I think the theme of this restaurant is quite simply oil. There's even a thick layer of oil surrounding this dish...to my dismay. So by this dish, everything is starting to taste real sick.

Stir fried pork with apples

Prepared using a pork of the pig i'm not too acquainted with, most probably the veins of something, the meat is tough and strangely chewy. The apple it is fried with is interesting because i ended up having more of the fruit then the meat since having too much meat had me feeling nauseous. Of course, the oil had much to do with the feeling as well.

Claypot Rice

More or less used to the fact that items here are separated as a norm. The claypot rice had the ingredients and rice separated yet again. The rice itself was dry and lacked significant taste while the la chang and chicken tasted pretty good. Sweet and balanced when taken with the rice.

Salted Fish Fried Rice

An additional dish of rice for fear of the lot of us not being full. We had the salted fried rice. This was strangely wet and as the name implies, quite salty. After all the food, it was difficult to swallow this as well. Which is fortunate because it really isn't very tasty.

Overall Score: 5.5/10 (service was terrible yet again)

Location

Address and website

And at night, the 5 of us once again decided to venture a little further out to get some grub and hopefully do some shopping. The girls once again decided upon a weird location for some spicy hot fun. In case you can't read mandarin, its written that they are the experts in preparing fish. Well, we'll see about that.

Salivating Chicken

Ever since my long lost visit to Xi Yan, i've not had salivating chicken for at least a year. This here is the actual salivating chicken, or rather, the China version of salivating chicken. Its not filling with sesame oil like the Singapore counterpart, but rather filled with chili oil, a little sesame and plenty of other items like roast nuts and ginger. The portion size was generous as well. Taste wise, its definitely spicy but bearable and the chicken is as tender as can be. Reflecting on the visit, this was one of the better items.

Wild mountain greens

I don't know my greens well so i can't tell you what these are. I was however filled in by my colleagues that the greens are grown wild and these were in season this time of the year. Honestly though, it wasn't anything special and tasted strangely bland.

Szechuan Ma La Shui Zhu Yu

We've been pining to try the Szechuan hot and spicy pot for days and finally we had a go at it. I only had a few pieces but i can tell you, its very spicy. Unlike the previous post where the pot only looked spicy, this one had "oomp!" and i couldn't stand too many tastes before i surrendered. The fish was as good as the rest i've had in China with the only gripe being the presence of bones in them. Try it if you like spicy stuff but you were warned.

Greens with shrimp and cashew nuts

I'm not sure but i suppose this is asparagus. The star of this dish turned out to be the supremely white and unappetizing looking shrimps you see in the picture. Though looking utterly not fresh and overcooked, the turned out juicy, sweet and crunchy which was a surprise. The greens were average though.

Soy based beef

Salty, salty and more salty. This was just too salty to be liked. Its like they dumped the entire can of salt into it. The meat was tangy and chewy but whats the point when everything is just salt?

Mushroom soup?

What can i say? Normal, clear, bland and tasteless. Not meat inside it, just mushrooms, cabbages and more greens. Not my bowl of soup, so to speak.

Hot Stone BBQ Butter Prawns

Now this, i have something to talk about. Yummy but oily describes it. The skewered prawns are soaked in butter and roasted to a colorful orange before being set atop a bed of burning hot stones and served. It easy to eat the entire dish as with the shell since its so crunchy and tasty. The gripe for this one is the rather small prawns which could have been better bigger.

Overall score: 6/10

Well, that concludes day 4 of the China food. Next up. My second last post on Food In China before skipping back to the Singapore posts.