Perched high above the clouds and chaos of the streets below, the other week I enjoyed a delicious meal in the world’s highest Shanghainese restaurant in Pudong’s iconic Jin Mao Tower.  Refined, contemporary Shanghai dishes from the Grand Hyatt’s Club Jin Mao were only matched by the Club’s exquisite panorama of the twinkling city below.

The extensive menu is a little daunting, but luckily I was joined by one of the hotel’s marcom interns, who helped me navigate the many plates on offer.  We started with a cold, braised eggplant and venison terrine.

The eggplant was perfectly light and refreshing, and unlike many varieties found in the city, was not cloyingly sweet.  Instead, its brown braising liquid played second fiddle to the actual vegetable, which was tender and a bit smoky.  The venison terrine, which caught my eye at first glance while scanning the large menu, was unexpectedly delicious and decidedly light.  Marbled with chilled jelly, each piece was delicate and flavorful without ever becoming gamy.

Then, like in any Chinese restaurant – from small hole in the wall to playgrounds for the city’s elite – we shared family style platters of meats, tofu and rice.

The meat dishes – a chili stewed pork belly and shredded duck tongue – were savory and toothsome.  The shredded duck tongue was bathed in a soy and brown sugared sauce, reminding me of both kaofu and slowly braised pork belly.  Spiked with anise and perhaps cinnamon, the dish was at once comforting and simple.

The fiery pork belly – stewed with chilies and scallions, wasn’t as punishingly spicy as I had imaged or hoped for, though the tender slices of belly were nevertheless succulent.

Tofu puffs, stewed with bok choy and earthy mushrooms were equally satisfying.  The puffs of tofu were the perfect vehicles to soak up every last drop of the dish’s silky broth.  Spongy and airy, the puffs were delicate and served as a nice textural contrast to the crisp bok choy.

Before ending, I made a request for the restaurant’s interpretation of my favorite street food, niángāo.  I have not found a restaurant serving glutinous rice cakes that can rival the ones stir-fried on the Shanghai streets.  But Club Jin Mao comes awfully close – the closest yet, actually.  Usually restaurant niángāo lack the intensity of flavors that street vendors create, often becoming bland.  And there’s nothing worse than a bland, sticky rice cake.  Club Jin Mao’s version, however, picked up many of the nuanced flavors from the street and presented a dish that could easily be one of the best found in this city’s restaurants.

For dessert, we shared a green tea steeped tiramisu and mandarin crème brûlée.  The brûlée was citrusy and tasty, but my favorite part of the dish was actually the accompaniment – candied sesame bark.  The sugary cracker was studded with black and white sesame seeds, creating a sweet, savory and crispy experience that I think would fair well if bagged and sold in stores on its own.  The Chinese riffed tiramisu was incredibly rich, and the mildly sweet jasmine tea ice cream served alongside it was a nice, subtle counterpart.

A few years ago, Dong Linfa – Chairman Mao’s personal chef – could be spotted behind the wok in Club Jin Mao’s kitchen, often cooking replica meals enjoyed by the Chairman himself.  Good enough for the Chairman, certainly good enough for me.  I’ll gladly be back next time I find myself on the this side of the Huangpu.

• ¥¥¥¥
• Club Jin Mao
• Grand Hyatt Shanghai
• 86/F, Jin Mao Tower, 88 Shiji Da Dao
• 电话: +86 021 5049 1234 x 8688

Tomorrow kicks off Shanghai’s sixth Restaurant Week.  Apparently, well over 13,000 reservations have been made at some of the city’s hottest tables already.  I’m not actually booked anywhere this year – by the time I got around to it, everywhere I wanted to go was already filled.  But, I was very fortunate to get a first look at the Restaurant Week menu offered over at La Brasserie the other day.

La Brasserie is part of group “A” – charging 118元 for a three-course lunch, and 248元 for a three-course dinner.  Considering the price point, La Brasserie is offering a pretty generous dinner, featuring Boston lobster risotto, a Flinstonian sized beef rib and a decadent strawberry pavlova.

Our meal began with the bistro’s signature French Onion Soup.  Gooey Gruyere bubbled over the top of the rich soup and slightly sweet soup. The lardon frissee – the other first course of which diners will be given a choice – is equally satisfying, though a bit more theatric as the delicately poached egg is pricked and dramatically oozes its velvety, creamy yolk over the salad.  The lardoons added a nice salty note, but their crunch was a bit lost among the many croutons.

The main courses will prove difficult for people to decide which one to try.  The portion of lobster risotto is generous, with large pieces of the crustacean stirred into the creamy rice.  Topped with an entire claw and part of the body, the dish pleases both visually and tastefully.

The meat, though, is quite the spectacle.  A giant rib is brought out, with two pieces of fork tender beef resting in a tangy, vinegary barbeque sauce.  The sauce is a bit overpowering, but the beautifully cut and braised beef makes up for that.  The accompanying potatoes and a medley of roast vegetables seem a bit of an afterthought, as its hard to steer the fork away from that beef.

Dessert is as indulgent and decadent as the main courses – a large and airy strawberry pavlova crowned with caramel floss.  The meringue is light and barely sweet, wrapped in a thin layer of whipped cream and dressed with thinly sliced fresh strawberries.  It’s all grand and delicious.

If you aren’t able to make it to La Brasseries during Restaurant Week, they’ll be offering this tasting menu for a while, though with a small bump in price.

Reservations for this bistro or any participating restaurant can be made through DiningCity at www.restaurantweek.cn.

• Lunch – 118元, Dinner – 248元
• La Brasserie
• The Ascott
• 6/F, 282 Huaihuai Lu near Songshan Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 

Last week a few friends and I met at the new crab place in town that’s run by the folks from the Haiku Restaurant Group.  Far from a crab shack, the restaurant is the group’s first foray into something other than Japanese cuisine, and a little more up market than their other concepts.  On Monday, the four of us followed the Disney-clean Shikumen brick-paved road to Xintiandi to try it out.

Greeted by the hostess with moist towels and a shot of chestnut scented water (both incredibly appreciated considering summer’s heat), we quickly settled into our table with an inviting medley of Singapore Street Food (98/186元).  Tender chicken satay wrapped in banana leaves, an addictively tasty fried carrot cake, a curry samosa and ngor hiang transported us to the hawker’s stands on the streets of Singapore.  We couldn’t get enough of any, but that carrot cake – a riff on China’s iconic turnip cake – was simply unreal.  Root vegetables like turnips and carrots seem to fare nicely when fried…

The menu isn’t typical Shanghai huge.  I like that a lot.  Instead of barraged with an encyclopedia of dishes, which always has me relying on a server to help navigate, Pulau Ketam’s menu is straight forward and just right.

After our “street-side” snack, we shared a tofu and spinach dish that was equally satisfying, yet more refined than the hawker fare.  The silky, house-made tofu (68元) sat atop a bed of wilted spinach and finished with dried berries and crab.

Then a butternut squash soup (98元) arrived.  Chili and garlic infused coconut milk created a velvety broth when puréed with the tender gourd.  Topped with a bit more crab, I liked the direction our meal was taking us.

A brief encounter with Pulau Ketam’s organic mixed green salad dressed in a sweet, orange vinaigrette (138元) was at once creative and simple.  The clean and crisp vegetables were accented with caramelized toasted walnuts and truly blossomed with the acidic orange vinaigrette.

And as if that wasn’t enough to whet our appetites for crustaceans, the four of us indulged in a single order of the filet mignon entrée (158元).  Bite sized pieces of fork-tender Shaken Beef were warm and comforting, the meats juices swirled with a burgundy reduction that was syrupy and sweet – but both in a terrific way – and earthy from the beef.

And then, the main event.  Dressed for battle with provided aprons, picks, moist towels and finger bowls, and with our game faces on, we dug into our enormous black pepper spiked crab (650元if Sri Lankan, 520元if Indonesian).  The fiery sauce was addictively spicy and had us constantly digging in, fingers first, grabbing and picking as much  of the sweet tender meat as possible.  I luckily shoved my way into scoring a claw, with the meat perfectly intact.  The sauce, pungently garlicky and peppery was tamed by a swirl of butter.  The only thing missing was an accompaniment of bread to soak up every last drop.  But let’s be honest; at that point we were ready to burst.

I love how shellfish can take any fine dining experience and make it all so much more inviting with fewer pretenses.  With sleeves rolled up and cracking shells, we surely made a mess.  But so did everybody.  There’s no elegant way to eat some of the world’s most extravagant seafood, and there’s something decidedly refreshing about picking crab meat, elbows on the table, surrounded by blonde woods and a fresh, contemporary atmosphere

We could have stopped there, but we were first presented with the restaurant’s signature garlic noodles – which were nice, but hard to appreciate considering our seemingly limitless meal – and a refreshing bowl of fruit jellies in what I’m guessing was coconut milk.  The dessert was a nice cleansing way to finish our glutinous introduction to the Haiku Group’s translation of Singaporean and Malaysian food.  As soon as we all took a bite of the dessert, the Americans among us instantly were reminded of something, but we couldn’t quite put our fingers on the flavors that nostalgically brought us back to childhood.

Until we figured it out – Fruit Loops!

I’m glad the Haiku group has strayed from the empire of the rising sun and has set its sights on something truly special and unique in this city that offers so many other things.  I will be back.

• ¥¥¥¥
• Pulau Ketam
• Xintiandi, South Block
• Unit 1, Lane 123, 2-3 Xingye Lu near Madang Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 5306 3706

While walking back to my office last week, I stumbled upon something really special in the spot that used to house French bakery, Paul’s.  Open for just six days and already wildly popular during lunch, Green & Safe is an organic market with a deli counter serving fresh salads, sandwiches, pastas and sous-vide meats.  Think a bite sized, Chinese Whole Foods.

Originating in Taiwan, Green & Safe sources all of its produce and organic meats from its farm nearby Kunshan.  They are committed to sustainability, organic and local produce and provisions.  The vegetable section, located outside is rather delightful.  Approaching the vegetable stand bins, the air is perfumed by the abundant basil and rosemary, as if transporting me to the market’s very own herb garden in the Chinese countryside.  All vegetables and herbs are seasonal and only 15元 per jīn.  That’s a steal for some things, and robbery for others.  But the quality is great.

Inside, the store is littered with fruit bins and artisanal, organic products like jams, sauces and spices.  Rice is freshly pulverized into flour to order.  Rounding the corner, there are organic wines, baked goods and frozen cuts of chicken.  Really delicious chicken.  Last week I bought a beautiful butterflied leg and thigh for 18元.  It’s a shame it’s frozen, but I guess that’s what they mean by Green & Safe.  I was promised that more is to come – in all sections of the store.

The deli counter is full of interesting salads, all a little Eastern-Western fused.  Take, for example the Deviled Tea Egg.  While imaginative – and artfully tie-dyed – the soy and tea flavors of the egg are completely lost, though the creamy yolks and crisped garlic garnish serve as nice distractions.  I also tried the Curry Chicken salad the other day – very tasty and light.

Service is a bit confused.  Staff – of which they are many – are very eager to be helpful.  But like in most Chinese retail stores, that helpfulness and eagerness quickly turns bothersome.  I was walking around the store, trailed by two people the entire time, at the ready in case I ever had a question.  I’m actually pretty putt off by this in general.  It’s 100 degrees outside.  I’m schvitzing.  I’m irritated.  Get away from me.

But I appreciate the effort of people being available to help explain the concept to people not familiar with the glory of Whole Foods.

And ironically, the staff behind the counter – while trying so desperately hard to be of some help – aren’t any help when it comes to the menu.  For lunch today, I wanted the sous-vide beef tenderloin.  I asked if I needed to order a salad or something else with it, to which the cashier said “absolutely not – it’s a lunch set.”  However, I was presented with a large empty plate with a pile of sliced roast beef.

To be fair – the beef was superb and cut thick and generously.  The tenderloin was well marbled, perfectly seared and succulently tender.  But that’s not lunch.   That’s just a plate of meat.  So, I went back and ordered a tofu caprese to round it out a little bit.  The simple and bright tomato salad was deliciously sweet with creamy and delicate slices of Japanese tofu in place of mozzarella.  I liked the dairy free bait-and-switch.

Green & Safe’s been open for just shy of a week and I’ve already been half a dozen times.  I go after work to pick up produce for dinner.  I go for lunch to grab something quick, healthy and toothsome.  Once they smooth out the rough edges and get a few more things in stock, I’ll probably never shop anywhere else.  I truly admire the store’s steadfast commitment to educating consumers about the importance of using organic, sustainable – and most importantly seasonally local – ingredients.

Oh, and upstairs there’s a tapas bar which I’m eager to try…

• ¥¥-¥¥¥
• Green & Safe
• 6 Dongping Lu near Hengshan Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 5465 1288
• www.green-n-safe.com

In the summer months, I’m less likely to wake up and grab a jianbing on the way to work in the morning – the idea of eggs hard boiling in the summer heat waiting to be cracked onto a bing isn’t all that appealing to me.  So, I usually opt for quick, tasty breakfasts at home.

Lately, my go to morning meal is a nice bowl of granola and yogurt, and I’m a huge fan of all of the Smarty Granola flavors out there, especially the Cranblack Sesame and Apple Cinnamon.

Started right here in Shanghai, Smarty Granola makes incredibly healthy and nutritious granolas featuring antioxidants and interesting Sino twists (red bean and blueberry!) on the Western breakfast classic.  The Cranblack Sesame is loaded with dried cranberries and black sesame, and dotted with toasted peanuts.

I’ve had the best consistent luck finding bags of it at Feidan on Anfu Lu (and usually I buy a few at a time), though I’m sure City Shop and other expatty places carry.

A bowl of Cranblack with thick and tangy Greek yogurt: breakfast is served.

www.smarty-granola.com

One of my favorite things about summer is the availability of in season juicy, plump tomatoes.  They need only to be prepared really simply – or not even at all, just sliced and enjoyed.  I usually grab some seven grain bread from Baker + Spice, schmear a little bit of mayo on top and then load it with thick slices of tomatoes with a little salt and pepper.  It’s great.

Today, however, I found myself at Greek Taverna for lunch, and couldn’t resist their regular Greek Salad, made better because of the seasonally delicious tomato.

Before my salad, however, we ordered a small bowl of silky hummus, finished with a drizzling of Greek olive oil.  Simple high quality ingredients – garlic, lemon, chickpeas and oil – were perfectly blended into a thick and velvety dip, sticking well onto grilled pitas.  The lemon was bright and light, and did not overshadow any one component.  Too often, hummus is excessively lemony.

My salad served as a nice and healthy anecdote for this hot and humid weather.  Slightly dressed in olive oil, vinegar and a few dried spices the cumbers, red onion and milky feta stood well against briny olives and incredibly fresh tomatoes.  While the grilled chicken was surprisingly tender and moist, the tomatoes were the focus, each one dripping with summertime.

Usually I’m tempted away from salad at Greek Taverna – opting mostly for Souvlakis or Gyros.  But, today I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying lunch than that tomato heavy salad.

• ¥¥
• Greek Taverna
• 1 Yueyang Lu near Dongping Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 6431 7751

It’s ridiculously hot in Shanghai.  Ridiculously.  Yesterday reached 97°F/36°C, and when I walked to work this morning at 8:00 a.m., it was already 90°F/32°C.  It’s just too hot.

And so in an effort to not stray too far from the air conditioned comforts of my new digs, yesterday I sought out a lunch that would be both close to my apartment and incredibly flavorful.  A friend and I stumbled into Mia’s Yunnan Kitchen on Anfu Lu seeking a little shaded respite from the sun and to sample a few Yunnanese dishes.

Yunnan cuisine is well known for a few particular and delicious ingredients that most people don’t generally associate with being Chinese – cured hams and sausages, goat cheese and foraged mountainous mushrooms.  We kept that in mind when ordering our plates.

We ordered pan-fried slices of well seasoned Yunnan goat cheese, an omelet, some marinated cucumbers, a bowl of noodles and mushrooms and a crispy fried mint salad with dry fried beef and chilies, all washed down with a couple of refreshing juices– the vibrantly colored carrot, beetroot and apple blend was rather nice.

The simply prepared cukes, accompanied by a smoky dip, served their purpose well; they were cooling.  But the pan-fried Yunnan goat cheese was a far more savory starter.  Once fried, the slices of cheese were dusted with a salt and peppery blend that really highlighted the cheese’s natural tang.  The cheese is firmer and less crumbly than any feta, but its taste mild and light.

The omelet was also simply prepared – a couple of scallions tossed with thin slices of cured Yunnan sausage were folded into fluffy and tender eggs.  The dish could have used a bit more seasoning, but I appreciated the effort to highlight the sausage.

The most memorable dish and most beautiful, however, was the slightly fried mint leaves tossed with thinly sliced beef, ginger and chilies.  Using the meat as a flavoring, it was really more of a mint salad, with a few slices of tender, dry fried beef.  The dish was actually fun to eat; crunching on the singed minty leaves proved to be surprisingly light and refreshing.  The leaves were cleverly served on a napkin, which was able to soak up any excess grease, helping to not steep the salad with extra oil.  I’ll be back to this place just for this.

We ended the meal with a heaping plate of cold noodles, lightly tossed in sesame oil with sliced Yunnan ham, a few sprigs of cilantro and the region’s famed matsutake mushrooms.  According to the restaurant, the mushrooms are only found 3200m above sea level in the foothills of the Himalayas and provide a lot of nutrition.  Disappointingly, the mushrooms were actually the least memorable part of the noodles – and the sparsest.  What was delightful, however, was the salty cured Yunnan Ham.  It was the perfect foil to the cilantro and springy noodles.

Mia’s Yunnan Kitchen has been closed for the past few weeks due to a renovating facelift.  It’s back open, and just as good as before.  Most importantly though, because I find this heat to be completely insufferable, I’m glad it’s so close to my place.

• ¥¥-¥¥¥
• Mia’s Yunnan Kitchen
• 45 Anfu Lu near Changshu Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 5403 5266

I met someone for lunch at La Crêperie today.  Quite close to my office building, the Brittany café is constantly enticing me with buttery smells and the promise of salted caramel drizzled over sweet crêpes each time I walk past its entrance (usually en route to something a bit healthier).

But the siren’s call was too much to pass by, so we ordered a couple lunch sets to begin our tasty French nibble.

68元 is good for a choice of two savory and then two sweet crêpes for dessert (including drinks).  Add on a 20元 spot, and that’s good for the special of the day, with a choice of two even sweeter desserts.

I opted for the classic La Bigoudène for my savory tooth, and a crêpe with caramel and sliced apples for the sweet.

La Bigoudène boasts papery thin slices of French ham, emmental cheese and a barely fried egg, all enveloped in an impossibly thin buckwheat crêpe.  The actual crêpe is both buttery and tender, with the slightest nutty flavor, perfectly accenting the salty ham.  Topped with sautéed, earthy mushrooms and served with mustard vinaigrette dressed leaves, the plate did not disappoint, and the crêpe was the perfect foil to soak up each last drop of running yolk.

Admittedly, I prefer savory to sweet, but the salted caramel crêpe with sugared apples served as a nice counter to my main course.  The apples, which weren’t actually too sugary, added a nice crisp cut to the caramel.

I really like La Crêperie, and always leave very satisfied.

• ¥¥-¥¥¥
• La Crêperie
• 1 Taojiang Lu near Fenyang Lu
• 电话:+86 021 5465 9055

Everybody’s heard of Di Shui Dong in Shanghai.  It’s one of the first restaurants to come to mind when craving spicy, cumin scented food from Mao’s own home province, Hunan.  I’ve heard murmurings of complaints from wàiguórén recently though, suggesting the restaurant dumbs down its spice in order to appeal to westerners.  “It’s not authentic” or “it’s geared toward expats” is a cadence too often sung about this place.

But you know what?  I like this restaurant.  A lot.  And whenever I’m there (I frequent the Dongping Lu variety over Maoming), I’m usually one of just a small handful of foreigners even there.  The rest of the guests rolling up their sleeves and digging into huge spicy, fried ribs?  Chinese.  Real live, local, authentic Chinese people.

So, yeah.

It seems Chinese and expat alike visit Di Shui Dong especially for those fried ribs.  While they are delicious, a few friends and I wanted to stray from those cumin rubbed ribs and oily spiced fish heads that we love so much, swapping them for a stir fry of smoked tofu and thickly cut bacon, braised eggplant and a Hunan riff on one of my favorite street foods: niángāo.

The niángāo were disappointingly lackluster.  What I love about these glutinous rice cakes found on the street, is their ability to absorb nearly anything you fry with them.  A delicious sliced sponge ready for flavor; and since we were in a Hunanese restaurant, whose cuisine is defined by big flavors and spice, my expectations were pretty high.  And for some reason, whenever I order this dish inside the walls of a restaurant, they pale in comparison to the bowls fried right on the street (and for usually for a fraction of the price).  These were just simply and blandly dressed in oil, and topped with dried chilies.

But luckily, our next two dishes surely had us forgetting about any limp niángāo tubes.  A flame lit pot of a bacon and smoked tofu stir fry was incredible.  The flavors from the tofu brought out the same smokiness found in the bacon, creating a delicious medley of woodsy notes.  Tossed with chives, bamboo, ginger and a liberal amount of chilies, the dish was both punishing and pleasing.

The eggplant, also prepared with the mouth watering blend of Hunan spices, was also satisfying.  I find the Hunanese spice blend to have an even more robust flavor profile than Sichuan’s (though I prefer the latter because of those damn tongue numbing peppers).  The added cumin imparts a depth to Hunanese cuisine that is warm and exceptionally aromatic.  And the braised eggplant slices artfully soaked up every drop of the fiery oil.

Whenever I need Hunan food, Di Shui Dong does alright by me.  And they have an unexpectedly extensive Belgium beer list, too.

• ¥¥-¥¥¥
• Di Shui Dong
• 5 Dong Ping Lu near Yueyang Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 6415 9448

After much consideration and deliberation, last week I plunged headfirst into the Chinese blogosphere, bringing The Shanghai Foodist onto Sina Weibo (微博).  Posts will be in both English and mangled Chinese, so I welcome all to follow along as I snap quicker pics and post shorter quips about the things I’m eating.  And like any twitter/weibo account, it will be a lot more real-time than polished prose, so for those with attention spans shorter than jean cutoffs, you’re welcome.

There’s going to be a lot of hashtagged foods and pictures and twittery weibo stuff. #foodporn #shanghaistreetfood, #麻辣, et cetera.

There are several ways to link up: hit the twitter icon on the bottom left of the screen (yeah, I haven’t bothered to change that to a weibo icon, that’s coming…), or click this fancy link right HERE!

So, come join the seven other people following The Shanghai Foodist!

#shanghaifoodblog