Beef noodle soup – niúròu miàn – is a classic Chinese soup that is as popular as the West’s Chicken Noodle.  It soothes ailments and brightens up drizzling afternoons.  Like any good meat-based broth, bones (typically beef shanks) are simmered in a stock pot along with ginger, soy sauce and spices like star anise, cloves and sometimes cinnamon for hours, even days, creating an incredibly deep and flavorful broth.  Add in braised pieces of beef, tendon and a few green vegetables along with noodles, the soup is seemingly simple, yet completely complex.

This city, myself included, has been recently seduced by the newly opened European and heavily French accented cafés, butcheries and bakeries along the redeveloping Yongkang Lu.  The street seems to have everything; a beer delivery shop, Sheng Sushi, an organic Chinese condiment storefront and even a Fish n’ Chips joint.  The street is also home to Taipei Yongkang, a tiny lofted Taiwanese place dishing out satisfying bowls of this country’s favorite soup.

Needing a quick and warming lunch today, I ducked into the cozy café and ordered up a big bowl and within just a few minutes, my soup appeared.  The cinnamon and star anise scented broth is what draws me to this soup – simmered for hours with beef bones, the broth is silky and smooth, and the spices are perfectly fused without one overpowering another.  It makes the ever tender beef even warmer and brighter than most other versions.  I also asked the waitress to throw in a couple tendons into my bowl – the ones here are nearly perfect, almost silky; not cartilage-y and chewy like others found around town.

Rarely can I finish the portion of sturdy noodles, but today I was chilled and hungry to get warm, and these noodles did just the trick.  For 28元, they are reasonably priced, but beyond convincingly soothing.

Located exactly in between my apartment and office, I’ve been here probably more than I really care to admit.  Perhaps I’ll even stop by again for dinner tonight for another helping of delicious comfort…

• ¥
• Taibei Yongkang
• 66 Yongkang Lu near Xiangyang Nan Lu
• 电话: +86 021 6472 5443

After kvetching about this for what seems like years, we found two others who also shared our dismay of not being able to satiate our gluttonous cravings for this quintessential bar food.  The four of us finally decided that it was time to stop complaining and start a discovery of Shanghai’s best Buffalo winged offerings.

This is the Middle Wingdom.

Our first stop on this fiery journey brought us to the end of the earth and back.  Gubei.  Out in that neighborhood, we had heard of the aptly named sports bar Wings from Bubba’s Chili Cook Off,  and thought it a logical starting point for our road to Buffalo.  They supposedly had the best wings in the city, and we ventured out last night to put their spicy sauces to the ultimate test.

Each Wednesday, the bar offers a special on wings – forty with two 0.5L drafts for RMB 120.  We immediately put an order in, and requested a few of their different sauces to sample: Memphis Dry Rub, Cherry Coke BBQ, the requisite Spicy Buffalo and their legendary Johnny Cash.

The dry rub and cherry coke appeared first.  Initial reactions were enthusiastic, though a little mixed.  Our highly quantitative tasting notes found the Memphis style dry rub to be tasty and creative with “hints of dusted BBQ Pringles” lingering on the palate.

The sticky Cherry Coke BBQ sauce was a bit too sweet for me, but I appreciated the meaty portions – bigger than most in the city – and the overall composition of the wing; lightly floured, but deeply fried, allowing for the tender and juicy meat to hide underneath its ever crunchy skin.

Then the real prize was delivered.  Two plates of Spicy Buffalo and Johnny Cash.  The Spicy Buffalo received points for both presentation and authenticity; they were drowned in an impossibly bright orange sauce.  With the slightest bouquet of spice penetrating our noses, our mouths instantly salivated and we were ready to dig in.  The wings themselves were delicious.  Not as spicy as I think a wing described as “spicy” should be, but they were nevertheless tangy and loaded with a buttery Frank’s mix that made us nostalgic for America.  We’re thinking that the rest of the wings we sample in this city will be matched against these.

We then decided it was time to conquer the Johnny Cash.  One of the fry cooks brought them out personally,  genuinely cautioning us of their spice.  Bring it on.

They were loaded with crushed red peppers and seeds and coated with a thick, rusted red sauce.  The first two in our group who tried to tackle the challenge couldn’t handle the spice so well.  At first they insisted it wasn’t so bad, but within seconds, the insatiably spicy chilies crept up and their lips were burning.

As I bit into mine, the fiery chili flakes and tomato-based sauce created an almost euphoric experience of spice that was at once burning and addicting.  As if I couldn’t reach a higher level of spiced bliss, Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire came on overhead, calling me to my peppery Promised Land.  And as I went down, down, down the flames went higher.  My mouth was on fire, and nothing was there to soothe my scorched tongue.  But my stylish friend and I kept going in for more.

And in the spirit of Shanghai’s overindulgent nature, we ordered another twenty, but mistakenly received and ate thirty more without realizing it.  Our waitress brought out a plate of unordered black pepper wings; we ate the entire plate and didn’t realize our mistake of not ordering them until our other plates arrived.  Of the second round, we received another helping of the Spicy Buffalo and tried our hands at the Chipotle Maple, which immediately reminded us of a syrupy saturated chicken and waffle breakfast at Waffle House.

Winner winner chicken dinner that night?  The Spicy Buffalo.  They are classic and delicious and above all else, authentic.  The only down side I really saw with these wings besides the lack of real heat – though that’s pretty picky – was that Wings was fresh out of blue cheese sauce, a huge blow to my desire for a good wing with an equally good dipping companion.  But they promised they usually have it, so I guess we’ll have to set sail back to Gubei sometime to see.

Wings provided a nice start to our Buffalo discovery, setting the bar fairly high, up to which others should be measured.  Though, I think we all decided that it doesn’t take seventy wings for us to evaluate if a place is good or not, so we’re going to try and scale back just a little, or buy a few more gym memberships for the group…

If anyone out there has an incredible  Buffalo wing recommendation, let us know so we can see how it stacks against the rest.

Show us your wings Shanghai, and let’s fly.  Welcome to the Middle Wingdom.

• WINGS : ★★★★☆
• 620 Hongsong Dong Lu near Gubei Lu

Posted in neon marker outside the eatery on a blackboard, Waiting Café offers two changing lunches each day for RMB 35.  Besides the specials, only cheesecake is on offer.  Today’s choice was either a Seafood Fried Rice or a Black Peppered Beef with Mushrooms.  It was pretty chilly today, so I figured a spicy and hearty lunch would do the trick to warm me up, so I opted for the latter.

As soon as the owner took my order, she disappeared into the back room to fry up the steak and mushrooms.  Within minutes, she reappeared with lunch and a cappuccino spiked with hits of cinnamon.  The beef was surprisingly tender and flavorful.  Mixed with the mushrooms, the dish was both spicy from the pepper and star anise and earthy from the fragrant mushrooms.  The dusted cinnamon over the cappuccino actually tied the lunch together subtly and nicely, as the spice lends itself easily to star anise.  I do wish, however, there had been more broccoli than the single floret provided, but overall the meal was satisfying.

Only four people can comfortably sit in the café, which doesn’t seem to be a huge problem yet, as whenever I’ve passed by, I’ve never seen anyone inside.  But if more people discover this charming place – charming really because of the incredibly friendly owner – then people just may have to Wait for a seat.

I think I’ll shuffle this cheery place into my lunch remix.

• ¥
• Waiting Café
• 1323 Fuxing Middle Road near Fen Yang Road
• 电话: +86 (021) 6472 7752

Those are my basics – comforting things I can do a lot with when combined with cheeses, fresh produce, herbs and meats, and things I can survive on if all of a sudden there is some crazy nuclear disaster and I’m stuck in my apartment with not a market or restaurant open in sight…or during Chinese New Year.

But my Eastern section of that pantry is pretty lacking, and if I actually want to make a few Chinese dishes on my own, I should start with at least stocking a few basics that no Shanghai kitchen should be without.

So to beef up my long neglected Make It Yourself section and to better acquaint myself with these items beyond soy sauce and black vinegar, I’m going to highlight some Chinese pantry items through the course of a few posts.  Stay tuned for some cool and hopefully tasty recipes and join me as I create my Chinese pantry.

Perched at the bar so we could watch the chefs quickly grill our yakitori, a friend and I ordered an Asahi and settled in for a leisurely dinner of grilled meats and vegetables.  The yakitori on offer ranged from chicken hearts and livers to smoky eggplants.  Being a bit adventurous, we ordered a few hearts, but mostly stuck to tenderloins and more meat varieties we knew we’d enjoy.

To begin with something fresher – and healthier – we split a small portion of their seaweed salad.  Nothing innovative or exceptional, but the salad, dotted with toasted sesame seeds, was a nice start.  I don’t know what it is about these salads but I rarely enter any kind of Japanese joint without ordering one.  They are light and pair well with a Japanese draft.

After the salad, we were bombarded with our order of what seemed like hundreds of skewers of meats, mushrooms and green beans.  It seemed that most everyone around us was ordering a few skewers here and there in between their beers or sake, making it all a bit more relaxed and unhurried, more like tapas.  I’m sure we were given a few judgmental glances from the Japanese clientele, but our waitresses seemed to delight in our unabashed style of ordering.  They even came over a few times to help style these photos, rearranging soy sauce containers and making sure I was getting a supposed “good side” of a particular meat stick.

And after our seemingly endless spread of yakitori had been guzzled down, we ordered a smoked eggplant topped with pork floss and a couple cups of miso soup to help digest it all.  Considering how much I dig eggplants, I was surprised how much I disliked theirs.  It was too smoky and the pork floss was more of an annoyance than a delicious embellishment.  But the miso soups were standard and always a nice ending, though they did not offer any relief for our overly stuffed stomachs.

I’m not an expert on these kind of places at all – but I do like to go to them for a couple drinks and Japanese bar bites – so I couldn’t tell you if this place is better or worse than what a standard izakaya place is supposed to be.  But whenever I go, I’m usually satisfied, and it never hurts that it’s less than a block away from my house.

• ¥¥
• Da Ji
• 207-3 Maoming Nan Lu near Yongjia Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 6467 4789

On my way to work today, street corners that were empty last week were once again littered with pushcarts selling savory yóutiáo and flavorful jiānbǐng.  Freshly fried bǐng were being sliced and portioned into plastic bags.  Roasted glazed ducks and crispy sliced pork bellies were again hanging in windows.  People were cueing at bus stops and traffic on my street was at its typical morning halt.  And as I watched fruit vendors arrange their seasonal produce on mats outside their shops, refreshed from a week off of work, I briefly reflected on my own resolution for this year of the dragon: to be more committed to discovering this city through food.

That’s why I started this blog – to become more intimate with Shanghai and its people by looking at it through the lens of food.  To better understand daily life through observing interactions with food, taking note of people’s eating habits.  And for whatever reason over the past few months I’ve lost touch with that a bit and have subsequently neglected this blog.  So that is my resolution, to become even more acquainted with this place and the people that live here; born and bred Shanghainese, assimilated Chinese, minorities and expats.  The exceptionality of Shanghai is that it doesn’t belong to any one of those groups; it is not this insular and exclusively Chinese place or experience, and that is why it’s so electrifying.  It is also why food here is so incredibly diverse.

So, I hope you all continue to follow me on my quests for perfect dumplings and my discovery of cool street eats and restaurant ramblings.  And even though I’ve probably gained a couple jīn since I’ve started this blog, I’ve gained far more insight and wonder for Shanghai that is worth more than caring about any extra inches on my waistline.

Happy New Year, Shanghai.

It’s really no wonder that Lemon Tarts run aplenty here, considering Shanghai’s French influenced neighborhoods.  So finding the best the city has to offer wasn’t so hard.  These are my Top Three:

1. Mr & Mrs Bund : ¥¥ 6/F, Bund 18, Zhongshan Dong Yi Lu 电话 6323 9898

No list of Shanghai’s best lemon tarts could ever be complete without Paul Pairet’s now iconic “Lemon & Lemon Tart” (100元).  The clever spin on the classic bistro dessert features lemon sorbet, silky lemon curd and vanilla Chantilly all enveloped by an entire candied lemon.  The three-day process to make this decadent flavorful sweet is well worth the effort – with a single prick of the fork, the lemon filling oozes out and the whole thing disappears almost instantaneously.  Not only is Pairet’s creation the most imaginative lemon tart in Shanghai, it’s also the tastiest.

2. La Boulangerie : ¥ 60 Yongkang Lu 电话 3425 0210

While the newly opened trendy shops and cafés on Yongkang Lu have seduced Shanghai expats like a siren in recent weeks, La Boulangerie is no stranger to charming the city’s French set:  they’re the bakery behind Le Saleya’s desserts.  Their classic lemon meringue tart is simple yet superb.  Its shortcrust is buttery, its curd filling velvety and sweet and its meringue airy and light.  The generous 28元 serving is powerful enough to brighten even the darkest and coldest winter day.

3. hoF Bar & Brasserie : ¥ 1318 Lujiazui Huan Lu 电话 5010 0800

While satisfying our chocolaty cravings at Brian Tan’s hoF with bites of cakes and truffles, we recently discovered that chocolate isn’t the only thing he does well.  hoF’s classic French Lemon Tart (36元) boasts enough butter to make Paula Deen swoon and is both as comforting and as seductive as Tan’s staple creations.  The sweet and tangy filling stands up well to the crumble of its shortcrust base, but one of the best parts of tasting a lemon tart at hoF is enjoying it with a glass of their signature Grand Mimosa (48元) – Prosecco mixed with fresh orange juice and a dash of Grand Marnier.  It’s the ultimate citrusy indulgence.

Note: the ¥ rating here refers to a single portion of Lemon Tart

First restaurant on that list? 1931.  It stares at me every single day from across the street where I live.  I sneak a peak inside when walking past, always want to suggest it as a place to meet up with friends, but have still somehow never reserved a seat.

Stepping into 1931 is like stepping onto the set of a bad costume party.  Incredibly nostalgic for that bygone era, the restaurant tries hard to create a romantic atmosphere with heavy drapes and antiques cluttering the dining space, but it could probably afford to spend more time in the kitchen working on recipes than picking out upholstery patterns.

To begin, we ordered the classic Shanghai starter of smoked fish.  Although they were out, the waitress suggested a portion of their finless eel to start, assuring us that they “were basically the same thing.”  Within minutes, the finless eel came out, and to our delight, was what we had wanted from the smoked fish appetizer.  The eel was smoked, and then lightly fried before tossing in a sticky brown sauce and peppered with sesame seeds.  And although it was hard to distinguish the actual fish from anything else that could have been fried, the dish was good.

After the fish, we received a plate of guotie – eight delicately fried dumplings.  Each one was succulent and simple, and best enjoyed with its vinegary counterpart.  And after these two dishes, we were eager to see what else the restaurant could do.

So, we ordered a shredded roast duck, a melon soup, eggplant and a medley of desserts.

The duck was fair at best.  A pile of cold shredded meat was stingily topped with three thin strips of skin.  Served with the requisite shredded cucumbers and scallions and lumpy hoisin sauce, the fowl failed to impress or satisfy.

The rest of the dishes did not fair much better.  The recommended melon ball soup was more akin to a mysterious Traditional Chinese Medicine tonic, tasting like it could better remedy a head cold than satiate any appetite.  And even though the braised eggplant was less offensive, minced hot dog was used instead of seared ground pork to top the classic dish.

Desserts were typical and sweet – heavy on the whipping cream, but light on real complexity or flavor.

But the most odious part of the entire dinner had nothing to do with disappointing flavors or individual dishes.  It was the price tag.  All of this came to over 500元.  Considering the experience and the food on offer, I found that to be pretty inappropriate and unacceptable.  I will not be back.

Although this adventure was disappointing, I still begin the New Year resolved to try more places that I’ve always intended on trying.  Let’s check back in a week and see if that’s still true…

• ¥¥¥-¥¥¥¥
• 1931
• 112 Maoming Nan Lu near Nanchang Le
• 电话: +86 (021) 6472 5264

My first article was about my absolute favorite breakfast item sold on the Shanghai streets, and the other that came out this morning was about a nutritious and seasonally appropriate snack.  What I really like about Shanghai Family is that it lets me look at this incredible city through a completely different lens from my own; I really dig seeing how people other than twenty-something year old expats see this place that I love so much.

So check out my newly minted profileon the site and check out my articles!

Kush serves healthful and supposedly detoxifying food, perfect for cleansing both the body and mind after breathing in years of that Shanghai air.  Wanting a bit of a cleanse, a friend and I browsed the menu and decided to order a few things to share.

We started with the Fresh Spring Rolls (36元).  Thinly sliced cucumbers, carrots, tofu, rice noodles and basil are tightly wrapped in a thin sheet of rice paper and served alongside an uninspiring dipping sauce.  The ingredients are cooling and fresh, but lack any real imagination.  They are fair at best.

We then received a few drinks – a Cucumber Water Infusion and a “Detox.”  The 25元 Detox was a concoction of lemon, honey, aloe vera, ginger, mint and cayenne.  I ordered it based on the recommendation of nutritionist Allison Lochry, who suggested the drink for those who’ve been living in Shanghai for an extended period of time and have overwhelmed their detoxification pathways.  This particular detox takes aim at the functionality and efficiency of my liver.  Flavor definitely isn’t the focus with this drink, so it seems, but hopefully my liver runs a little bit better after a few forced sips.

The Cucumber Water Infusion (15元) tastes just like I’d imagine it would – bland cucumber juice.  In terms of Yin and Yang, cucumber juice is a great tool to help cool and balance an overheated body.  However, the drink is pretty dull and tastes a little bit like murky water.

The Roasted Veggie Red Pepper Hummus wrap was surprisingly delicious.  Warm laffa bread wrapped a well-balanced and tasty mix of onions, mushrooms, tomatoes and crumbled feta.  The roasted red pepper hummus served as a really nice spread to the wrap, helping to keep all of the veggies together.

And my Red Curry (47元) was truly satisfying.  Generous pieces of fresh pumpkin are stewed alongside sweet potatoes, garbanzo beans and veggies in a rich cocunutty broth.  Served with wild rice, the flavorful curry is hearty and comforting, while its texture is both velvety and silky.  This is a really well executed dish.

We also ordered the Kush Green Goddess Soup (27元), which we really should have done without.  Although the soup is packed with vibrantly green blended vegetables, the star ingredient of any Green Goddess soup, or dressing or dip, is the anchovy, which is the missing piece to this rather bland broth.  Anchovies give any green goddess that hard to name flavor burst that this soup desperately needed.

And to finish, we tried our luck at the Lemon and Coconut Cheese Cake (39元).  The tofu and coconut milk based cake wasn’t nearly as good a traditional cheesecake – nothing beats a good old fashioned cheesecake – but, it was light and lemony and served as a nice and interesting ending to the meal.

As some might recognize, “kush” is a high-grade variety of a grass not typically found in juice bars.  So I find it a little puzzling that this mostly organic and vegetarian place would have this name; when people are seeking a remedy for their kush induced hunger pangs, I don’t think they get insatiable cravings for Cucumber Water Infusions.  In that respect, Munchies – which serves greasy hamburgers and milkshakes not too far from Kush – is a bit cheekier in concept.

While I probably won’t go out of my way to return to Kush, I will keep it in my arsenal of delivery options – as I’d definitely order the wrap and curry again.  And if I happen to already be in that area of town and need something wholesome and nourishing to wash away the sins of a life in Shanghai, I’ll absolutely pay Kush a visit.

• ¥¥
• Kush
• 98 Yanping Lu near Xinzha Lu
• Jing’an District
• 电话: +86 (021) 5175 9822
• www.kush.sh