But luckily for the restaurant, their actual dishes, interiors and stellar service quickly distracted us from the gloom on the other side of the floor to ceiling windows that were hiding would-be incredible views that night.

Chef Grant Brunsden’s menu is an eclectic mix of comforting plates, often punctuated with Asian accents.  It is the colliding of Eastern and Western ingredients that create such well executed dishes such as their decidedly French representation of a Peking Duck and Foie Gras Terrine.  It’s become easy to quickly write off “fusion cuisine”; some even have begun to describe it as overplayed and unoriginal.  But that isn’t the case here.  This starter was truly unique and something special.  Slathered atop truffled toast with an accompanying sweet jam, each bite was decadent and rich, not unlike the restaurant and posh club’s clientele (apparently M1NT sold more Dom than any other club in the world last year – and I don’t think that’s due to it’s patronage from the 99%…).

Along with the terrine, we also ordered the restaurant’s signature tuna avocado tartar (85元) and then a small bowl of creamy Tom Yum Goong (60元) to round out our starters.  The fresh tartar was a welcome light foil to the more indulgent terrine, with spicy hints of a lime wasabi dressing creating a much appreciated cleanliness to the dish.  The soup, however tasty, was actually not a proper Tom Yum Goong per se (goong meaning shrimp in Thai), but more of a Tom Yum Kai, boasting tender and well seasoned chicken.  On a cold and miserable Shanghai night, this cilantro spiked silky coconut broth really stood out and comforted us well.

What I find most appealing about Brunsden’s menu is his family style approach – order a main and then share a few sides among those at the table.  Our waitress tried hard to convince us we needed three sides between the two of us, but after all of our starters and impending entrees, I surprisingly decided two was enough for us to still be incredibly full without us straying into the territory of true gluttony.  So we ordered Chinese inspired sautéed green beans finished with an XO sauce and a Western and cheesy cauliflower gratin to accompany our mains of cod and beef cheek curry.

Rarely do I prefer surf to turf (with a few Maine exceptions), but M1NT’s Pacific Black Cod really overshadowed the peanutty Penang Beef Cheek Curry – which was still pleasant, just not spectacular.   The fish on the other hand, was.  The generously thick portion of roasted miso glazed cod was wrapped in a bamboo leaf  and served with a grilled lime.  The ever tender and buttery flesh was at once juicy and flaky.  Grilling the lime added yet another dimension of intensity to the dish, elevating it above the meat.

The sides of cauliflower and beans were equally tasty, though I preferred the gooey molten baked cauliflower over the presumably healthier bean.  Go big or go home, right, and we had been ordering pretty big up until that point…

To end, we sampled a few desserts – a comforting bread pudding and a walnut milk panna cotta with Kahlua sauce.  Cleverly served in an ice box, the panna cotta was well gelled and seemingly light, though still plenty sinful.  But like the soup we started with, the warmed creamy bread pudding was the perfect comforting companion for such an evening.  Drizzling the cream atop the pudding brought the dish together nicely and offered a skillful finish to an enjoyable meal.

But what impressed me about M1NT more than even the food, was the consistently good service and the ability for the concept to seamlessly ebb from the adjoining club’s thumpa thumpa into a calm and relaxed restaurant.  Dining at M1NT is both a separate and connected experience from the club.  And although not as affordable as any pink hot dog truck parked out front, the restaurant’s price point is considerably lower than most competitors and what you’d expect from a place slinging more Dom Pérignon than anyone on the planet (you can even order it online and have it delivered to your doorstep now at M1NTCELLARS).

I’ll be back.  Soon.

• ¥¥¥¥
• M1NT Restaurant
• 24/F, 318 Fuzhou Lu near Shandong Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 6391 2811

I met a couple of friends over there for lunch the other day.  It’s literally right next door to my office, but come midday, I’m usually in no mood to fork over a few red bills for noontime sustenance, so I haven’t been in quite a while.  However, it was one my friend’s last meals in Shanghai, so burning a few red bills seemed to be justified.

As soon as we were seated, we were presented with breads and a fantastic dipping sauce. Some kind of tomato and basil infused oil that reminded all of us of an incredibly thinned flavorful gazpacho, perfect for plunging our freshly baked rolls into.  We ordered a couple of salads, then each a main course, followed by a single dessert for the table.

I was very surprised when my salad appeared.  The menu describes it as a smoked mozzarella salad with tomato and chickpeas (98元).  However, it is more of a chickpea salad, with a slice of grilled smoked mozzarella and a little tomato confit.  There was literally an entire can of chickpeas on my plate mixed with toasted pinenuts, lightly tossed in a lightly flavored pesto oil.  The smokiness of the grilled cheese was delicious and powerful, but the ingredients sat in a pool of oil and dairy grease, and the fibrous beans lacked any salt.  I love chickpeas.  I don’t love unseasoned chickpeas.

I was then offered my main dish.  A pan-seared sea bass was perched over a light garlic cream, plated with asparagus papillote and a crispy leaf of spinach (198元).   The actual fish was outstanding; it was perfectly seared, providing a crunchy, golden crust to hide its tender, moist flesh.  But, it was ruined sitting atop the overly large portion of the sweet garlic cream – I’m suspect if it even had any garlic in it.  The entire dish was plated on a piece of slate, which looked nice at first, but soon the oil and juices from the fish, and cream and additional finishing oils starting sliding and spilling over the edges of lipless slab and onto the table.  I was too distracted worrying about whether my suit was going to be oil stained from this thoughtless presentation to really care about flavors.  The crunchy spinach leaf was texturally nice, though.

I had little faith that our dessert was going to surprise me enough to make up for the first two lackluster courses.  It was a coconut mouse with a cereal brittle (perhaps a mixture of corn flakes and oats) served with a yoghurt ice cream.  The yoghurt ice cream was one of the best ice creams I’ve ever had.  It was thick and tangy and just barely sweet – enjoyed with one of the provided mint leaves, it was refreshing and cool and almost had me forgetting that the part of the tablecloth before me was saturated in oil.

The coconut mouse was fine, and the brittle was actually pretty creative – if only all breakfast cereals could be caramelized into a sugary bark.

I keep thinking that there is obviously something I don’t understand about the conceptuality of some of the dishes here – maybe it’s all just too haute for me and just not my jam.  Because the service is great, the atmosphere even better (especially in warmer weather), but something just is not in synch with the food for me.  And so in all fairness to El Patio, I just may not know the song they’re singing.

Perhaps we should have stuck to tapas in this Spanish restaurant, but I probably won’t be returning to try my luck at this place anytime soon.  I do enjoy the upstairs, though, when I’m not eating – in sunny months they’ve got a killer outdoor space and lots of Freixenet flowing…

• ¥¥¥¥
• El Patio
• 110 Fen Yang Lu near Fuxing Zhong Lu
• Former French Concession
• 电话: +86 (021) 6437 5839

A friend and I ventured there the other night to get down with swine.  Nearly every item on the menu boasts fatty pork belly; in familiar ways like bowls of Ramen to more creative riffs on BLTs.  Even the potato salad is sprinkled with pork chips.

We put in our order for the Pork Street Toast (35元for three) and buns stuffed with duck confit to share and to start and waited for our fatty, porky feast to begin.  Our waiter soon returned to inform us that they were out of the bunned duck.  No problem, this joint’s for pigs anyway.  So we swapped the dumplings out for some pork filled spring rolls (15元 for three).

The Shanghai Spring Rolls were standard – a predictable mix of cabbage, mushrooms and tender pork was enveloped into rice paper and deeply fried.  The accompanying vinegar brightened up the experience, but otherwise, these weren’t special.

The Pork Street Toasts, however, were pretty interesting.  They are a play on a traditional Vietnamese street snack – a combination of sweet potatoes and ground pork.  This mixture is then spread over a thin slice of bread, further dredged in rice flour and then fried.  Topped with sweet chili sauce and a few green scallions for good measure, the snack is certainly greasy, but also devastatingly good.  There’s a little sweet and sour matchup going on with each bite, which is always nice.

Then, skipping the salad offerings – who are we kidding here – we dove right in for the pork belly kill with a pork rice bowl and pork belly scallion noodles.  Again, the waiter came and told us that rice bowl was out.  Gutted, my friend settled for a bowl their ramen.

The scallion noodles were pretty tasty, though not life changing nor really very exciting.  Springy noodles are topped with diced pork belly, eggs strips and vegetables.  The trick is to quickly mix it all together; otherwise the noodles become sticky and clump together.  The flavors are pleasant enough, though – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – the dish could do with a bit more pork belly.  Not even a joke.

Dinner ended with a cinnamon heavy, sugar lacking oatmeal raison cookie and a surprisingly moist and delicious, however small, vanilla cupcake (they were out of the red velvet – is that three strikes?).

At the end of the day, I like this place.  But what I like about it really doesn’t have much to do with the food.  The café is relaxed and comfortable and seems to foster good conversations between tables and DJs and waitstaff.  There’s this feeling of being invited to someone’s cool house party that happens to have good drink specials and lots of pork, oh and clothes for sale.  It’s crowded and a bit noisy, and I really dig that.  It’s really for those reasons that I’ll be back.  And to try that pork belly rice bowl with a soft poached egg and caramelized onions…

• ¥¥-¥¥¥
• The Grumpy Pig
• 65-4 Maoming Bei Lu near Yan’an Lu
• 电话: +86 (021) 6217 3355

While emerging from a Family Mart at the crossroads of Taiyuan and Jianguo Roads on my short walk, I noticed that across the intersection was a seemingly small wet market.  And not unlike most days, I had my camera in hand and decided to check it out and browse the selection of seasonal vegetables and hanging meats.

Upon entering this market, I realized it was much bigger than I had thought.  For the most part, it was all fairly organized – vegetable stands lined the right wall, and seafood along the left.  In the middle, rows were divided between meat, noodles, tofu and more produce.

There were far more varieties of dòufu – fermented, spongy, smoked – and niángāo than most markets, which got me pretty excited as I could probably eat those glutinous rice cakes all day.  They had the typical discs, which are best stir-fried with a few vegetables late at night, as well as thicker cuts and even niángāo balls which could easily be good in hot pot (and definitely good dipped in hot pot sauces).  But the meat was a bit lacking – only a few stands had any quality cuts left by one in the afternoon.  Though, there was plenty of caged fowl – mostly roosters, hens and pigeons – waiting to become an incredibly fresh dinner.

One of the better vegetable stands really caught my eye with its array of mushrooms and plastic colanders of yún ěr – black fungus (sometimes called clouds ear, hairy wood or tree ear or in Europe, Jew’s Ear – oh, nice one, Eurozone).  I prefer the fungus prepared as a traditional cold dish – simply tossed with cloves of garlic and diced spongy dòufu, dressed in a mild star anise scented oil.  The one at Annamaya is particularly tasty.

If you live in the area or are nearby and need some produce and freshly stretched noodles or are in the market for some delicious Jew’s Ear, give this place a try.

• Jianguo Wet Market
• Intersection of Jianguo Lu and Taiyuan Lu
• Former French Concession

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.