Saturday dinner in Wujiaochang
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt
See the video at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29563531@N04/3556504775/
See the blog at:
www.fridayinthecity.blogspot.com
Saturday night, May 23.
A friend is coming to visit me from Hong Kong in a week. In preparation for the visit, he is planning out his morning, afternoon and night.
But as most of my friends who have traveled with me know – I approach new places a little differently.
I usually attack a new city by first picking out a restaurant – and the centering everything else around that adventure.
Tonight, I went to an area of Shanghai called Wujiaochang. The chaps at the front desk recommended it because of the food and massive shopping malls. Locals may know it for this reason – but it is also famous because the main intersection of this area is a convergence of 15 different roads. To mitigate the sight, they created four levels of roads in a massive intersection, and then covered the whole thing with a colorful sound blocking shell that is like a nightly light show.
At night, it becomes an intersection for thousands of people to come for shopping, food and even dancing. (But that will be another blog entry!).
In typical Rick fashion, I arrived at about 8:30 at night. I knew it was a pretty local place, as I was the only Caucasians among the thousands of people around. I use a strategy of walking around until my stomach is finally growling. I search for the restaurant that has the most people – and looks like it is the happening place.
Tonight – that restaurant was a Hong Kong style restaurant called Bi Feng Tang. Fortunately, they had one English menu. I am not sure that anyone there spoke English – but pointing at pictures seemed to work pretty good.
The menu was a mix of some things that I have eaten before. But there were also a few things that even if I had heard of them – even I would not readily order them. Are you interested in trying items like:
Marinated Goose Head
Spicy Bull Frog
Spicy Pigs Intestine
Spicy Jews ear (not sure what that is!)
Poached Pigs stomach
Steamed Chicken feat with black bean sauce
Double boiled Snakehead fish with watercress, sweet and bitter apricot kernels
In the end, I tried a few dishes, including the restaurant signature dish of Cage Free Duck with Chili oil. It was basically a half of a duck chopped up and simmered in chili oil and a few vegetables. It amounts to a bunch of chunks of bones with some meat attached. By now, I am getting used to popping a bone with meat in my mouth, eating around the bone and spitting it out like the locals.
I ate around the duck feet that was simmering on top. But by the time I got to the bottom, and half of the ducks head and face floated to the top, I was pretty much ready to move on. A few fried dumplings revived my appetite.
It was an adventurous and tasty meal!
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