Having a breakfast of toufa with the locals

Hang your coat up and have a waltz in the square:

Throwing up your wishes and dreams:

Adventures in Shanghai – Part 1
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 2
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 3

Towards the evening, long queues snaked across the street waiting for the lamb kebabs to come off the grill. Not wanting to wait, we just picked up some interesting-looking bread. The dough is mixed with pieces of lamb (chewy for the most part) and fat and baked into a fragrant flat loaf with a crusty exterior.

Next to the bread is an egg custard tart from Lilian Bakery, a franchise that has several branches scattered around the city. A connoiseur of egg custard tarts, A has decided that this is best one we have had so far and I am inclined to agree. The custard, which is wobbly and just eggy enough to lure me but not put A. off, is held together by a flaky pastry shell. Utterly divine!

Somewhere between a roti and a naan, this sesame seed-coated bread is fried in a large flat pan which gives it a crispy shell. We had a great version the first time then had a lot of trouble finding elsewhere. The second one turned out to be too soft and mushy to be enjoyable.

This is a Chinese delicatessen! Every second shop in Shanghai seemed to sell a variety of preserved and dried foods, biscuits and sweets, as well as herbal ingredients. Most of the preserved meat were vacuum packed in foil wrappers, making it difficult for non-Chinese reading people like us to determine what each contained – feet, chicken wings or tongue, just to name a few. This shop made it somewhat easier although I can’t imagine buying that porcine face mask. It reminds me rather creepily of Hannibal – eeeuughhh.

Adventures in Shanghai – Part 1
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 2
Images of Shanghai

Can anyone shed some light on what I was eating? Cos I have absolutely NO IDEA!

Further along the same bustling street, we encountered dessert of a different kind. The base, when we got to tasting it, was like claggy batter but the top was prettily studded with dried and glaced fruits and nuts. There was a HUGE and I mean HUGE line waiting to get a cup of this but my recommendation is ‘watch the guy making them – the pan is an interesting shape – but don’t go out of your way to try’.

Thsi vendor was making four different types of filled pancakes but I could only understand what two of them were – red bean and chesnut paste. My recommendation is ‘Skip these – sticky (undercooked?) and bland’.

These grilled scallops created the most heavenly smells and I would definitely try them next time.

Can you see the hand just to the right of the photo? Well, they weren’t too pleased with us taking photos. Maybe they thought we were about to run away with their secret traditional method of making these fairy floss-like sweet (I’m thinking, surely there is a less labour-intensive way).

Funnily enough, I saw a lady making the exact same thing in the exact same way in London’s Chinatown a week later. Too late!

Adventures in Shanghai – Part 1
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 3
Images of Shanghai

Going for a walk later on that day down Nan Jing Lu, we stumbled across an extremely busy little alley that had the most heavenly smell of food cooking. A detour was in order here and we came across some unusual and delicious foods.

We managed th snag the last of this batch of fried beef dumplings (not sure about name). Really delicious and the line of people waiting to get their hands on one was justified.

Steamboat-style meals are also available. Great if you want to pick and choose.

We saw these siao long bao stalls everywhere and the great thing you could always see a small huddle of workers, with disposable face masks on, moulding these. The dumplings then went straight into the frying pan. How much fresher can you get? Sold in portions of four, the trick to eating these was to make a small bite into the skin and allowing the very hot steam to escape then slurping some of the juice out before eating the meaty part. HUGE queues everywhere for these! I think the Shanghainese must literally live on these dumplings. (Warning: Don’t get the ones on the streets immediately outside the ‘Old Town’ area though as you pay tourist prices for inferior food).

Lots of smoke coming from these portable barbeques:

…more soon…

Adventures in Shanghai – Part 2
Adventures in Shanghai – Part 3
Images of Shanghai