On Food

Shanghai is a great place for cheap culinary delights. Cheap is a relative term, because a 100RMB international buffet seems cheap to me, but not necessarily so to an average Shanghainese who earns in the range of S$1000 per month.

I'm talking about this Brazilian restaruant I went to on the third night that serves excellent international buffet at just 95RMB per pax!

They have a live band but the volume was a tad too loud.

The waiters go around serving roasted meat of all kinds, and they do it Brazilian-style. I didn't dare to try some of them, like roasted chicken heart!

The famous 南翔小笼包 at 豫园！This would be hard to miss for anyone who visits Shanghai. I sought virtualtourist.com's advice and came here on a weekday afternoon to avoid the weekend crowd.

There is a takeaway counter on the first floor and an interminable queue infront of it. I am a busy tourist and cannot afford the luxury of time to queue, so I headed upstairs for the restaruant. The main difference between taking out and dining in is the imposed minimum spending of 25RMB for the latter.

While waiting to be served, I couldn't resist cam-whoring.

And here comes the xiao long baos!

It's really succulent. Can you tell?

And the 汤包, which is basically dumpling with a lot of soup in it.

The neighbouring shop is equally famous for its glutinous rice balls.

I tried their signature dish - tang yuan with black sesame fillings.

Bi Feng Gang is a Chinese restaurant that is highly popular among the locals and it opens 24 hours a day. I ordered

deep-fried duck's jaw

stewed assorted seafood

steamed dumplings

and sweet-and-sour prawns.

It's not all restaurant fare for me though. I had humble commoner stuff too. This bowl of dumplings costs just 8RMB. Easily the best wanton I've ever tasted!

This is a hot wok-cum-steamboat kind of concept.

It started off as pan-fried chicken.

After a while you pour in water and voila! You get steamboat! It's tasty yet very unhealthy. Can you spot the layer of oil at the top?

This was my daily staple - 统一 iced red tea endorsed by Sun Yanzi!

The roadside stalls near my hotel sell these minature lobsters and I decided to give it a try. Deshelling them is a rough act, and there is all of a tiny strip of meat in each of them that tastes like a mixture of crab and prawn. It's good for the experience though, since it's something I've never seen in Singapore!


And I had lunch (cum dinner, which I will explain later) at the famous 绍兴白斩鸡 shop before leaving for Singapore.