While I was away, I caught up with Reality Raver for dinners, drinks and sweet treats and Reemski for a spectacular burger.  (It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone that, in 48 hours, I ate at eight places and drank at four bars.)  Really, the perfect break!

Mamak

In the “Great Australian Bites” feature for their first Weekend Australian Magazine, The Age defectors John Lethlean and Necia Wilden celebrated Sydney’s Mamak as a truly authentic roti joint.  Other mainstream media have also hailed the food there, but it was Penny’s blog post that really pushed it up into my must try list.  As soon as I’d checked into the hotel, I grabbed my folder of google maps and headed on down to Chinatown.

There were at least half a dozen dishes on the menu that I really wanted to try, but I was planning a “progressive lunch”, so Mamak was to be my first course only.  With that in mind, I chose the roti telur bawang and a teh ‘O’ ais limau.  The tea was great – not too sweet, with the perfect amount of ice – and the roti was fresh.  I probably should have stuck to the simple roti canai (which is, in fact, what was brought to me first) as roti TB can tend towards sogginess and the plain roti looked so delightfully fluffy/crispy.

Din Tai Fung

During a bit of a Twitter-moan about the inconsistent XLBs around town, Ed mentioned that Sydney was the place to go for dumplings.  A quick call for nominations went out and Noodle Sue and Jetsetting Joyce heartily recommended Din Tai Fung.  Even better, it was in the same area as Mamak.  Better still, they had a nice little table for me even though I didn’t have a booking.

As at Mamak, I wished I had a couple of other people with me so that more of the menu could be sampled.  Drawing on my over-ordering technique from the China trip, I decided to order more than I could eat and leave some of it without guilt.  The XLBs were lovely – the skin was sturdy enough to hold the soup, but translucent enough to complement, rather than overwhelm, the filling.  The noodles with a pork, tofu and broad bean topping were pleasant enough, but not earth-shattering, and the pork bun really was a dish too far.

When I got up to leave, the waitress did offer to box up my leftovers, but I wasn’t confident that a solitary XLB, half a bun and some noodles would really re-heat well.

Spice I Am

Sydney has some wonderful Thai food, but unfortunately Spice I Am (Darlinghurst) didn’t showcase the best of it.  That’s not to say it wasn’t nice, just that it wasn’t particularly special despite the rather special prices.  The fitout is lovely, the seats are deceptively comfortable and the service is competent (the waitress steered us to the right hand side of the restaurant, pointing out that the other available tables were close to what proved to be a very noisy birthday group).  The starters – excellent crispy fried prawns and betel leaves, and a lovely carpaccio (really, a ceviche, I suppose) of hiramasa kingfish – set our expectations to “high” for the mains.  Unfortunately, those expectations were not met.  The mains (a “seasonal special” of duck salad and a beef curry) were okay, but not hitting the heights that great Thai food can.

bills (sic)

bills is an institution.  Last time I was up north, the Darlinghurst cafe (which I believe is the flagship of his expanding empire) was closed for renovation.  I was determined to have a bills breakfast this time around.  In preparation, I went through a long process of lowering my expectations, as I figured there was no way that it would be anything other than disappointing.  I guess that means 2010 has been chock full of surprises so far: neither bills nor Avatar sucked as much as I expected them to; in fact, I enjoyed them both!

bill  - or, at least, his menu writer – makes every effort to ensure that the breakfast tourist won’t go away disappointed.  The iconic dishes (ricotta hotcakes and corn fritters) are highlighted “bills classics” on the menu.  Reality Raver had the hotcakes and they were the fluffiest, most delightful pieces of breakfast puffery I’ve ever tasted.  I went with the corn fritters and bill might not know much about punctuation, but he knows how to celebrate a key ingredient – these were much more corn than fritter, which is just as they should be, but so often are not.  The coffee was also excellent.

Plan B

Plan B was another item on the itinerary that had been entered my consciousness via the raves on blogs.  Having forked out the big bucks for Mr Perry’s wagyu burger, I felt I had to try Justin North’s version at less than half the price but what seemed like more double the enthusiastic support.  The lovely Reemski had ordered the burgers and scored a table by the time I got there, but I have to admit to getting a little worried when she demonstrated the size (tiny) of the burger.  My anxiety disappeared when she described how thick the patty was (and how much extra fat North adds to his burger mix).  The burgers arrived and… it really is worth making sure you make time to get your hands on one of these if you’re in Sydney (and if you live in Sydney and haven’t tried it yet? Get down to Clarence Street stat!).

Reemski’s photo has me wanting another one (and also lusting after an iPhone!)

Busshari

Even though I let my no-alcohol-weeknights policy go for the break, I was able to stick to fresh fish Thursdays, thanks to the sushi chef at Busshari.  We had prime seats at the bar, which helped us decide on exactly what we wanted to order from the sashimi and sushi selections.  The agedashi tofu and miso eggplant were both deliciously silky and the desserts (a pumpkin mousse and a sesame tart) capped off the meal nicely.

Zumbo Patisserie and Cafe

A year ago, I hadn’t heard of Adriano Zumbo.  Thanks to his contributions to Masterchef, grabbing some macarons at the patisserie was a must and Reality Raver was kind enough to take me over there on my way to the airport.  The selection behind the counter was breathtakingly pretty – there were ten varieties of macarons available and I was saved the agony of decision-making by the fact that the boxes fit ten macarons.  Easy! One of each.

As they were packaged they were identified but it was really too much to take in.  I heard summer pudding, black sesame, something with balsamic, fig, red wine… I figured I’d be able to identify the flavours when I tasted them.  I had a preview of the macaron-y deliciousness at the cafe where we tried a chocolate-filled mint treat.  I’m still dreaming about the amazing iced chocolate…

Yumbo Zumbo

Ah, Sydney – I’m already planning my next visit!

Related posts:

1. Shanghai and Beijing – one mouthful at a time
2. A break from reality
3. Febfast – time really does fly when you’re having fun…

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Government

2009 proved that I still have some remnants of idealism that haven’t been lost in middle-aged cynicism, in that I was surprised to find myself disappointed by governments and their poll-driven pandering. Governments increasingly do what people want, rather than what’s necessary; follow rather than lead. Unfortunately what they are following is usually sentiment that’s been drummed up by PR manipulated mainstream media. 2010 promises more of the same. The first news story I read this year revealed the massive US aid package to Israel (with a substantial percentage earmarked for Israel to spend on US made military hardware) with additional funding to the Palestinian Authority to train security forces. Sounded a lot like profiting from continued instabiity to me.

Social Media

2009 was the end of Facebook for me. I quit it early in the year and found that my life was none the poorer for missing out on endless status updates of people I’d added only because it seemed churlish to keep them out. I managed to get through my year, despite not knowing which Brady Bunch character I was, which Thomas Pynchon novel I was, which Kanye remix I was, which Michael Bay special effect I was. If I’d ever had any regrets about not having a Facebook account, they disappeared over Christmas lunch, when my cousin’s teenage boy expressed shock that I wasn’t “on” Facebook: “Even Grandpa’s on it!”. Exactly.

On the other hand, Twitter came into its own. I’d joined up – in my real name – in 2008 but hadn’t really used it. In 2009 I set up my current Twitter account and started adding some of the “big names” (few of whom have survived into my 2010 list) and a couple of people whose blogs I’d been following. Where my Facebook circle was limited to people I knew, my Twitter circle had (until recently) no people I’d actually met. Our common interests (largely food, film and TV) kept the conversation going and, mostly, interesting.

Travel

We started the year off revisiting old haunts in Malaysia and tried something new in September with our first trip to China. I rely on having a trip to look forward to, but have realised that this approach is seriously flawed. Having already booked flights for our 2010/2011 holiday (South Africa via Hong Kong), I am now wishing away a year that has barely started.

Food

Both overseas trips were dominated by food.  That was a motivating factor for going back to Malaysia, however the variety and quality of the food in China was a revelation.  Locally, Cutler and Co made a big splash when it opened and I’m glad that 2010 is starting with another visit.  Libertine continued to be the best local restaurant a person could possibly want, Hutong’s XLB are getting better the more distant the memory of Shanghai’s dumplings get, and my obsession with Gingerboy’s son-in-law eggs is nearly out of control.

On the home front, Fuschia Dunlop’s books dominated domestic output in 2009 and I don’t really see that changing in 2010.  The most frequently cooked recipe, though, goes to Frank Camorra’s simple but delicious Wet Rice with Chicken from the Mo Vida cookbook.

As for reading about food, newspapers have given way to blogs.  Blogs helped us plot our way around KL and Penang, gave us tips for China and keep us inspired to try new things at home.  On the other hand, The Age’s once dispensible Epicure section became even more pointless with the recent departure of Matt Preston.  His column kept me reading this year despite the weekly torture of Larissa Dubecki’s reviews, although she provided me with a fair bit of ranting material for this blog, so perhaps I should be grateful.

Work

For the past three of four years, I’ve felt as though I was starting anew with each new year. That gets tiring. 2009 was the first year that I didn’t have to build from scratch, which was not only refreshing but allowed me to explore some more interesting new approaches. 2010 should – hopefully – be more of the same, which is to say same, same, but different.

Television

2009 was the year of Foxtel. While we were in Malaysia, we had access to cable television and this made us feel as though our lives would be incomplete were we to miss the finale of the Iditarod: Toughest Race on Earth or the episode of Time Warp where a bullet was shot into a banana. As it happened, we didn’t watch any more of the sled dog race when we got home and the novelty of things in super slow motion wore off quickly – there’s no cutting to the chase when slowing things down is the raison d’être of the show. We did, however, become seduced by Andrew Zimmern as he travelled around the world eating Bizarre Foods and developed something of a dependency on a weekly dose of Anthony Bourdain. Plus there was the real Masterchef in various iterations (an amazing Professional version, and a Celeb version that left the Australian one in the shade), Top Models from a number of countries and wannabe designers of clothes and interiors. On slow days, Yes Minister and even The Goodies kept the tele on.

The really big events of the year, though, were the finale of Battlestar Galactica, the penultimate season of Lost and the debut of Masterchef Australia. With BSG over, 2010 sees the debut of the related series Caprica, which could either be a triumph or a let-down. Lost starts in late January in the States and Channel Seven is advertising it already, although the ads give no hint as to whether it will be “fast tracked”. The second season of MCA is being filmed now – will it be as successful as the first?

Reading

I started the year really well, reading a number of books in a relatively short time during our Malaysia holiday.  This just proved that the adage “start as you intend to continue” doesn’t mean that momentum will carry you through, as my reading fell off sharply once holidays were over (quite possibly because of the above).  As the backlog of unopened New Yorkers piled up, I considered cancelling my subscription and admitting that I was no longer a reader.  The Infinite Summer reading challenge got me back to print, and then the 100 must reads inspired me to “read a list”.  That is, until I got halfway through Lord of the Flies and stopped.  This year I intend to read more.  At least one book a month.  That should be achievable, unless I decide to pick up Gravity’s Rainbow again.

Movies

For the second year in a row we missed the Melbourne International Film Festival and we didn’t find much that gave us the energy to get to the cinema during the year. In addition, our last easy-walking-distance local video shop closed, so if we missed something at the cinema, it was gone (unless we could think of another way of seeing it… hmmm). Amongst the enjoyable were District 9, Inglorious Basterds (50% really good, 50% mediocre), Star Trek, Avatar, Coraline, Julie and Julia (possibly only because Meryl Streep was so amazing), In the Loop and Up. We have just signed up at the nearest video rental place, so will hopefully catch up on some of what we’ve missed.

Music

First, the good stuff from 2009. Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone is lovely and my first gig for 2010 will be seeing her at the Hifi. Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavillion gets a lot of iPod time, as does Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. Thanks to iTunes making it easy to download songs, I have spruced up my workout playlist a bit (Daft Punk has exactly the right BPM for cardio, but gets a bit tired after years of repetition), but they are songs I dread coming up when the iPod is shuffling away on the dock during a dinner party.

The bad stuff is largely a result of having Foxtel. It’s easy to put the TV onto Max, V, Vh1 or V Hits and that often forms the soundtrack for the weekend (during the week, the Food channel tends to be the background noise). This means that I hear more “new” music than I am used to being exposed to, but it also means that I suffer through a lot of crap. Approximately 90% of the music videos also bring me pain, for a couple of reasons.

• Pants or, more precisely, a lack thereof.  Beyonce, Rihanna and Lady Gaga, I’m looking at you.  Actually, I’m looking at more of you than I particularly care to, video after video.  Put on some pants, or look into frocks.  Thanks.
• I’d also like to see the death of relentlessly porny clips.  I’m well aware of the fact that I can – and do – turn off the TV, but that’s beside the point.  As is Shakira in a flesh coloured body suit performing stripper moves in a cage.  Or Britney hanging off a bar in a skimpy white leotard humping a crew of dancers.  Just stop.
• David Guetta. He crops up in collaboration with a number of singers and he could well be responsible for writing the songs, producing them, orchestrating them… whatever. I don’t care enough even to google him. The reasons I wish he’d disappear is because the music is boring and his contribution to the videos is to stand in the background looking like a Scandinavian serial killer. Creepy.

Oh, thought I’d finished ranting about music related things, but… auto-tune.  I hate it.  If a singer needs a producer to get them on key, they’re not a singer.  If it were a case of nudging the occasional bum note, or if it were being used as a deliberate effect, I might feel differently.  As it is, it’s being deployed so aggressively that a lot of new music sounds soul-less and robotic.

= = = = = = =

Have I made any resolutions?  No, that would be setting myself up for failure!  Along with reading more frequently, I plan to

• get back on the bike in an attempt to regain some semblance of fitness
• establish a more interesting week-day cooking repertoire
• attend at least ten MIFF sessions
• open the New Yorker as soon as it arrives, and abandon the idea that I have to read every article before moving onto the next issue

And, inspired by Daniel, I’m instituting mono-tasking January.  One thing at a time!

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3. Infinite Jest – finite

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Today I tackled the smallest subset of Beijing photos – the pics from our visit to the Dashanzi Art District (also known as 798).  I was something of a reluctant visitor; the Wallpaper guide was all “oh, Dashanzi is so over, you’ve really got to go to [somewhere much less accessible]” and, to be honest, there was a lot of pretty kitschy stuff.  There was, however, some really interesting work and it was wonderful to spend time wandering around a precinct so thoroughly dedicated to art.  (Oh, and there was decent cake, too!) It’s definitely on the itinerary as a longer visit next time.

Chen Wenling’s “farting bull” – “Emergency Exit”, a commentary on the global financial crisis – was extraordinary, and Yan Pei-Ming’s “Landscape of Childhood” installation was truly affecting.  The photos do neither justice, but do serve as an aide-memoire for us – hopefully they give you an idea of the work.

Click here for the Dashanzi photoset.

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1. Shanghai and Beijing – one mouthful at a time
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My favourite snack in Shanghai was translated as “meat cake”, which sounds rather unappetising.  Imagine a nice, juicy meatball encased in flaky pastry – that’s the best I can do by way of explanation.  They were sold streetside throughout town.

Another variation on the “meat cake” was a favourite in Beijing – the roujiamo.  It’s basically a round bread (like a Turkish bread) and is split and filled with sliced, roast meat, chilles, coriander and perhaps shredded cucumber, lettuce and onion, depending where you bought it.  The meat can be pork, mutton or beef; naturally, muslim vendors serve either mutton or beef.  It’s been described as a “Chinese hamburger” but I thought it was more like a small doner kebab.  Delish.

I mentioned the lamb skewers in the previous post and they really were something else.  Our guidebooks indicated that they were very popular in Beijing, however we saw many more muslim food stalls in Shanghai than in the capital.  I’m not sure whether we weren’t looking in the right places, or whether the centre of gravity for Xinjiang vendors has shifted.  The kebabs usually comprised three thickish strips of lamb – two lean surrounding a strip of fat.  After they were cooked, they were dipped in a spice mix, unless you requested bu yao tai la (which we didn’t).

We tried a couple of variations of breads as street snacks.  One was cooked in flat, oval loaves of around 40cm x 20cm.  They were sprinkled with sesame seeds and some contained other, subtle spices too.  They’re sold by weight – indicate how big a wedge you want and it’s bundled up in a bag to take away.

The breakfast-on-the-run we had en route to the Forbidden City (and as a pick-me-up on other occasions, too!) was a flatter bread, “filled” with egg and sliced leek.  It’s similar to a Malaysian egg roti.

Spring onion cakes are another version of a fried flat bread/pancake filled with – you guessed it! – spring onion.  They are served as snacks and were also on some breakfast menus.  Noodle Kingdom in Russell Street does a pretty good one and I’ve even found some pretty decent frozen ones at the grocery in Melbourne Central.

Glutinous rice rolls – these are densely packed glutinous rice rolled around a filling. We tried one that had a sweet bean and youtiao filling.  Interesting.  Also on glutinous rice, one of our unsuccessful snack endeavours was a glutinous rice dumpling wrapped in lotus leaf.  Perhaps it was that particular vendor, rather than the overall concept, but it was gloopy and nasty.

Steamed corn cobs.  Again – it could have been a dodgy vendor/end of day for the corn, but it was completely flavourless.  In South Africa, “mealies” are a staple and they look like corn cobs but with cream coloured kernals.  This corn was yellow, but the flavour was bland like a mealie.  I’m a huge sweet corn fan, so was bitterly disappointed!

Shanghai style shao mai are HUGE – not the delightfully dainty dumplings I’m used to.  Still, they were tasty and the size of them meant that one was a satisfying snack, while two puts you in danger of ruining your lunch.

Fresh youtiao have spoiled me for the packaged dough sticks you often get here: light, fluffy and perfect for sopping up the soupy goodness of congee. Mmmm.

Toffee fruit rods.  I was disappointed when the Fruit Rod King in Lonsdale Street closed before I’d made good on my threats to stop there and buy a fruit rod, so I was thrilled to see such a range of toffee covered fruits and fruit portions on sticks in Beijing.  I’m not sure what the fruit was that I tried – it could have been crabapple – but it was pretty good.  I was keen to try the grapes and the orange portions, but we ran out of time.

Drinks

Beer

Local beers were cheap and available at convenience stores (All Days, Lawsons, Kedi) in Shanghai and little bottle shops in Beijing as well as at supermarkets.  Ordering beer at a restaurant was always accompanied by the question “ice?”.  The first time we said yes, we expected that it might be served like a bia hoi, over a big chunk of ice, but it was just cold from the fridge.  I’m not sure who orders lager and asks for it to be room temperature, but it was the same everywhere we went, so it must be a common thing.  The local beers – Tsingtao and Yanjing were the ones we stuck to – are very low alcohol and can be a bit on the sweet side, so aren’t for endless boozing.  Beers brewed under licence (Heinekin, Budweiser) were also low alcohol, so the low price might reflect an alcohol tax – imported beers could get pricey.  Having said that, the otherwise overpriced supermarket at Times Square had an impressive range of European beers and it was cheaper to buy a bottle of one of those than a 340ml can of Schweppes Diet Tonic.  Go figure.

Paulaner has a number of micro-breweries in Shanghai and they are hugely popular.  We dropped into the Xintiandi branch for a beer after dinner on a Wednesday night and the place was heaving with people (and a Filipino cover band).  Not bad, given that they were charging 75Y for a half litre of their draft.  By contrast, 75Y at the deserted Bund Brewery got us a litre each.

Wine

Yes, wine is produced in China.  Not only that, but one of the labels – I can’t remember which one – has recruited a French winemaker to spruik its product.  Good on them.  We only discovered the existence of the wine because C was intent on sampling some baiju.  The woman in the Zhapu Rd supermarket saw us looking at the lethal spirit and guided us towards a Grand Dragon cabernet sauvignon, gesturing to indicate that it was good.  It was only a couple of bucks, so we figured we could try it for a laugh and… it wasn’t so bad.

As a result, we sought out local wine in supermarkets and bottle shops throughout Shanghai and Beijing.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the Grand Dragon again, but we tried the Great Wall (not so good) and Dynasty (better than Great Wall, but no Grand Dragon) and a Dragon with a different label.  All in all, I think we managed a fairly comprehensive survey of Chinese cab sauvs, but being no wine expert, the best I can say is “we opened the bottles and didn’t pour any of it down the sink”.

Coffee

Coffee at cafes is expensive relative to the cost of everything else, and thus didn’t seem to offer much value (for us, that is – the Starbucks all seemed to be doing fairly well).  We had a caffe latte at At Cafe in 798 and I felt as though I’d been transported back to early 90s Brisbane.  A tall glass; a small, strangely located handle; a vaguely tan colour but no discernible flavour; an almost impenetrable centimetre of foam on the top.  To satisfy our need for caffeine, we stuck with tea in the evenings and convenience store coffee-in-a-can in the mornings.  Mr Brown’s was the best.

Juices etc

Watermelon juice was a bit of a lifesaver in Shanghai’s heat, so I was pleased – for a change – to see so many juice bars.  Mr Donut made tasty granita style drinks and I developed a bit of an obsession with the pink grapefruit drink stocked at most convenience stores.  I’m sure it was mostly sugar, but it was still pretty good!

= = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Well, I’ve reached the limit of food reverie – now I’d better get back to sorting the Beijing photos.  Oh, I wish the imperial family had thought to use different colour schemes to more easily differentiate the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple…

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Flipping through my notes from the trip, I am struck by the contrast in detail. Each dish in every meal is recorded, but a whole morning in the Forbidden City is noted in two lines:

- eggy pancake b/fast on the run towards Forbidden City
- lots of ppl but many areas deserted – so huge

Clearly the most important aspect of our visit to the Forbidden City was the breakfast en route. No wonder Mao didn’t care to visit².

So the highs, and not-so-highs, of the food in China…

Shanghainese

The food of Shanghai, according to guidebooks and websources, is characterised by sweetness and oiliness. Funnily enough, “Shanghai” food wasn’t ubiquitous in Shanghai – that honour is probably shared between Sichuanese and Cantonese food. With a bit of effort, and some mis-steps due to the abysmal directions/datedness of our guide books, we did manage to track some down.

Near Shimen No.1 Rd metro – un-named (at least, name un-noted!) restaurant. We headed out on a rainy night, in search of a Xiao Nan Guo and found something that looked like a cheesy “gentlemen’s” club. (As it turns out, I think it was the place we were searching for – we found another branch of it when wandering around the French Concession a few nights later and it had the same cheesy logo). Our mission had been to try Shanghainese food, so we were determined. We eventually found a place that identified itself as having local food so we ate there on the basis of that criteria. We ordered a yellow croaker, which came in a sticky, sweet (but not too oily) brown sauce, gorgeously silky eggplant, pork and peanuts and some green vegies. Sounds like a lot of food for two people, doesn’t it? The difficulty in travelling somewhere like China as a couple is that you either order what you can eat and miss out on trying a lot, or you order more than you can eat and waste food. Given how cheap food was, we tended to stick with the latter, making sure not to order rice (who needs filler?). Oh, and we ate all of what we ordered at this place…

Xinjishi - again, not the restaurant we’d planned to eat at. This time, we’d managed to find a cab and headed for the Ruijin Guesthouse, to eat at their branch of Xiao Nan Guo. It had gone – moved to Donghu Road, as we discovered later. It was packed, but the waiters found us a little alcove off the main part of the upstairs dining room, so we wedged ourselves in and proceeded to order up a storm. We started with some cold dishes: the salted chicken (good, but I really struggle with the shards of chicken bone that seem to break off and pierce my gums whenever I get chopped poultry on the bone), five spice beef slices (delicious), and shredded radish (surprisingly more-ish). Onto the hot dishes, and we felt we had to take advantage of being in Shanghai during hairy crab season. The waiter recommended the crab and bean curd and it was lovely. We couldn’t go past Grandma’s braised pork, which was rich, dark, sweet, and we felt we’d ordered so much we could leave the offally bits. To maintain some western semblance of balance – eat your vegies! – we ordered some greens, and some corn with pine nuts. Amazing food.

Xiao Nan Guo – yes, we did finally get there… in Beijing. The drunken chicken was so-so (I think my shard tolerance was even lower than usual) and the claypot eggplant was silky but had a little too much dried prawn for my liking. I’d chosen the lotus root stuffed with glutinous rice, so I persevered with it for longer than I would have usually. It would have made quite an interesting dessert, or perhaps we needed more diners at the table so share the joy. On the upside, the braised trotter was sublime and the snowpea and bamboo shoots were fresh, crunchy and a perfect balance to the trotter.

Xiao long bao

These delicious, but dangerous, dumplings deserve their own heading. They are native to Shanghai and I’m not ashamed to say that we ate them wherever and whenever we could over the first week. On our first morning, once we cottoned on to the fact that it was two hours earlier than we’d thought, we stepped into the only foodery that seemed to be open on East Nanjing Road. The waitress, clearly fearing that we would take forever to choose, rather forcefully suggested the crab xiao long bao and a couple of bowls of noodle soup with pork and mushroom slivers. I’m not sure whether it was the fact that they were our first XLBs in Shanghai, but I still think they were the best. The version we tried in Old Town – again for breakfast, this time with congee and char siew bao – were good; the Crystal Jade ones were very good; but the fast food joint near Shanghai Station and the cafe at Hongqiao airport proved that it was possible to make average xiao long bao. Even so, they were probably on a par with those at Hutong here in Melbourne, if you’re benchmarking.

Beijing

Well, of course, there was the duck. We didn’t get nearly as much of it as we’d planned – the restrictions and security checks around the Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square/Chang’An Ave precinct ahead of the 60th birthday celebrations led us to rule a couple of places out. Still, we had two ducks, and both were lovely. The first one was at the Wangfujing location of Quanjude and it was very good. The skin was perfectly crispy, the duck was tender, the pancakes and sauces were tasty. Despite mastering the art of not filling up on unnecessary starches, I couldn’t help but eat my way through my entire steamer of pancakes. C was more sensible and left some of his.

Carving the duck

Our second duck was at a place in Dongzhimennei Daijie. This was better than the first duck. The skin seemed even crispier and more of the fat had rendered off. There was also a sweeter – perhaps slightly smokier? – flavour to the bird. Added to that, the service was much friendlier and the atmosphere was nicer – the section at the back of the restaurant looked like the House of Blue Leaves from Kill Bill.

“Homestyle” cuisine was what was on offer at many local neighbourhood restaurants. It’s hard to define, but was generally hearty and flavoursome. At one place we had beef balls in a sweet sauce – the sauce definitely reminded me of a Sichuanese sauce but without the sichuan pepper. We also had a lovely dish of tofu braised with a range of mushrooms and the sorts of brackeny shoots you sometimes get in Korean food.

Sichuanese

When it was good, it was very, very good. Even when it wasn’t good, it wasn’t dreadful. And it did seem to be everywhere.

First, the not-so-good. Exhibit A was a meal of fish-flavoured pork slivers on rice at a fast-food style place near Shanghai Station. Cheap, filling, just not exceptionally tasty. Still, what do you expect for about $1.50?

Moving up the scale was the restaurant in Shatan Houjie in Beijing. Just down the road from our hotel and a cheap and cheerful place to grab lunch whilst our room was being readied. Ordering gong bao chicken is a bit of a cliche, and their rendition was fairly pedestrian – a little too close to inspiring a chorus of “mama’s making Kantong, doesn’t take long for the word to get around” for the Sichuan hall of fame. On the bright side, the cumin lamb was lovely – salty and spicy with the kind of rich muttony smell and flavour that we don’t get with our sheep meat here anymore. Mmmm.

In less salubrious surroundings, in a little street near the Lama temple in Beijing, we fanned away the cigarette smoke and enjoyed a very good fish-flavoured pork dish and savoured the peculiar sensation of fresh sichuan peppercorns in our fried beans with dried chilli.

Our best Sichuanese experience came at Sichuan Citizen in Shanghai. Naturally, we over-ordered like fiends, choosing a range of cold and hot dishes. The cold sliced beef shank with cucumbers was phenomenally spicy. Not exactly what I was expecting, but delicious nonetheless. The sea bass was lovely but the star was the pork ribs with eggplant. This was my first experience of really good quality sichuan pepper and it seriously blew my mind. When I bit the first peppercorn, there was a burst of heat, and then a tingling feeling began right down the back of my jaw. After a few seconds, the entire left side of my mouth was buzzing. A really odd sensation, but it’s amazing how it seems to take away the heat of the chillies, leaving just the flavour. We are desperate to get our hands on some good stuff now that we are back…

Other regional cuisines

Dong Bei

Zhapu Road, which is lined with restaurants for a number of blocks, was close to our hotel in Shanghai. The problem with a street like this is that it’s very difficult to make a decision on where to eat. We finally managed to settle on a small place that specialised in Dong Bei cuisine. The Lonely Planet doesn’t provide maps of China in its city guides (how stupid!) but we managed to figure out that Dong Bei means North West and was therefore pretty close to Korea. As was the food. We had an amazingly fresh, custard-like tofu in sauce and some cold sliced duck to start, then followed it up with a kimchi-esque twice cooked pork (lots of cabbage, naturally) and a dish of fried pork pieces in a crispy rice crust, with a sort of sweet/sour sauce. That wasn’t quite what we were expecting – we thought it was going to be those little fried rice cakes that go all crispy and puffy and then crackle like demon Rice Bubbles when the sauce is poured over. What we got wasn’t so theatrical, but it was still delicious. Look out for Dong Bei food!

Yunnan

Yunnan borders Burma, Laos and Vietnam and the food certainly had similarities with those cuisines – lots of tangy fish-sauce/limey flavours with fresh chillies and coriander. We had a lovely baked fish, some Dai-style eggplant and a rather unusual potato dish that resembled a rosti in lovely surroundings right on the lake. Mmmm, fried potato!

Cantonese

Always reliable, verging on boring as a result of familiarity, but it came to our rescue a few times when we needed to find a place for a late lunch. We had some delicious roast pigeon in Yunnan Road, but our worst restaurant meal was at a Hong Kong place in Pudong – nothing particularly wrong with it, just boring. Made me feel as though I’d missed an opportunity. Still, the Cantonese dumplings we ordered at Crystal Jade almost made up for that.

Others

We had a noodle soup from a place that identified itself as serving “Shandong” cuisine. Shandong is a province not far to the south of Beijing. The soup was nice – I guess what separated it from other, similar dishes was that the noodles resembled linguine. We also had the trusty Lanzhou noodles, which I love, and were so desperate when one of our duck quests failed that we ended up at a restaurant in a mall where I had some Hainan Chicken Rice and C had a claypot chicken rice with mushrooms. Okay, so they were more Malaysia than China, but they were unexpectedly good.

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It does seem as though all we did in China was eat, doesn’t it?  We actually did a lot of exploring that wasn’t food-related and I’ll get to that.

After I cover the snacks…

1. It came in a plastic sleeve which, for some unfathomable reason, has a ziplock-style open/close on the back cover.

2. No, really, the Forbidden City was amazing.

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My Picasa account now has sets from Shanghai and Suzhou.  Given that China is a heavily populated country, I was quite surprised by how many shots we have with no people in them.  I was not surprised by how many photographs we have of buildings – that’s par for the course when the travelling companion is an architect and takes possession of the camera.

I will write more about the trip soon when I 1. find a minute and 2. get to a point where I feel I can articulate my thoughts properly.  I am, however, constantly remembering amazing dishes and meals we ate while we were there, so perhaps food might be my starting point (who’d have guessed?!).

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So… why not cannibalise an email in the interim? The following, therefore, is adapted from some possibly inarticulate thoughts scrambled together after a couple of days in Shanghai.

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Not only is the internet free with our room (at the rather wonderful Astor House Hotel), but there is also a computer supplied. I can only bear to have it on for a few minutes at a time, as it is incredibly noisy (and I thought I was inured to noise after walking the jackhammered streets here). I tried to check Twitter – blocked. Ditto for access to WordPress. Hmmm. I can send tweets via text message, but it feels rather strange not to be able to see others.

We’ve already had to make a slight change to our original itinerary. The plan had been to take the overnight train to Beijing because I’d heard of these fab deluxe berths – a cabin with two soft beds, an ensuite (ensuite! no trying to balance while squatting on piss-soaked floors!) and DVDs.  Unfortunately they seem to be a figment of my imagination as nobody here has heard of them, not even the English-speaking woman at the “Service Excellence Counter” at Shanghai station.  She was quite keen for us to shut up and pay for two beds in a four berth, but somehow spending the night with a couple of potentially throat-clearing strangers robbed the venture of romance, so we decided to stay an extra night in Shanghai and fly to Beijing on Saturday. The hotel is an absolute oasis – enormous room and so quiet and comfortable. Lovely to come back to. Apparently Ulysses S Grant stayed in this room (Celebrity Room, Famous Man Lived), so it must be good.

C is doing brilliantly with the Chinese, although of course when people hear him speak they just respond in rapid fire without modifying vocab for a non-native speaker. It has resulted in a couple of misfires, but then who doesn’t want lamb hotpot for breakfast?

The trip over was fine, the only major drama was over what I should fill in for the mandatory “health declaration”. I was honest, so was pulled over in the arrivals hall by a woman in a mask who asked me some questions and took my temperature. It was normal, thank god. The Maglev from the airport into town was amazing – 30kms covered in about 8 minutes. Of course, then we had to get a cab the remaining 5 kms, which took about half an hour. Traffic here is insane. There are road rules, apparently, but it’s not entirely safe to assume that a green pedestrian light means you can, or should, walk.

We changed our watches over on the plane, but I’d forgotten to change my phone time. This is how we came to be wandering around downtown Shanghai watching elderly people exercise at about 7.45 on a Sunday morning. They weren’t just doing tai chi, either: there were martial arts, ballroom dancing and calisthenics. There was also an open air hair salon being manned by young men in military uniforms, as well as a free (and very public) dental clinic for “Love your teeth week” in People’s Park.

Dancing in the park

Shanghai’s hosting the 2010 Expo, so half the city is a construction site, including most of the Bund. Roads are being dug up, buildings torn down, renovated or rebuilt, and the Shanghai mascot is everywhere, promising “Better City, Better Life” or, as a series of enormous mis-printed banners had it: “Beeter City, Better Lufe”.

I wonder who lost their job over this...

One way to divert tourists from being disappointed over not being able to see one of the city’s main attractions at it’s best is to create another mascot:

Welcome to Shanghai Tourism Festival

This little chap – apparently a deer – seems to be rather pessimistically wearing a jetpack whilst riding a plane.  According to Sinotour, the festival “will be grandly staged from Sept. 12 to Oct. 6″, so we were clearly favoured when choosing the time of our visit.  So far we’ve seen nothing beyond the mascot at most major intersections to suggest a festival of any kind, but we’ll keep a lookout.

The Shanghai municipality seems to be generous when it comes to acknowledging the “modelness” of its work units.  It’s rare to go past a building without a sign declaring “model work unit” – I was relieved to see that our hotel has been so recognised.

I'm not sure what this model unit did

The food seems to be universally good. The first night we struggled to find somewhere to eat (I’d been warned that evening meal times are generally early, but had chosen to ignore that).  C negotiated for some fresh seafood at a local place and even though we were probably charged stupid-foreigner-didn’t-ask-the-price price it was relatively cheap. There are lots of Uighur places selling lamb on sticks as snacks, and we’ve had baby dove (pigeon),pork ribs, crab dumplings, noodle soups and, of course, this morning’s lamb. We were actually expecting some pan-fried dumplings we’d seen being cooked outside, but they are “guo tie” and C apparently ordered “guo zi”. The dumplings were just going to be a snack, so we also ordered hun tun (wonton) soup. Our breakfast table was groaning under the weight of it all but the other diners didn’t seem to bat an eyelid.  I’m quite confident that even the Fish fighting cock willow tree food at the food court in West Nanjing Road would have been tasty:

The fragrance explodes the squid food

I’m lucky that C reads some Chinese and is happy to get the dictionary out to decipher words he doesn’t know.  This means we’re not limited to seeking out places with English and/or picture menus, which makes life both easier and more interesting.  And, given time – which waiters are not always keen to do – he’s also able to make a bit more sense of The fragrance explodes the chicken valuable food.

Today’s been wet and gloomy, so we wandered in the rain rebuffing repeated offers of 10Y umbrellas (yes, 10Y is less than $2. No, we’re not usually that stingy, it’s just that we’re not used to rain lasting for longer than a few minutes and umbrellas are annoying). Once we were thoroughly soaked, we decided that we should probably get some sort of rain protection. C did some on-the-run negotiations with an umbrella seller – I ended up with a plaid pattern and he’s being protected by a black umbrella with the slogan “no comment”. We escaped the rain into the Museum and spent a couple of hours with ancient bronzes, calligraphy, chops, jades and ceramics.

The subway is cheap, easy to use and trains come with almost alarming frequency.  Cabs are also cheap and seem to be everywhere, unless it’s raining.  Everytime we catch a cab or try to get information at a ticket office I whisper to C “tell them we’re on a race around the world”, but I think he hasn’t mastered that particular phrase.  Either that, or he’s strangely unwilling to indulge my reality TV fantasy.

I feel as though we’ve seen a lot (my aching feet seem to agree) but there’s still a lot of ground to cover over the next few days… and that’s before we even hit Beijing.

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Food plays an important part in my social life.  Seeing friends always includes eating of some sort, whether it’s a full meal, something delicious with coffee or some tasty snacks with drinks.  Part of the enjoyment of having friends for dinner is constructing the menu – selecting dishes we’ve made successfully and making sure they’ll work together, as well as suit the tastes of the guests.  Grabbing lunch, for the 80% LTE-er, is never about whatever’s most convenient, or closest (I submit last term’s lunchtime dash from Collingwood to Doncaster for a noodle-and-dumpling fix as evidence).  Food also plays a role in choosing holiday destinations, which is why Tahiti has often been considered and discarded, and Spain is near the top of the wishlist.  Food is also part of why we revisit Asia so often and why Malaysia, in particular, remains a firm favourite.

Malaysian food is the complete package: an incredibly wide range of dishes, availability, affordibility and an enthusiastic local population blogging about favourite places.  This makes planning a food-centric visit so easy: add some information gleaned from foodie-webs to a Google map and… voila!  A holiday made in gustatory heaven.

The only disappointing meals we ate in two and a bit weeks were the included breakfasts at a couple of hotels.  By Australian standards, even these meals would probably have passed muster, but nothing really compares to a freshly made roti or two, a selection of curry gravies and a pint of sweet, milky tea.

The highlights?  Well, after all the buildup, the roast goose could have been a major let-down.  It wasn’t.  We took the advice of boo-licious of masak-masak, got there early, and enjoyed an amazing Christmas dinner.  Crispy skin, tender flesh with a fine, quail-y type of grain sitting in a tasty jus, perfect for soaking up with rice.  The nasi lemak at Nasi Lemak Tanglin was an amazing breakfast that set us up well for our morning-that-became-afternoon trek around the Bird Park and museum.  All the options on offer looked delicious but we ended up with the beef rendang and squid.  Despite it being about four weeks ago, I would still have had a post-hoc vomit if I realised I’d had the spleen.  Wandering around BB, we ended up on Jalan Imbi and remembered some bak kut teh places were in the area (we’d left the map at the hotel).  It wasn’t difficult to sniff out the herbal soup.  Sun Hong Muk Koot Tea was beginning to fill up, so we grabbed a table and ordered the basic BKT from a short menu and were pretty pleased with it.  Our yau char kwai never made it to the table, but it didn’t make it to the bill either, so that was ok.   A plate of noodles with the beef ball soup on the side at Ngau Kee was a lovely way to say goodbye to KL.  I’d prefer to remember it that way, rather than with the LCCT nasi lemak…

Pulau Pangkor satisfied our ikan bakar cravings – we had fish and prawns one night, and stingray and squid the next – and I also had a decent bowl of curry mee in Pangkor Town.  It wasn’t until we reached Georgetown that we finally got some ayam goreng (fried chicken) into us – and then we really had trouble stopping.  Yasmeen Nasi Kandar is still going strong, as is the little place next door in the alley.  At Sup Hameed on Jalan Penang we had some delicious sup kambing (mutton soup), which we followed up with chicken wings and beer at the Red Garden Food Paradise.  The women at Tai Tong Restoran in Lebuh Cintra pushed an almost overwhelming array of dim sum onto us – naturally we got through it all!  We also managed to get through some amazingly gelatinous pig’s trotter, fantastic fish balls and divine fresh tofu at the Teochew restaurant Goh Swee Kee.  Of course, there was also lots of chicken rice, char kway teow, mee goreng… oh, I’ve got to finish this up – I’m sooooo hungry.

What didn’t we have?  Um, curry laksa!  Must go to Laksa King, stat.

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Since the UNESCO listing, there have been reports of landlords evicting tradespeople from shophouses in order to reap increased rents from developers for “boutique” hotel conversions.  This is a pity; one of the reasons Georgetown is so appealing as a destination is that it is a living city, not a plastic tourist park.  Hopefully the local planning authorities recognise that the basis of Georgetown’s appeal is in its authenticity and will resist developments that lean towards a Ye Olde Straits Settlement Town Experience.

Anyway, checking up on Georgetown’s evolution is a good reason to put another visit in the diary – maybe I’ll pencil it in for 2018.

Georgetown - streetscapes

Shophouses and signage

The beautifully restored Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion

The Khoo Kongsi

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So, all in all, I read seven books and crossed none off my “to read” list!

Goldengrove – Francine Prose

The Gerald Manley Hopkins-inspired title was what caught my eye; the beautiful writing captured my attention. I put this book down reluctantly late on the first night of reading, and picked it up again first thing the next morning. The scope of the story is small and the plot is simple, but Prose has managed to create a surprising amount of tension within this work.

The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

Lots of Booker Prize winners leave me cold (The Line of Beauty stands out as an exception), but this is wonderful. The structure could have been irritatingly gimmicky, but it works perfectly. Energetic, witty, tragic… another novel that demanded attention.

Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper – Fuschia Dunlop

Entertaining and frustrating, in equal measure. Dunlop’s decision, at a relatively young age, to take up study in Chengdu was offbeat and courageous. She captures the exhilaration, as well as the frustration, of adapting to a new culture and language and the passion with which she writes about food is engaging. I did, however, find the combination of naivety and arrogance irritating – where she can no longer claim to be oblivious to the nature of the Chinese state apparatus, she attempts (unsuccessfully, in my opinion) to justify her acceptance of preferential treatment. I’m always put off by memoirs that have this brand of “it was great, but it’s gone now so you missed it” smugness and, towards the end, this becomes overwhelming. It’s an interesting book, but perhaps I should have read it over a period of weeks, rather than over a couple of days.

With Nails – Richard E. Grant

The cover line read “Funny, bitchy, utterly fascinating” and this is about 58% true. It’s quite funny – particularly on Withnail and I, the “bonding” camp at Coppola’s ranch for Dracula, and all of the Hudson Hawk entries – somewhat fascinating (he writes beautifully about his father, and his authorial voice matches the expectation set by Wah Wah), but not at all bitchy. This is not a criticism; I would, quite possibly, have been devastated had it been bitchy. Still, the cover line demonstrates what publishers think will sell in celebrity memoirs.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People – Toby Young

I wasn’t expecting much from this book and it failed to meet even those limited expectations. My love for Simon Pegg will probably find me renting the DVD version, but not until it comes out as a weekly. God knows how Young even got the Vanity Fair gig – dude cannot write. The fact that he’s parlayed his utter failure there into two books and a spin-off film is unfortunately less unbelievable than it should be.

Love in a Cold Climate –Nancy Mitford

A very silly book. Lots of fun.

Wicked – Gregory Maguire

When I saw this in H.S. Sam’s, I thought “oh, no, somebody’s cashed in on the musical and written a book”. God, I’m ignorant. This is a good “beach” book: it’s engaging enough to keep the pages turning but not so engrossing that you miss out on swimming and walks down the beach; interesting enough to pack in the bag for the trip home, but not so valued that it matters when the spine fills up with sand. Maguire’s “alternative Oz” has clearly been successful – having not known of the existence of this book prior to my encounter with Sam’s dog-eared copy, I can’t seem to avoid seeing the sequels everywhere. I doubt that I’ll pursue my relationship with Oz beyond what it is now (although I’m planning to watch the movie – Judy Garland’s, not Michael Jackson’s – again soon).

What’s next?

I’m currently reading Kafka on the Shore and I still have People of the Book sitting on the shelf.  Hopefully I won’t have to wait until another holiday to get stuck into that!

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