Once upon a time, some great people brought me to a place called Din Tai Fung. Although I was living in Shanghai at the time, I had no idea what to expect on this first visit to Xintiandi and my first introduction to Xiaolongbao (way before it was cool). Luckily, they taught me how to bite in without scalding the insides of my mouth, and I quickly fell in love. More than six years later, I finally made in back to Din Tai Fung, but this time it was in Arcadia, California. Despite the obvious distance between Arcadia and Shanghai, much of Arcadia looks like it was pulled directly out of China. The Din Tai Fung, though, looked little like its counterpart across the Pacific.

In Shanghai, Din Tai Fung is a fancy pants dumpling house. It’s in an affluent part of town and not exactly priced for commoners. In Arcadia it’s a pretty basic place with prices for anyone (to be honest, the actual dollar amount of the food in each place is probably very similar, however, people make much more money on average over here). Nonetheless, the options on the menu were quite similar to what I remembered from back in the day.

So, like any good dumpling-seekers, we began with old-fashioned (pork) Xiaolongbao and its not-so-old-fashioned cousin with pork and crab. Combined with the black vinegar on the table, these guys brought back some great memories. Although they came out steaming, the soup inside wasn’t as hot and scalding as other Xiaolongbao I’d had in the past. Of the two dumplings, I definitely preferred the pork on its own without the crab. To me, there is something pure (not in the Kosher way) and simple about about those pork soup dumplings that makes them great, main reason why I keep on getting dumplings delivery every weekend.

Next, we had the Shanghai Rice Cake with shrimp. The dish consisted of little rice cakes stir fried in a delicious brown sauce, with shrimp and some sort of green leaf that was only there because I was sharing with my friend. The little rice cakes are kind of noodle-y and do a great job of absorbing flavor and adding a unique texture to the dish. They definitely made for a nice change from all the dumplings we were eating.

And speaking of dumplings, we also had ourselves a batch of Shrimp and Pork Shao Mai. As opposed to the crab and pork Xiaolongbao, these kept the two animals separated and depending on the way they were eaten, it could be a mix of meats or not. While these dumplings weren’t bad by any means, I definitely didn’t feel that they were nearly as good as the Xiaolongbao.

We finished off the main meal with some classic Pork Buns. These thick, bready buns were filled with an entirely different pork than any of the dumplings we had eaten. These were more on the sweet side and a tasty way to mix things up. Yet, after destroying so many dumplings earlier in the meal, the pork bun was a bit hard to tackle because of its size.

For the finale, we ordered Sweet Taro Dumplings. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know I have a special place in my heart and stomach for taro and the prospect of eating taro dumplings excited me. They came out looking like regular Xiaolongbao, but inside they were filled with the good old purple stuff. Well, kind of. They weren’t lying when they called them “Sweet Taro” because these sure were sweet. For someone who loves sweet red bean, the sweet taro would be perfect, but I am not one of those people. It was the first time I had been let down by taro and I will be sure to think twice before eating a sweetened version of that delicious tuber again.

Din Tai Fung definitely delivered the goods on the dumplings. Although it has been a while since I’ve been in China, they definitely did justice to my memory of the motherland. Now, if only a branch of Yang’s Fried-Dumplings would open on this side of the ocean, we’d really be talking!

After living in China for a while, I learned there were quite a few dishes that the Chinese liked to call “Chinese Hamburger.”  Fortunately, none of these involved a trip to McDonald’s, but unfortunately if you don’t speak Chinese, you really don’t know what you’re going to get if you do ask for a Chinese hamburger.  This is because essentially anytime they stick some meat and any other foods inside some sort of bread or bun, they call it a Chinese Hamburger.  One night in Shanghai, we were invited out by a buddy of mine to eat at a Shanxi-style restaurant (not to be confused with Shaanxi, its neighboring province) called Sanjinxiaochu (三晋小厨) near People’s Square in Shanghai and encountered an interesting variation of the Chinese Hamburger.

The meal was filled with some pretty tasty food served on a Lazy Susan and eaten family style.  Eventually, a platter filled with baozi (Chinese steamed bun), bok choy and some sort of meat was brought out.  My Chinese friends told me it was Chinese Hamburger and although it looked nothing like and Chinese Hamburgers I’d ever seen before, I was intrigued.  Upon closer inspection, I found that the meat was some thick, fatty pork belly and looked delicious.  Although I usually like my pork belly in bacon form, this looked damn good.

I grabbed a baozi, opened it up and put the ingredients in.  You’ll notice I didn’t avoid the bok choy, despite it being a vegetable.  This isn’t because I particularly enjoy bok choy, but because when I travel I am willing to try out just about anything, even vegetables.  Otherwise I get concerned that I might miss out on something amazing.  Anyway, the bok choy and pork belly filled the boazi perfectly and I bit in.  This was not your momma’s hamburger.  The pork belly was cooked so tenderly that it basically melted in my mouth.  The flavor was so strong and delicious that this was one burger that had no need for ketchup.  And to be honest, the bok choy wasn’t awful.  In fact, it was kind of good to have it there as a buffer for the strong taste of the pork belly.  Of course cheese would have been better, but at least it wasn’t as bad as having lettuce on a real hamburger.  The baozi was a great bun and helped keep that juicy Chinese Hamburger together.

The Shanxi-style Chinese Hamburger was certainly an interesting eat and something I would be up for eating again, but it is definitely not for everyone.  If you don’t like eating fat, you won’t go near this thing, for even though it’s probably less fatty than your average hamburger, the fat is just out there for everyone to see rather than being ground into the rest of the meat.  But if this does look like your type of think, just be careful if you order a Chinese Hamburger somewhere, because the odds are that you won’t see something like this.

Just what is chou doufu (pronounced cho dough-foo)? If you don’t know Mandarin, you might think it sounds pleasant. The words roll off the tongue pretty cleanly and it sounds like it could be some sort of doughy deliciousness. Like a doughnut or something. But if you know Mandarin, then you know the true meaning of the words and they are nothing at all like a doughnut. Chou doufu means, quite literally, stinky tofu. And the name is certainly appropriate. As with much of the rest of Chinese cuisine, chou doufu comes in many forms, but the form I know best can be found on the street.

Chou doufu begins its life just like most other tofu, but then it gets fermented and something goes terribly stinky. I don’t really bother with how the tofu gets fermented, but why. Like why would anyone think it would be a good idea to ferment tofu? I suppose it has historical reasons similar to pickling and other forms of fermentation, which means it was just a method of preservation before the fridge came about. But however it happened, it happened and China has been smelling it ever since.

Now you know that chou doufu can be found on the street, but you might be wondering on which streets in particular. The truth is that you don’t need to “look” for chou doufu, because if you have a decent olfactory sense, your nose will lead you there. Most recently, my olfactory sense led me to a chou doufu stand near the Yu Garden in Shanghai. It’s really hard to explain the smell of chou doufu, but rest assured it has earned its name. The Shanghai street-style of chou doufu is prepared with deep-fried rectangular cubes. Frying the tofu this way makes it easy to pick up with chopsticks or toothpicks and really if I can’t pick up tofu in this way, I probably won’t eat it. The result of frying it makes the tofu crispy on the inside, but somewhat spongy and juicy on the inside. The tofu is most often topped with a vinegar, sweet brown sauce or hot chili sauce. After the saucing, all you really have to do is hold your nose and dig in.

You’ll find a taste that is far better than the smell, but it is not for everyone. In fact, the chou doufu I found near the Yu Garden disappointed me. Perhaps it had been fermented differently than I was used to, but I think it was because there wasn’t any hot chili sauce to put on it. Instead I was stuck with the sweet brown sauce, which did nothing to cover up the smell or enhance the flavor. Either way, it didn’t invoke the happy memories I thought it would.

So whether it ends up being your type of thing or not, chou doufu is certainly something every visitor to China should try. You may not like it, but you will sure as hell like the taste better than the smell.

By now you may be wondering why I’m posting all about food in China. First and foremost, it was for vacation, but it was also to check out the Shanghai World Expo. If you don’t know what the Expo (formerly known as the World’s Fair) is, it’s basically a huge event lasting a few months where countries are given the opportunity to build pavilions to show off their nations. Some create beautiful works of architecture (remnants of past fairs include the Eiffel Tower and Ferris Wheel), some show off aspects of their culture and some simply use their pavilion to sell products from their country. Some even had local foods to eat, and that interested me the most.

When we found ourselves in the Sri Lanka, I was feeling pretty hungry. There were some cool things to look at, but mostly I was interested in the type of food that they ate in that huge island off the coast from India. Not surprisingly, a lot of the food looked like I could find it in any Indian restaurant, but then I saw the Meat Godamba. Įtempiamos lubos Vilniuje Gera kaina https://cempianos.lt. My eyes were first drawn to the word “meat,” but then my mouth realized that “godamba” sounded pretty awesome when spoken out loud, so I ordered one. It was hard to tell what was inside because the entire thing was wrapped in flatbread, but I knew at the very least there would be meat inside. They offered to cut it for me and as soon as they did, I let out a sigh of relief as I realized there weren’t any hidden veggies.

When I bit in, I was immediately pleased. The inside had a sort of a spice that tasted kind of like curry, but that could have simply been my preconceived notions making me think it was curry-esque. Nonetheless, the spice gave the godamba a slight kick, but also made it taste delicious. In addition to the meat, I could also taste some sort of potato inside, which may have made this dish the equivalent of Sri Lankan meat and potatoes. It was perfect for an unvegan and definitely something that would make a great snack or side dish for any sort of South Asian meal.

I was definitely happy to find the meat godamba in Sri Lanka. It was certainly the most unique food I found all day that I had never seen before in the USA, and hence the only food from the Expo worth writing about. If only I could find Sri Lankan food at home, I would be up for getting down with the godamba again.

In my experience, I’ve learned that some of the best food in the world can be found on the street. No, not literally on the street (although the 10 second rule certainly applies for some of this food), but food that is sold on the street rather than from some brick and mortar building. A major part of the allure is the tracking down of the street food. There’s no address, so you really just have to stumble upon it. Plus, since it’s mobile and there are no hours, there’s no guarantee the food will be there again the next time you look for it. The biggest part of the allure, though, is the taste. It takes someone with an iron will to seek out this kind of food, but when you find something great, the payoff is huge.

Some of the best breakfast street food can be found in the form of bing (Chinese flatbread). Little carts and literal hole-in-the-wall places can be found all over Shanghai hawking bing in the mornings. Bing has a wide range of thickness, circumference, add-ons and more. Fortunately, just outside of our hotel (Manhattan Business Hotel) in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, we found ourselves a bing cart in an alley. This cart cooked up cong you bing (pronounced tsong yo bing), also known as a scallion pancake for only 3 rmb each. This cart even had a twist on the typical cong you bing by frying an egg on it. Cooking the bing begins when a lump of dough is tossed on the portable griddle with a generous amount of oil. The cook then flattens out the dough to the desired size with an iron, sprinkles some scallions and salt on the dough and cracks an egg onto the thing. But that’s not all.

After the cooking is finished, you get to throw some toppings on. First and foremost is the thick, sweet brown sauce. I have no idea what it actually is, other than the fact that it’s thick, sweet and brown, but it goes great with the otherwise savory bing. Other toppings include some tiny pickled veggies, cilantro, a spicy chili sauce and then more scallions. Put it all together and you get one hell of a breakfast. Although the high dose of scallions and pickled somethings don’t fit in with my unvegan diet too well, I am certainly not a picky eater while traveling. After all, I would hate to miss out on something as tasty as this.

Some even claim that this might have been the inspiration for pizza via Marco Polo, and although the history major in me tells me that’s wrong, it’s not hard to draw the comparison.

While cong you bing makes a great breakfast, there are many varieties of bing to be found outside the major tourist areas of Shanghai. If you don’t mind the risk of getting lost in a big foreign city, you might just stumble upon some of the best breakfast street food the world has to offer.

To some, the thought of eating McDonald’s in a foreign country seems just plain wrong. After all, when you’re in a different country, you should be experiencing their culture in all aspects, especially food. And what’s more American than McDonald’s? Yet, it’s hard to deny how much of this American fast food has become a part of other cultures. In Japan and China, a big bucket of KFC is now a Christmas tradition and all over the world you can find Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut. And these companies have not simply forced American food down people’s throats. Instead, they have adapted, and few have adapted as well as McDonald’s.

Step into a McDonald’s outside the US and you will see foods you never knew existed. In Canada, you can find Poutine, in Israel there are Kosher McDonalds’ that don’t offer cheese on their burgers. In Japan, the Teriyaki McBurger is like a regular burger, but with a teriyaki twist. These international options almost make McDonald’s a destination, rather than a place to avoid on vacation.

China has a few different unique offerings, but my favorite is their pie. Rather than forcing good old-fashioned American apple pie into China, McDonald’s has a Taro Pie. I’ve loved taro ever since I discovered the purple sweet potato and when I learned that McDonald’s had stuffed it into a pie, I jumped on it. During my year living in China, this pie and I had a delicious love affair. So when I returned to China, I was ecstatic to find the Taro Pie was still on the menu. I ordered one for 5 rmb and immediately fell back in love. The pie comes in a similar sleeve to the apple pie in the US, except that it is bright purple and covered in Chinese and English letters. Inside, the pie looks the same as any other McDonald’s pie. The crust is crunchy and delicious, while the inside is a nearly fluorescent purple color and loaded with these potatoes. The taro isn’t too sweet and is somehow very different in flavor from any ordinary sweet potato. The texture is grainer than the viscous apple pie and the thicker taro sauce inside adds a great dimension of flavor that isn’t overly sweet like it can be in other pies. Plus, it’s purple, which is pretty awesome and rare in edible food.

So next time you’re in a foreign country, don’t be too quick in dismissing McDonald’s. If you go for a Big Mac and fries, you might be doing yourself a disservice, but if you seek out a regional specialty, you could just discover something amazing and unique. Then you’ll end up like me, waiting for your next opportunity to crunch into your Taro Pie.

After spending some time in China, you will find that the Chinese people are very prideful, and not simply prideful about their country, but about their regions as well. It seems like if you go anywhere in China, you will hear that whatever region you’re in has the best tea, best dumplings, best noodles and really anything else you can think of (best dog?!). The same goes for hot pot. So if you may think hot pot is simply a bot of boiling water to cook food in, you are wrong.

While in Shanghai, we went to a Chengdu-style (pronounced chung-doo) hot pot joint on Huaihai Road called Hot Pot King. Like most hot pot, the Chengdu sort is family-style, with a big pot in the middle of a table. But the Chengdu-style hot pot is unique in that the pot itself is divided in half. On one side goes a spicy broth, while on the other side goes a more plain broth. Although only one side is spicy in the hot sense, both have a good amount of spices and oil added for flavor. So if the spicy side gets too hot for you, you can always cool off on the other side without losing too much flavor.

Unique to Shanghai (as far as I know) is that hot pot joints like this have a huge selection of sauces to choose from. You serve yourself by grabbing a small dish and ladling out the various sauces. They vary from peanut to spicy sesame to crazier options like hot hemp oil (whatever that is). After mixing a personal concoction, you can finally start boiling some food.

There is typically an order in which foods should be tossed into the pot and most local Chinese will ensure that things are done in the right order. Even if you don’t know the exact order, you can pretty much assume that thick foods like potato and lotus root will need to be cooked first. These guys simply take longer. Vegetables and things like cilantro should also be added in the earlier stages because they also take a while and in the case of cilantro, they add flavor to the broth (whereas the vegetables simply steal flavor from the broth). The last food to go in is always meat, so you have to be a patient unvegan to truly enjoy hot pot. Meat only takes a few seconds to cook in the boiling broth and although you have to wait a while to put it in the broth, the payoff is nearly immediate.

Hot pot meat is some of the most tender meat around and is thinly sliced for easy cooking. The broth adds great flavor to the meat that would make it taste great on its own, but if you succeed in mixing a delicious sauce, the meat becomes even tastier. Lamb and beef are the most common because of the short cooking time and you can find these either frozen or refrigerated. The frozen strips are made into thin rolls for easy cooking, while the refrigerated meats are thicker strips. In trying both, I can’t really say I have a preference, because so much of the flavor comes from the broth and sauce, rather than from the meat preservation style.

For sheer variety, Chengdu hot pot is hard to beat. While most offer only one broth flavor, Chengdu gives you the option of spicy or mild. On top of that, if you’re going to get it Shanghai, you should get a nice selection of sauces to customize your meal even more. No matter your preference, Chengdu hot pot is a great way to eat some hot, boiled meat in Shanghai.

Just across from Yang’s new location in the new mall on Wujiang Street is another place that serves up xiaolongbao (soup dumplings). It’s called Nan Xiang Steamed Bun Restaurant and cooks them up in the original steamed way. Nan Xiang is actually the part of Shanghai where xiaolongbao originated and you can still find the original in its location near the Yu Garden, but the line is always crazy-long, so when I saw the Nan Xiang restaurant right next to Yang’s, I figured I would give them a taste.

Similar to Yang’s, there is a clear window that allows any passerby to see the magic of dumpling-making. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Nan Xiang is more of a sit-down restaurant and because of this, there isn’t a line out the door to draw people in. We were seated pretty quickly and knew what we wanted before looking at the menu. We ordered eight dumplings (their smallest set) and a bit of green tea.

The dumplings came out pretty quickly and were served in an old-fashioned bamboo steamer – presumably the one they were cooked in. The steamed xiaolongbao are smaller than their fried counterpart, so consuming eight between the two of us didn’t seem like much of a daunting task. Picking these up with chopsticks was much easier than the fried ones, so losing soup wasn’t a big concern. The method for eating these is essentially the same as the other xiaolongbao, but with the added bonus of being able to put the dumpling into a spoon after the initial removal from the steamer.

I bit off a small part and slurped out the soup. This is the best way to eat xiaolongbao, because putting the whole thing in your mouth and biting will unleash a scalding soup and leave you with a burnt mouth. Anyway, the soup was nothing short of delicious and although the flavor was slightly different from Yang’s, neither was exactly better. Once the dumpling had been slurped dry, it was time to take on the meat and dough. I found that the meat of the steamed dumpling was a little more flavorful than when fried, but I did miss the crunchiness of the dough that only frying could provide. Although fundamentally the same, steamed and fried xiaolongbao were certainly different enough to merit trying both.

Ultimately I enjoyed the fried dumpling better, but Nan Xiang’s steamed style wasn’t exactly a slacker. And hey, if weren’t for these traditional steamed dumplings, the fried dumplings could never have come to be.

Once upon a time, there was a street called Wujiang in Shanghai just outside the Nanjing West Subway Station. At all hours of the day, the street was lined with food vendors and inside the old buildings were delicious, old-school Chinese restaurants. On that street was a hole in the wall called Yang’s Fried-Dumpling, which served a delicious xiaolongbao (pronounced shiao-long-bow) with the special twist that it was fried (as opposed to the traditional steaming method). Xiaolongbao is one of Shanghai’s signature dishes, a dumpling stuffed with pork that creates a soup inside when cooked. The dumpling is sealed air-tight so the soup stays inside until it is eaten. Even though Yang’s went against tradition by frying their dumplings, there was always a line outside their door.

A lot has changed in Shanghai in the past couple years, especially on that street that literally does not exist anymore. All of the old restaurants, including Yang’s and a place that had my favorite kung pao chicken, were knocked down to likely build some sort of shopping center. Fortunately, at least Yang’s has been reborn in a little mall on the other end of Wujiang Street. Yang’s looks out of place in the white-tiled, sterile mall, but they still have a line of people out the door at all hours. The dumplings come in sets of four for five rmb and have to be paid for at the cash register in advance. After grabbing a receipt, you can get in line and watch the dumpling-makers work away.

After watching them work tirelessly to scoop out ground pork, stuff it inside hand-crafted dumpling dough and fry those suckers up, my hunger for xiaolongbao grew and grew. Finally we made it to the front and grabbed our dumplings. I opened the lid and they looked simply beautiful. Now the key to eating these soup dumplings is recognizing the fact that these have just come out of the fryer and are filled with scalding hot soup, so it’s best to not just plop the whole thing in your mouth and take a bite. Instead, the idea is to take a small bite from the top and slowly slurp the soup out. This is the best way to avoid a burnt tongue and to truly appreciate the soup. After slurping all the soup, the rest of the can be eaten pretty easily.

I picked up my first dumpling and went through the ritual. After slurping and biting, I found that Yang’s hadn’t lost their touch. The soup was delicious and the pork had some great flavor. Although I’m pretty skilled with the chopsticks, these fried dumplings were pretty tough to pick up without puncturing the dumplings. This caused the tragic loss of soup in a couple dumplings, but the fried-dumplings made up for this with their incredibly tasty and crispy dough.

Despite moving into an odd little mall, Yang’s Fried-Dumpling is still a force to be reckoned with in the Shanghai. Although not prepared in the traditional way, frying the dumplings adds a nice little crispiness to the dough that just can’t be duplicated by steaming. Because of that, Yang’s should definitely be on the list of places to eat for any visitor to Shanghai hoping to get some delicious xiaolongbao.

Mmmmm meat. There’s something about that just makes my mouth water. It must be the taste. But taste alone is not enough to make meat amazing, apparently meat can be a pretty good springboard for earning some serious cash. Take Li Li from China for example.

Not too long ago, Li was working at a meat-processing company. A noble job by all accounts. Just yesterday, though, this meat man became China’s richest man. In a land of more than 1 billion people, that is no small feat. To become the richest man, all he had to do was build a pharmaceutical company called Hepalink and toss it into the Shanghai Composite Index for trading. This brought his wealth do a somewhat humbling 7.8 billion dollars.

And where would he be without meat? Would Li ever have gotten his start on the path to wealth if he hadn’t worked at a meat processing plant? Probably not. Could you imagine where he would be if he had gotten his start at a vegetable processing plant? I’ll give you a hint…it’s somewhere between no and where.

So for beginning your working life in meat processing and using that experience to become the richest man in the world’s most populated country, Li Li, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via The Independent)