Michael Booth

Shanghai Street Food

This was what I really came to China for: the dirty, quick, terribly tasty stuff they eat on the street. I don't really know where to begin to describe how indescribably great this peanut-filled wonton in pork broth tasted. It was, like, oh my god, I need to eat these every day for the rest of my life. It was, like, wha... oh... baby... more... again...

Like that thing Meg Ryan did that time.

Or the moment they opened the Ark of the Covenenant in Indiana Jones (but in a good way, and without any burning Nazis).

It was like a culinary crash-zoom, when everything else goes blurry, and your taste buds take over every other sensory input.

It was quite good.

And I have chef Austin Hu of the fantastic modern American restaurant, Madison, to thank for introducing us. He took me there together with a few of his chef friends and staff. Don't know what the place was called, nor it's address or telephone number. All I can tell you is that it was close to the junction Zhao Zhou road and Hefei Road.

Next stop was the fabulously chaotic Shouning Rd Night Food market. This is 2am on a Monday morning, and it was still buzzing.

I have never had anything quite as garlicky as these grilled oysters. I can still taste the garlic. And it was a few days ago now.

These were fabulous: grilled tofu with cumin (the latter an influence from the Chinese muslim community). Why can't we get tofu like this in the West?

Shouning Rd is famous for its crayfish. Here are some of the little blighters. Frankly, I can live without them, but they were a must-try.

The next day I met up with the wonderful Shanghai food blogger, Fiona Reilly, whose lifeonnanchanglu.com is one of the city's best English-language food blogs. We went to Jia Jia Tang Bao, probably the most famous xiaolongbao restaurant among visitors. It was excellent. For this xiaolongbao novice, as good as they get.

And, then across the street to Yang's for some sheng jian bao, kind of like fat gyoza - steamed then fried pork dumplings with sesame seeds. Of course, sesame seeds (like bacon and parmesan) could make clay taste good, but these really were terrific. If only there was one of these places on the corner of my street. Then again, I'd probably end up sheng jian bao-shaped if there were.

Any guesses what this is? Mm-mmm, congealed duck blood. Well, shame to waste it.

And thanks to Shirley Huang for taking me to this incredible chong yu bing place the next day. It looked like a janitor's closet, but chef A-Da's truly heroic spring onion pancakes are said to be the best in the city. He only makes 300 a day, and when he's made 'em, he packs up for the day. We made it just in time - in fact, Shirley had to beg with some people ahead of us in the queue to be able to buy the last two. 

Here is the master at work. I really feel there is hope for the future of humanity when I find someone who has dedicated their life to making one particular food stuff to the best of their ability, gradually honing their technique over the years, and who couldn't give a stuff about opening chains, branding, franchising, or industrialising their product.

And yet another great Shanghai street food highlight, their version of a crepe which I found in the French Concession: jiang bing, with a spicy bean paste, fried egg filling instead of ham and cheese.

You will not believe how great these taste. My god. Almost worth getting a hangover for.

And if you're still feeling peckish, take a beak, sorry, peak at these lovely duck heads.

They are partial to their deep fryers, the Shanghaiese...

Less partial to Japanese-style department-store basement food halls. This one was virtually empty.

The classic Shanghai ice lolly flavour is pea. I can imagine pea ice cream can be fantastic...

But this one was a little past its sell-by.

Table No.1 at The Waterhouse Hotel, South Bund, Shanghai

I stayed at the super-cool Langham Xintiandi (best breakfast buffet EVER, including individual chefs making ramen noodles and sushi to order), and the impossibly glamorous Langham Yangtze, but if you are looking for the hippest Shanghai hotel, it has to be the radically post-modern Waterhouse, by Singaporean hotelier, Loh Lik Peng. Believe it or not, this is it:

And the view from the terrace towards Pudong:

The hotel's restaurant is Jason Atherton's Table No.1. Atherton visits a few times a year, but the rest of the time the kitchen is in the very capable hands of ex-Maze chef, Scott Melvin. I was Scott's guest for a fantastic lunch, together with his partner, and pastry chef, Kim Lyle, formerly of Maze's South African branch.

Started with some excellent razor clams with fava beans.

Foie gras (left) and a very pretty dish of crab with a watermelon sandwich.

Smoked eel with avocado cream.

A sumptuously tasty braised chicken dish and terrific piece of turbot.

Kim Lyle's glorious desserts.

In all, I couldn't fault this meal for its rock solid technique, superb produce and unashamedly cosseting combinations of flavours. Classic, with a twist. Fabulous. And, perhaps most impressive of all, this very contemporary European cuisine draws an 80-90% Chinese clientele. 

(Disclosure: as I said, I was Scott's guest but, frankly, I am unlikely to be heading to Shanghai any time soon so would have no problem about burning my bridges in that regard, but if I didn't think it was good, as I am not obliged to, I simply wouldn't bother to post about it.)

More food and non-food stuff from Shanghai

The photos speak for themselves, so for once no smart alec captions...

To a Shanghai market

One of the best restaurants in Shanghai is Jason Atherton's Table No.1 at the too-cool-for-school Waterhouse Hotel. Atherton is apparently there a few times a year, but the rest of the time the kitchen is in the more than capable hands of Dundee-born chef, Scott Melvin, who has previously worked at Atherton's Maze and Pollen Street Social in London.

Scott and his lovely South African partner, Kim (who is also his highly skilled pastry chef), kindly offered to take me on a market tour on Sunday, to one of Shanghai's best produce markets. 'Actually, I don't often get the chance to come out here myself,' Scott told me. 'If the stallholders see me, then the prices go up.' He usually gets his ingredients delivered to the restaurant, so it was a bit of a spree for all of us.

First stop was the astonishing seafood section. Now, I like to think I am pretty au fait with just about everything that's edible from the sea - after all, I have spent quite a lot of time at Tsukiji over the years - but the fairly grotesque creatures in the top half of the picture were a new one on me. Some kind of sea cucumber, I guess...

Then there were the various species of clam, some no larger than a finger nail - presumably used for flavouring soups.

There were several shops specialising in dried sharks' fins. Don't worry, I am sure the fins were removed under anaesthetic, and replaced on the donor shark with a prosthetic. Or perhaps not...

Unlike the Japanese, the Chinese are far from squeamish when it comes to offal.

Look at the size of those fins! They've got to be from a Great White, no? (Bear in mind, I am well over six foot. Ish.). 

Is there really money to be made by counterfeiting Lea and Perrins? Hard to believe, but here's the evidence. Not shown: Jeinz Tomato Ketchup and Jaggi Seasoning.

As mentioned in a previous post, one of the big ticket restaurant items in Shanghai is sea cucumber. Here is a shop filled with dried ones - I'd love to know how they prepare them, or whether all the ones served in restaurants are dried.

Though the market was far, far more hygienic, clean and better run than the markets I visited in India last year, there was still quite a relaxed attitude to certain items.

Here's a true foodie test for you: Does this tray of sheep's brains a) revolt you to the very pit of your stomach, or b) remind you of that great lunch you once had at Ribouldingue?

Kim bought this astonishing citrus fruit, whose name (and use, other than ornament) escapes me.

(STOP PRESS: It's called a Buddha's Hand! At least, by some.) And then they took me to the cricket market, where old blokes buy fighting crickets, exchange stories of great fighting crickets of the past, and sit around watching old bouts of cricket fights on DVDs. Really.

Now, this is more like it. I'd definitely be more up for a spot of scorpion fighting.

Try teaching your grandmother to suck one of these:

The Shanghai food odyssey begins in earnest

My hotel: the staggeringly good Langham Xintiandi:

Out wandering the streets on my first day, I kept being accosted by images of sea cucumbers, of all things. Seems they are a big ticket item in Shanghai's restaurants:

Sea cucumbers intrigued me, while this, on the other hand, looks like an unconscionable misuse of the earth's natural resources to me. White truffles? For cosmetics?:

Generally, during my trip I aimed to avoid the big name, mostly Western restaurants down on the Bund, Shanghai's glitzy, colonial riverfront night zone. So the first night I had a reservation at Fu1088, a much-talked-about contemporary Shanghaiese restaurant based in a most uncontemporary setting: a 1930s French-style villa in the French Concession, the old colonial quarter.

It was one of the very strangest dining experiences I have ever had. The place was virtually deserted, and had the feel of a very posh provincial Welsh hotel, circa 1954.

The food was... robust. This is one of their signature dishes: boiled egg with hairy crab, the latter one of Shanghai's other big ticket ingredients. It was mighty rich.

Things grew more peculiar with the arrival of bird's nest tarts, which were essentially sweet egg custard tarts with bird's nests in them. Wouldn't have been so weird, except that they were from the savoury part of the menu.

It's rare for me not to eat up, but these and other challenging dishes at FU1088 did somewhat defeat me, so I stopped by a 7-11 for a snack. Spotted these chickens' feet:

The next day brought more fortunate culinary experiences. Local chef Austin Hu, of modern American restaurant Madison (also in the French Concession), kindly offered to guide me around the city's food scene, starting with xiaolongbao at a branch of the Taiwanese soup dumpling masters, Din Tai Fung (now a global chain, whose Hong Kong branch has a Michelin star):

We started with a wheat gluten dish, cooked in rice wine and soy. Addictively umami-ish, with a lovely spongey texture, like some rare, ethereal mushroom.

And jelly fish - whose crunchiness always takes me by surprise - in, if memory serves, a zingy vinaigrette. 

And the star of the show, the soup and porked-filled parcels of pleasure, to be dipped in a ginger and vinegar mix. The Xiaolongbao Platonic ideal. Beautiful. I lost my xiaolongbao virginity to the best.

(Predictable headline alert) Shanghai Surprises

I landed in China for only the second time in my life. It doesn't seem that popular these days. This is immigration.

If they catch you doing any of this kind of stuff, then it appears you're really in trouble:

This is my kind of welcome: in my hotel room, chocolates, plus a small bag of meringues. AND THE BAG WAS MADE OUT OF CHOCOLATE. Well, that didn't last.

Shanghai is quite shockingly big.

Even the scale model is vast.

Pudong: where the future can't wait:

Cooking demo with Christian F. Puglisi of Restaurant Relæ

I was fortunate enough to be invited to a cooking demonstration with Christian Puglisi of Copenhagen 's restaurant Relæ on Monday. Puglisi is one of the most talked about young chefs in Denmark right now (he was named one of the most promising young chefs in the world by the Wall Street Journal last year). 

His restaurant, in Jægersborggade, won a Bib Gourmand from Michelin within a year of opening, and he has just opened an already highly acclaimed wine bar across the street, called Manfred's.

I like Relæ because the food is thoroughly original. Puglisi never takes the well trodden path. Relæ serves highly refined, conceptual food in a very simple, Scandinavian 'kælder', with bare wood tables, white walls, and pared down service. It looks like the kind of place which usually serves seven ways with cous cous and grilled chicken breasts. All his focus goes on the plate; that's not to say his dishes are terribly overwrought, they aren't. His is deceptively simple food with four or five ingredients on the plate at most, not unlike Le Chateaubriand in Paris. I also like that, though he sources locally and seasonally most of the time, he isn't afraid to occasionally go beyond the strictly Nordic larder espoused by his alma mater, Noma. So you will sometimes find, say, bottarga on your plate (Puglisi was born in Sicily; I got the feeling he is rather 'over' all that New Nordic business, actually).

So, to the demo. It was for a group of canteen chefs. Not the usual crowd for a 'vanguardia' chef to be presenting to, but actually Puglisi had a great deal to say which was relevant to them in terms of approaching familiar, low cost ingredients in a new way.

For instance, he sliced a filet of salmon, tossed some sea buckthorn berries (you could use diced, pickled cucumber perhaps) finely shaved carrots, and dill over it, then poured over a 50/50 vinegar and water 'cure', which had just come off the boil (shown in the photo above).

For another dish he chopped and fried some field mushrooms, but added about 10% porcini, whose flavour, he said, would be enough to boost that of the cheaper product, serving them on toast. Interestingly, instead of deglazing with white wine and reducing, as I was always taught at Le Cordon Bleu, he pre-reduced the wine and added it to taste at the end. The mushrooms, served on toasted sourdough, were completely delicious.

He also served a moreish cauliflower dish with toasted hazelnuts, chopped chervil and a butter/sherry vinegar/garlic vinaigrette; talked about the importance of sourcing really good quality chickens (from Sødam), and the difficulty of getting decent pork in a country where pigs outnumber people; explained various sous vide techniques; and low temperature eggs (a practical way to serve poached eggs en masse). A brief demo of xantam gum caught the audience's attention - he showed how 0.1% could nicely thicken a sauce without heating (useful with fruit coulis), but admitted that it does get rather over-used in the 'molecular' kitchen.

Here's the cauliflower:

During the course of the evening there were some other interesting insights:

Puglisi doesn't use Maldon Sea Salt, not that he doesn't think it's a good product, but because everyone uses it. He uses sel de Guérande. Again, I think this is quite revealing about his approach to food: he's a bit bloody-minded, but in a good way.

He talked about his time at el bulli, and how they used clay models of the food as it should look on the plate to keep all the chefs dicing and chopping ingredients to precisely the same size. He did say later that he didn't necessarily agree with the regimented chopping of veg to the same size (citing the cauliflower florets which could be both pleasantly soft and crunchy), but I suspect some of the el bulli regime has influenced his way of running a kitchen brigade as he also told us how his team timed every task, not just using timers to check on how long things cooked for, but for allocating how much time they gave themselves for everything. That's pretty anal, but I am sure makes for a remarkably efficient kitchen. 

This was a great dish: poached leeks with boiled egg, toasted rye bread, red onion and anchovies, the leeks very sweet, the anchovies and onion giving an umami-sharp tang, and the rye bread giving texture:

And even in a photo you can see how juicy and tender this pork belly (poached in pork fat) is:

A clean-tasting parfait made with just cream, egg yolks and sugar was spruced up with crunchy rape seeds, which gave an almost chocolatey, malty flavour, as well as crunch - although they do need to be blanched three times, dried, caramalised and then blended before being used, the chef explained.

I liked Puglisi. I admired his pragmatism: he explained how his wine bar allowed him to benefit from economies of scale in purchasing and more off-the-cuff experiments with produce. I admired his inventiveness with humble produce (he's a big fan of mackerel, for instance). And like all the best chefs, he radiated a calm authority, but was modest and unpretentious. 

It's going to be fascinating to see how, and in what direction he develops over the next few years.

Avoiding any puns on the world 'cock'

My neighbour keeps chickens. She had a large male cockerell which went lame and had to be put down. She asked if I wanted to cook it (you have no idea how difficult it is to resist making a whole variety of very childish puns in this post). I said yes, but that I couldn't quite bring myself to put the bird out of its misery myself, having admired it for many months. It was a famously cantankerous bird, but still, very impressive looking and part of the scenery around here.

 

In the end the local gamekeeper's apprentice (which sounds like a title for a lost DH Lawrence novel, but isn't), did the dirty deed, catching the bird with a large, comical net from a Woody Allen film, while wielding a big stick. Once he had it in the net, the bird became strangely becalmed, as if resigned to its fate.

I stood slightly off stage at this point, metaphorically fluttering a handkerchief in front of my nose like a Merchant Ivory extra. He gave the cock two swift blows to the head (NO! Stop me), and it lay there twitching its legs for a few seconds, gave a big sigh, and shuffled off his chickeny mortal coil. The gamekeeper's apprenctice (or is it a Jilly Cooper...?) poked the bird in the eye, which he said was a good way of making sure it was dead. 'If it blinks, it's still alive,' he said. It didn't blink. Although it did keep kicking for a while, which was unnerving.

It was dead though. He chucked it in the back of his pick-up and we headed over to where I had prepared a large pot of boiling water which we plopped the bird into. The gamekeeper proper had told me this would make plucking it easier. This has to be done instantly, apparently, otherwise rigor mortis makes it difficult to remove the feathers without tearing the skin. At this point, the gamekeeper himself turned up and pointed out that we were supposed to put the bird in cool water, then into the boiling water - which makes removing the feathers even easier - and that we should have chopped the bird's head off immediately to let its blood run out.

Who'd have imagined there was so much involved in preparing fowl? But this was just the start.

Left on my own now, I pulled the feathers off - which was surprisingly easy, much easier than my many frustrating hours plucking pheasants  - chopped off the feet and, wincing slightly, chopped the head off too. 

Then the really unpleasant bit: the innards. Starting at the neck, I cut around the base to open up the bit where the bird kept its food prior to being digested/ground up. Ugh. Masses of slightly digested grain and seeds, some greenery and a whole caterpillar tumbled out. Didn't smell great.

Then to the other end: guts, liver, heart, lungs  - all the gubbins had to be clawed out. And then one last surprise. As I pushed my hand in to scrape out the lungs, the carcass emitted a great, 'BUCKARK!' as if it were still alive.

It was one of the most disturbing and surreal moments of my life. In the spirit of experimentation, I pushed my hand in again, and again, the cock crowed. I began laughing, a little hysterically, like Mia Farrow in a horror film. And did it again. 'BUCKARK!' By now I realised that, by some weird confluence of air pressure, I was pushing on the late creature's voice box, summoning its once virile mating cry.

Tempted as I was to run to where my children were diligently doing their homework with my hand inside the bird like some gothic glove puppet, I managed to resist, so this extraordinary phenomenon, as yet unexplained by either Escoffier or Harold McGee, was witnessed only by me.

But here he is in all his glory, waiting to be turned into coq au vin, as per the excellent and only slightly flawed recipe to be found within the pages of Doing Without Delia.

Henne Kirkeby Kro - Noma's influence spreads...

Incorrigible old hack that I am, I am always on the look out for 'the new Noma', the restaurant which might come close to rivalling René Redzepi's place by the harbour in Copenhagen.

Of course, no restaurant can have the impact that Noma did, because Noma was the first of its kind and has become justly famous and heralded for dragging Scandinavians out of their pre-Glasnost, France-fawning approach to eating, but it is interesting to see the local, seasonal time/place philosophy filter down, and especially exciting to find a properly refined, complex New Nordic kitchen outside of Copenhagen. For all the talk in the media in recent years (to which I have contributed more than my fair share of hyperbole), the New Nordic 'revolution' has mostly been confined to the Scandinavian capitals so far.

So, welcome to the historic Jutland inn, Henne Kirkeby Kro, which these days is a luxury guest house (run by an ex-Fat Duck staffer) with a truly world class kitchen.

So eager was I to get to the table that I forgot to take a photo outside. So here is a model, yesterday.

The chef here is Allan Poulsen. He trained under a French chef (Michel Michaud - well known in Denmark) up in Skagen - so he has a classical background, which shows in the impeccable technique and presentation of the small servings of the tasting menu I tried.

This was one of the amuse bouches, pickled asparagus sandwiched with toasted rye bread. Rather awkward to eat, and I couldn't help feel that pickling asparagus was a shame. Best just to cherish it in season, I think.

A dish called Vadehave (Wadden Sea). Miraculously sand-free carpet clams (I have spent hours snorkelling for these, and tried every trick in the book to clean them, but to no avail: Allan told me he cooks and strains the liquid, removes the blighters from their shells and rinses them in clean water), with samphire. Transcendently delicious.

Hay-smoked potatoes from the restaurant's fabulous kitchen garden (which supplies much of the herbs, vegetables and fruit used at Henne Kirkeby Kro, and which I also neglected to photograph despite being shown around), and wild garlic cream - doesn't get much more New Nordic than that.

An odd 'fried bread' course. Odd in a nice way.

A tiny slither of kolrabi enveloping something (raw shrimp?) with crown of cress. Pity the waiters and washers up with all these slate plates...

I think this was a tatare of local beef with a clever wrapping made from gellified bone marrow.

One of the great dishes of the evening: Oscietre caviar with woodruff sorbet and pickled celeriac. Impeccable, fabulous flavours, the woodruff sorbet (green in tin, on the right) actually the star.

More kolrabi envelopes, this time with smoked cheese. Rather too frou-frou presentation for my liking. One had the sense that lots of fingers have been fiddling with the plate.

Another staggeringly good dish - cured mackerel with dill and a cucumber sorbet. Always great to see really fresh mackerel on a posh menu.

Green strawberries, smoked eel, dried tomato sorbet.

Another controversial dish, for me, this one: cod cheeks (very nice) blanketed with a melted cheese sauce (hmmm), and onions. I ate it all, but fish and strong cheese? I'm just saying...

Dodgy photo, sorry - this is cured local salt marsh lamb (a great undiscovered speciality of the region - undiscovered by me, that is) with celeriac and berries.

 More of that sensational lamb, with a purée of Gotland truffle.

A very Momofuku-esque course next: wild mushrooms with a 'No 14 cheese' and parsley. The most addictively delicious dish of the evening.

Elderberries with honey. Scrummy segue into dessert, and extremely pretty.

If I said dessert featured pickled onion and toasted bread, you might take a step backwards, and rightly so. These were paired - not entirely unsuccessfully, I have to admit - with lemon thyme and caramel. I'm all for breaking down that savoury-sweet barrier, something our old friend Alberto Adria is so adept at.

Most Noma-esque moment of the evening: white chocolate, dill and celeriac. Thoroughly refreshing. Simply, one of the greatest desserts I have ever tasted.

Another inspired dessert combination: raspberries and fennel. I have both these things growing in my garden, yet the thought of combining them wouldn't have occurred to me if you had put me in a room with 10,000 chimpanzees and 10,000 typewriters, each of them typing the words 'raspberries and fennel' and wearing raspberry-fennel motif t-shirts. While eating raspberries and fennel. As dessert.

Henne Kirkeby Kro is one of Denmark's most famous historic inns. A couple of years ago it was bought by a family who had made billions (of kroner, but still) from selling fibreglass to wind turbine companies.

They also bought an island. Well, you would, wouldn't you? Together with Allan, they clearly have a dogged, money-no-object approach to making this place one of the greatest restaurants in the region, and I would say they are well on the right path. That incredible kitchen garden, and the fact that they are in perhaps the richest part of Denmark in terms of great produce (lamb, beef, seafood, woodlands, heathland, organic dairies - south Jutland has them all), are going to count for a great deal, I suspect.

Shameless self-promotion

Some people prefer to draw a discrete veil over their mid-life crises. 

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