If you go back to the Expo, and want French food, you should check out RESTAURANT ECOLE INSTITUT PAUL BOCUSE, which is Paul Bocuse's restaurant in the Rhone-Alps Regional Pavillion, in the Urban Best Practices Area, near Gate 3. The staff are students, so they make some mistakes, but they're trying hard and the food is very good.

In Hangzhou, if you want to spend, you could eat at Dragonwell Manor (龙井草堂)
http://www.dianping.com/shop/537600
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...
西湖区龙井路外鸡笼山10号
0571-87888777

At a lower price point in Hangzhou is the Hyatt Hotel's Chinese Restaurant, which is called something like 28 Hubin, after the address. The dong po rou and Beggar's Chicken dishes at Xin Da Lu (Shanghai Hyatt) are actually traditional Hangzhou dishes whose particular preparation was invented at the Hangzhou Hyatt. For example, dong po rou can be commonly found in Shanghai & other areas, but the presentation found at 28 Hubin and Xin Da Lu, where the meat is sliced into a ribbon and served with bamboo shoots and pancakes, originated at 28 Hubin. Pretty much anything you order at either restaurant (Xin Da Lu and 38 Hubin) will be good, and prices are not that high.

Also, to update my other post, prices at Ding Tai Feng are much higher than Jia Jia Tang Bao, but probably around the level of a TGI Friday's or Bennigan's. You're not breaking the bank. Unless you go for the abalone and truffle xiaolongbao.

Nice list.

Chu Xiang, the Hubei restaurant you cite, has changed its name and moved. It's now called Lian Canting (Lotus Restaurant) and is located at
长宁区长宁路641号(近安西路)
021-52382919
http://www.dianping.com/shop/3548134

I've been told the menu hasn't changed. I never made it to the original location, and haven't been to the new location yet, so can't really say.

The new location is kind of between Zhongshan Park and Jiangsu Lu subway stops, and between Dingxi and Anxi Roads.

Guyi has opened a second location in the 8th floor of the Jiuguang Mall (久光广场), which is literally on top of the Jing'An Temple subway stop. I think my wife tried the new location and said it was the same as the old.

If you want upscale Hunan food, this place might be worth a shot:
http://www.smartshanghai.com/radar/hu...

Also, Hunan food is apparently pretty similar to the Hubei food provided by Chu Xiang/Lian restaurant.

That same 8th floor of Jiuguang Mall also has my favorite place for Cantonese dim sum, which is called Royal China or Royal Pavilion or something.

金桂皇朝
静安区南京西路1618号久光百货8楼806-7(近静安寺
)021-62883063
If you sneak in around 11:30, there should be pretty much no wait, but starting around 12:10, there's usually a half hour wait or more. The line dies down again around 1:00, I think.

I like Ding Tai Feng for the xiaolongbao, porkchop fried rice, hot and sour soup, mango ice, and air conditioning. Also, not all locations have the mango ice. But it's much more expensive than Jia Jia.

There's other really good Japanese & Korean options, but I'm guessing you're focusing on Chinese food.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the proprietor of O'Banza Cafe in Boracay, Philippines, has started a new restaurant in Macao?

http://ezinearticles.com/?3-Great-Seafood-Restaurants-in-Boracay&id=1955451
http://www.boracayrestaurants.com/bor...

He was a Portuguese lawyer who settled down in Boracay and cooked really amazing food out of the ground floor of his house. Last I heard, he had closed up shop and moved to Macao, although what he was planning to do in Macao was unclear. I also don't know the man's name.

I should add that this review owes a significant stylistic debt to Shanghai's best English language food critic, Christopher St. Cavish:

http://www.smartshanghai.com/blog.php...

There's a new upscale Taiwanese noodle restaurant, Changshou Mian. Well, I actually have no idea how long the restaurant has been there. I first noticed it yesterday, and tried it out today. New to me. It's got 75 Dianping reviews, so maybe not so new.

They've got the basic noodle & rice plates, with a variety of cold and warm appetizers, at a higher price point than your normal storefront. A bowl of noodles or plate of rice is about 25-28 RMB. For the price, you get waiters, a menu that advertises no MSG, free sweet red tea, a more upscale interior, and higher quality food.

I had the hong shao beef noodles for 25 RMB. It comes with a choice of wide or thin noodle (I had the wide). If you swap the beef for beef tendon, the price rises to 28 RMB. They also have ma la (spicy) beef noodle, Tainan rou jiang mian (like the Du Xiao Yue noodle in Taiwan, I believe - dry with a meat sauce), and about eight other varieties. Porkchop noodle, chicken leg noodle, some others.

For appetizers, I had the mustard jie lan (芥末芥兰), and the chicken roll (炸鸡卷). I think I have the Chinese translation of the second dish wrong. I remember the last two characters - it's toward the bottom of the appetizer list, and costs 18 RMB. The mustard jie lan is 12 RMB - it's chilled spears cut from the stems of jie lan, covered with a mildly wasabi-tasting brown sauce & a dice of red bell pepper. Nice. The chicken roll was also good - it's a couple logs of processed meat (possibly fish along with chicken), wrapped in tofu skin & deep fried, topped with a sweetish brown sauce & some cilantro. Also nice. Other appetizers looked a little different than your average selection - ma la (spicy) cucumber caught my eye, but I didn't get around to trying it.

The hong shao niu rou mian was good, although I had a couple complaints. First, the broth seemed a little weak or thin, although this might just be the reaction of a palate numbed by 5 years of MSG-laced Shanghai cooking. Second, I felt the noodle portion was a bit on the small side. The menu claims the standard serving is 3.5 liang, which should be a pretty hefty serving of noodles. As it was, I was tempted to ask them to add noodles, which they will do for free on all soup dishes. I abstained, figuring that two appetizers should be enough to make up the shortfall. In the restaurant's defense, I should note that I was really really hungry when I showed up. Overall, I liked the soup - the beef was nice and tender, they added napa cabbage (小白菜), rather than the lettuce that is more common here, and the overall flavor was good, once I adjusted to the flavor level. There was none of the low-level spiciness that you sometimes find in hong shao noodle, so I guess I'll have to try the ma la noodle next time around.

Overall, it's a nice place to get some high quality noodles and appetizers, and the selection of dishes is a bit different than your average storefront. The air conditioning and table service are nice bonuses, and the interior ambiance is actually not bad. Unfinished concrete floors, dark wood, and so forth. The porkchop rice plate is recommended on Dianping, and that seems like the type of thing Dianping would be good at recommending.

Changshou mian (长寿面), 1278 Beijing Xi Lu, between Xikang Lu and Tongren Lu, basically 2 blocks behind the Portman. Telephone 6289-0148.

Note: they do not appear to have an English menu. Also don't know what the staff's English ability is like.

Someone else might have more insight, but I'm not sure this is overly feasible.

Pudong Airport is in a pretty remote location. You're on the highway looking at farms for about 45 minutes before you get there. I've never actually stopped anywhere between Shanghai city and the airport. Outside of the airport restaurants, there's another food court near the maglev train station, which is a short walk away.

Cab drivers might also be unwilling to take you to a local restaurant. I think the cab line to pick up passengers is something like 5-6 hours. They're expecting a high fare for taking someone back to Shanghai city limits (150+ RMB). I don't think they would be happy to wait 5 hours and then get a 12 RMB local fare.

Since you've got some time, you would probably be better off taking the maglev into Pudong, using the subway/taxis to get around Shanghai, and just eating somewhere in the city. Apparently the subway runs all the way between the airport and the city as well, but I'm told that it is very much slower and not worth the 30 RMB savings.

Is there anything in particular you are trying to eat? Once you hit Shanghai city, the options are pretty much unlimited (well, not much SE Asian food).

More an anti-suggestion for in the airport: Acting Cafe (雅品), which has distinctive purple and yellow signage, should be avoided at all costs. Food is very expensive, and virtually inedible. From a price/quality standpoint, it may well be the very worst restaurant in all of Shanghai. They used to have a near monopoly on food when there was only Terminal 1. Terminal 2 now has additional food choices, and the Acting Cafe has spread there as well.

We're looking to get brunch or maybe a seafood lunch on Anna Maria Island, or perhaps on the way back from Anna Maria to Tampa. Any suggestions? I've seen good reviews of the Anna Maria Oyster Bar (which apparently has 3 locations?). Any other places to consider? We went to Sandbar a couple days ago, which was okay - no problems with atmosphere, but the seafood was so-so.

We don't need any place fancy, and have a number of small children in tow, so a fancy place might actually be a bad idea. Mostly, we just want good food, and hopefully good seafood.

Any advice appreciated.

-----
Anna Maria Oyster Bar
6696 Cortez Rd W, Bradenton, FL 34210

Thanks so much for the feedback. Any thoughts on the noise level at DC Coast vs. Oceanaire? I'd like someplace quiet, to allow normal conversation. I've been to Kinkead's twice before, and thought it was great. I'm kind of wondering whether to try something new. Although I suppose trying something that's worse isn't necessarily an upgrade.

-----
Kinkead's Restaurant
2000 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20006-1812

DC Coast Restaurant
1401 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005

Okay, for a variety of reasons, I never made it to Sakagura. I did, however, eat at Sarge's at least three times. The place has the best corned beef hash I have ever eaten in a restaurant - made with real corned beef, potatoes, and onions. Not out of a can. They're open 24 hours, have free wireless internet, and friendly staff. Free pickles and cole slaw too, and free refills on soda. My housing had no internet access for some bizarre reason, so I basically lived at Sarge's. This is probably the best return on a Chowhound inquiry I've ever had. Thanks so much.

-----
Sakagura
211 East 43rd Street, New York, NY 10017

Can someone recommend a good restaurant for a business dinner, entertaining some corporate clients? I've been recommended to Oceanaire, so I would like to keep the restaurant to a similar price point. I would also like to make sure the restaurant is in DC & easily accessible - places in Fredricksburg or the Palisades section of Georgetown are probably not good ideas.

I don't have anything against Oceanaire, and as far as I know, we all like seafood. I just wanted to see if there were other places of similar price and better quality, or what other options were available. Also, Oceanaire is a chain, so if there was a local option, that would be nice as well.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks much for the recommendations. After thinking about corned beef sandwiches and Japanese food, I think I'm going to try to get dinner at Sakagura, and then breakfast at Sarge's or 2nd Avenue. Any recommendations for specific dishes at Sakagura, or thoughts about the corned beef hash at Sarge's & 2nd Avenue?

-----
Sakagura
211 East 43rd Street, New York, NY 10017

Tuesday and Wednesday nights. To be clear, I just need one late night meal, and that can be meat. The vegetarian meal is at a normal time. I already have a lot of good Korean, Japanese & Chinese food where I'm at, so I guess I'd prefer to try something else - Middle Eastern or Indian?

Hi All,

I'm going to be visiting Manhattan, and need help identifying a late-night meal and a meal that has vegetarian options in mid-town.

I'll be staying on E. 38th, between 1st & 2nd, somewhat near Grand Central. I don't get into LaGuardia until 9:30 p.m., so I'm guessing I won't make it to the hotel until 11:00 p.m., and won't get to eat until 11:30 or so. Any suggestions for late night food in the area? I'm willing to eat pretty much anything (hot dogs excepted), and would like to keep the price around 20.00 or so. Is this relatively near K-Town, and if so what would a good late night bi bim bap/bbq place be? There's good Korean food where I am already, so I would be open to trying other options as well.

The second night, I am meeting a vegetarian friend for dinner. I'm not vegetarian, but he is. Any suggestions for a restaurant in the same area, around the same price point, with good vegetarian options?

Regards,

JT

Hi thanks,

The Hyatt was closed down due to demonstrations, so I was moved to the Marriott. Things were so busy work-wise, that I basically only ate room service. I have a feeling that the Marriott food is not as good as Hyatt food (Hyatts in China can provide some pretty good Chinese food), but they did provide some serious heat when I asked for "very spicy."

Said demonstrations shut down Siam Paragon, Central World, and several other shopping centers over there, so those didn't quite work out. Central Chidlom was, however, open, and selling Three Mountains brand sriracha. I think Three Mountains is a little less spicy than Rooster Brand, and my wife thinks it is a little more tart. All in all, it's a perfectly adequate substitute for Rooster Brand. Central Chidlom also sells a yellow sriracha, also from Three Mountains, which has the exact same English language labeling as the red. I bought a bottle, but haven't tried it yet. I'll let you know how that goes.

Shrimp paste was available at Villa Market across the street from the Marriott. I didn't check Central Chidlom.

Hoisin was the 8.5 ounce glass bottles of Lee Kum Kee, available at both markets. I'm hoping it's a southeast asian/Vietnamese formulation, and not the China-formulated LKK that is sold in the PRC. Again, haven't tried it yet.

Thanks much for the guidance. Hopefully I'll get to Lek Seafood on my next trip.

Hey, thanks much for the quick response.

Are there any particular things at Lek Seafood to try? I see reviews of a 3-flavor snapper. Is this deep fried with a 3 flavor sauce? What is 3 flavor sauce? Is this the giant cafeteria-sized place Anthony Bourdain visits in No Reservations?

Looking at my hotel website, I see the following listed as nearby shopping malls:

Erawan Bangkok Mall - Adjacent to the hotel
The Peninsula Arcade - Adjacent to the hotel
Gaysorn Plaza - Opposite the hotel
Siam Paragon - Connected by Sky Bridge from the hotel
Central Chidlom - Connected by Sky Bridge from the hotel
Central World - Connected by Sky Bridge from the hotel

Does this mean that I don't need to get on the subway for Central Chidlom & Siam Paragon groceries?

Thanks for the heads up about the protests as well. Wonder if my meetings will actually happen. . .

Hi,

I will be staying at the Grand Hyatt Erewan this Tuesday/Wednesday. I need advice on where to buy groceries and eat.

For groceries, I want to buy shrimp paste, hoisin sauce & Sriracha sauce, ideally like the Lee Kum Kee Hoisin & Rooster Brand Sriracha you get in the US. I realize that outside the shrimp paste, the other two are not necessarily typical Thai groceries, I just can't get them where I live, so I'm looking to load up.

For food, I'd like to get Thai food (obviously), and am happy to eat pretty much anything - papaya salad, fried chicken with garlic, curries, seafood - at any price point. Maybe a slight preference for seafood, again as being something that's not so great where I live. Mostly just trying to get great Thai food, close to the hotel or a short distance away.

John

Can I ask for thoughts on Pipo's in Carrollwood Village and/or Lala's on 56th Street just north of Busch?

I haven't been to either (or to Tampa at all) in a couple years, but I used to like both places a great deal, both for Cuban sandwiches, picadillo, puerco adobo (sp?). I understand Lala's may have had a management change recently.

Just had a regrettable dinner at Boxing Cat Brewery on Fuxing Lu from a food standpoint. I'm still planning to return and try some of their other beers.

Portions are very large, like Cheesecake Factory. My wife and I had an appetizer, a full size salad, a cup of soup, and an entree, and there was way too much food.

We had the mini-pulled pork sandwich appetizer, which was dried shredded pork in sweet ketchup-based sauce. Basically a pork sloppy joe, high school cafeteria style. So if you're in the mood for high school cafeteria style BBQ, this is your thing. The best part of the dish was the horseradish sauce, although it wasn't enough to overcome the sugar of the BBQ.

Steak salad was probably the best dish of the night, although the steak was pretty well done. Nonetheless, there were nice greens and a nice blue cheese dressing.

Gumbo soup was more like a bowl of chipotle salsa than gumbo. Deep brown, almost black, and tasting heavily of smoked chipotle peppers, a bottle of liquid smoke, or maybe both. Not much rice, a lot of liquid. Pretty much impossible to
taste anything but the smoke.

The baby back ribs were the same - just overwhelming smoke flavor. After working through the gumbo, I could eat a bite or two of the ribs and had to quit. The sweet potato mash was pretty nice, although had the sort of weak flavor you find in the sweet potatoes sold on the street here. The corn on the cob was noticeable undercooked.

The beers were

They list 12-16 beers, but had only 4 available - Dunkel, Pilsner, "Brewers Choice" and a Altbier? I'd been hoping for something hoppier available, an IPA or Pale Ale, but of those four, I liked the Pilsner the best. Overall, the beer seemed better than Henry's Brewpub, where the brewmaster came from.

Mui Ne Trip Report

Just got back from a week in Saigon and Mui Ne. I'm breaking the report down into two parts. The short answer is that Mui Ne is a culinary wasteland, and Saigon is the promised land of milk and honey. Sort of a heaven/hell experience, if you will. Assuming that hell is moderately overcooked seafood at fairly low prices. Full report on Mui Ne follows:

We stayed at the Mui Ne Sailing Club, which is great if you like kiteboarding, and kind of insanely windy if you don't. Food is basically resort food: a narrow selection of dumbed-down local foods, plus hamburgers, pizza, and other representatives of international cuisine. The crabcake wrap was nice. The Sailing Club does make an effort to provide a wide variety of foods - they list Afghan, Indonesian, and Turkish items on the menu. Overall, the food is very modern-restauranty, fish filets with fruit salsas and the like. The food isn't badly made and the service is nice. It's just not anything you need to travel to Vietnam to eat.

We made a number of attempts to leave the resort and eat good Vietnamese food, failing every time.

The first night, we were recommended to Ruang Forest Restaurant, which is a largish restaurant with musicians and a lot of “theming” - nets, boats, fish ponds, etc. The “Forest Style” crab was described as grilled crab with tamarind sauce. The reality was a medium-small swimming crab cooked to a nice degree, i.e. not overdone, and covered with a tragic ketchup sauce. Not so good.

The green mango salad with soft shell crab may have been very authentic, but was not overly tasty. Or at least was not for me. It was a green mango salad, with pieces of soft shell crab mixed in. Said crab was pickled or salt cured or something. In any event, the shell was very tough to chew through, and the crab itself had a powerfully salty, shrimp-paste like flavor. Sort of like eating a jar of shrimp paste with a tough shell mixed in. The crab gave the salad as a whole a very salty flavor. Putting the salad on the provided sesame cracker didn't really help. Not popular.

Shrimp grilled with garlic was done nicely and tasted like it claimed: fresh shrimp grilled with garlic. Probably the best dish of the night, in close competition with “flowering cabbage” in oyster sauce, which was a green vegetable sauteed in an oyster-sauce based sauce. The result wasn't just “vegetables with oyster sauce,” which I eat a lot here in China, but something a lot tastier and more complex. They used the oyster-sauce as the starting point, rather than the goal, and wound up with a very nice dish.

The second night, we followed the Lonely Planet's recommendation to Cay Bang, which was billed as a local Vietnamese seafood place for seafood. “The local Vietnamese” part of the description seems accurate, and they definitely have seafood on the menu. The crowd seemed overwhelmingly Vietnamese, and despite the English language menus, their ability to handle customers such as ourselves who don't speak Vietnamese was pretty severely limited. This might be a great restaurant if you are Vietnamese or are with someone who can speak fluently. For a foreigner such as myself, not so much. It's a very large, bare-bones seafood palace at one end of the resort strip. The prices appeared about double the prices listed at most of the foreigner-targeted seafood restaurants on the strip. I'm not sure if I was supposed to bargain (I didn't try), or if this is the difference between live seafood (at Cay Bang) and seafood on ice (at the strip restaurants) or what. FWIW, the board propped in the room with the seafood tanks (where you can pick out your meal) had the same prices as listed on the menu I was given. We ordered grilled squid, steamed shrimp in coconut water, a grilled grouper, stir-fried morning glory, and steamed rice. The steamed shrimp had no taste of coconut, but were cooked nicely, as was the morning glory. Everything else, including the rice, was noticeably overcooked. Actually, the rice was not so much overcooked as it was very dry. My daughter pulled a quarter-sized, dessicated lump out of her mouth, commenting “Daddy – dry rice!” The restaurant is the the size of a small village, so perhaps we just ran into some quality control issues. I have no idea. Ordering food and settling the bill was complex enough.

The third night we were recommended to Huong Vu, which apparently has several locations. It's one of the tourist-targeted restaurants with a tray of seafood on ice out front. We had a grilled giant shrimp, seafood spring rolls, summer rolls, “Hong Vu” fried rice, and fried morning glory. I watched them grill the giant shrimp closely, hoping to learn the secret seafood grilling techniques of Vietnamese cooks. I should have saved my time. The end result came out about the same or worse (i.e. overcooked) than the shrimp I buy from the grocery store here and grill at home, although cheaper. The shrimp was about 200g and cost about 4.50 USD. The seafood spring rolls were okay, and did taste of some sort of unidentified seafood, and the fried rice was likewise inoffensive. The summer rolls were sort of dry and otherwise underwhelming. None of the food was particularly special, and generally did not meet the standards you would find at say, the Eden Mall in Northern Virginia.

Which sums up our Mui Ne experience: not awful, but consistently overcooked seafood, and generally not as good as eating in Northern Virginia.

Saigon/HCMC Trip Report

Just got back from a week in Saigon and Mui Ne. I'm breaking the report down into two parts. The short answer is that Mui Ne is a culinary wasteland, and Saigon is the promised land of milk and honey. Sort of a heaven/hell experience, if you will. Assuming that hell is moderately overcooked seafood at fairly low prices. Full report on Saigon follows:

Ben Thanh market was good, only caveat being that when buying a box of fresh jackfruit, I forgot to check whether it was fresh or already going bad.

The best meal was probably at Quan 94, a Noodle Pie recommendation, where we had crab spring rolls, crab fried rice, deep fried soft shell crabs, and a tamarind hard-shell crab. An amazing meal, although the crab fried rice was probably unnecessary – the quality of the crab wasn't to the same standard as the other (amazing) dishes.

First runner up was likely Pho Hoa, at 260C Pasteur Street in District 3. I was recommended here by the hotel concierge, after complaining that Pho 24 wasn't any good. He felt Pho Hoa was better than Pho 2000. I never had a chance to make the comparison myself, but Pho Hoa was definitely quite nice. It's a large restaurant, 2-3 stories, multiple dining rooms. They have beef or chicken. Beef has many options – rare beef, tripe, meatballs, etc. We went with “everything,” which was pretty amazing. The table comes pre-equipped with sawtooth herb, basil, and some other herb I don't know the name of, chili peppers, limes, and you tiao – the fried dough sticks. The pho then arrives with a plate of blanched beansprouts. One interesting note was that the “hoisin” sauce on offer was much saltier and just different from the Lee Kum Kee that is pretty much standard at Vietnamese restaurants in the US. The chili sauce was pretty similar to the US-Vietnamese Sriracha. The noodles are tender, and it's just a very good bowl of pho. They also serve pate chaud – the Vietnamese pork pies – which are also good, if not as exceptional as their pho.

Another outstanding meal was Wrap & Roll, a chain restaurant with at least two locations around our hotel (the Sheraton). We had banh cuon, banh xeo, and the grilled pork with vermicelli, herbs & rice paper. Possibly some other dishes, I can't remember. It was all very good, cheap, and in an air conditioned, somewhat stylish-in-a-bare-concrete-and-bright-colors-way, if you're looking to escape mosquitoes around dusk. Wrap & Roll basically serves many types of Vietnamese food that you wrap with lettuce, along with a wide variety of Vietnamese drinks.

Noodle Pie had commented in 2006 or 2007 on Pho 24's success in turning pho into a successful chain, and theorizing that other street foods would follow. I saw some other examples of this, including a rice plate (com tam) restaurant called Moc and a Banh Xeo restaurant. Wrap & Roll appears to be a bit more upscale than Pho 24, which is almost like a McDonald's. Wrap & Roll also has a much larger menu, and is significantly more delicious than Pho 24.

After Wrap & Roll, the good meals started to get miscellaneous. The hu tieu restaurant across the alley from Blue River Hotel #2 was good (alley off Ky Con http://www.blueriverhotel.com/images/...), as was the banh mi stand down the street and to the left. A bakery called Pate a Chou or somesuch around the corner from the Sheraton (out the door, left, and first left) had the best pate chaud of the trip – large, crispy, peppery, creamy, and just a delight. The Brodard bakery also near our hotel had a good pate chaud, if somewhat smaller & more peppery. The banh mi sio mai (meatball banh mi) across the street from said bakery is good, but is an early morning option – she was out of pickles by 9:30 or so. The pho at the Sheraton's breakfast buffet was pretty good from a broth standpoint, although somewhat lacking in condiments and types of beef provided (just sirloin).

Two disappointing meals were the Pho 24 near the hotel and Ngu Vien restaurant. At Pho24, the pho broth was very salty and lacking in depth – like they tried to compensate for a lack of beef with extra salt. The rice plates we ordered were also uninspiring, with the pork, shredded skin, and pork pie all not up to the level you'd find in the US, and the “sunny side” up eggs coming in more well-done. The accompanying fish sauce/chili/garlic dipping sauce was also not very flavorful. Overall, a very disappointing meal.

The second disappointment was Ngu Vien, the Hue restaurant recommended on Noodle Pie. It may just be that Hue food is naturally bland. I don't know. We had the hue-style shrimp rolls that come with a dipping sauce made from water that has been used to steam shrimp (I have no access to Noodle Pie, so can't get the name), which were nice – there was a nice texture to the steamed noodle wrapper. The filling didn't taste like much – overall, sort of like a milder version of a shrimp rice roll from Cantonese dim sum. We then added the rare beef in coconut (bo tai nuoc dua?), the jackfruit salad and the fig salad, which are listed as goi mit and goi va on the site, but have much longer names on the menu. The beef had a very subtle flavor – it was tender beef, if not particularly rare, more like “well done beef in coconut.” But despite pulling it straight from an open coconut, it didn't actually taste much of the coconut. It was sort of like eating tender, thinly sliced beef, with the occasional spring onion. The salads were much the same – tender, warm beef, finely diced and mixed with sesame seeds, and something added that had about the same texture. It was actually very difficult to tell the two salads apart – I couldn't do it at all based on taste, and had to look at them closely to decide which contained fig vs. jackfruit. The salads were cooked nicely, in that the beef was tender and finely diced, but I guess I prefer larb/lop, which is basically the same dish with toasted rice substituting for the sesame seeds, and then lime juice, fresh mint, and chilis added. Beef and sesame seeds just didn't seem like a very exciting flavor combination. I was expecting something more. We also had some spring rolls, which were fried nicely – they came out hot, not overly greasy, with a nice dipping sauce, although the filling seemed pretty basic – just pork and a whole shrimp, no rice vermicelli, cabbage, wood ear mushroom, carrot, or any of the other things I associate with spring rolls. The one good dish was the com sen – fried rice cooked in lotus leaf, which had some nice flavors to it. Overall, the dishes seemed technically sound, nothing overcooked (except possibly the coconut beef), greasy or gloppy, but fundamentally lacking in flavor. The food was also remarkably slow – the first dish took about 40 minutes to arrive, and we had to carry the com sen straight from the kitchen back to the hotel due to time pressure.

It's a Hakka restaurant. Hakka are a minority group found across Southern China - Guangdong and Fujian provinces mostly. Like other Southern Chinese, they emigrated in large numbers, particularly to SE Asia -Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Everything after "restaurant" was me ad-libbing. It's not in the writeup. Returning to the writeup:

The recommended dishes are Hakka-style three cup chicken (san bei ji), which I've always thought of as a Taiwanese dish. There's lots of Hakka people in Taiwan too, so maybe it's originally a Hakka dish that has become Taiwanese. Who knows. But I digress. Returning to the review:

The other recommended dishes are hommade honey (the restaurant's name is a reference to an apiary) and Hakka style stewed pork belly.

They're open 7 days a week from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., they seat 86, and you gotta pay cash.

I just scrolled down and realized there's a whole lot more to this webpage than just the address and stuff, so I'm going to hit the high points now.

The top two lines are the address and phone number.

The first set of photos are captioned from left to right: "real farm food!" "Hakka Stewed Pork Belly" "Hakka Style San Bei Ji" "The Farm/Source" and "Papaya fresh from the field." The dishes described below are the san bei ji, the pork belly, papaya, and also oysters, fried jielan (kai lan?) and salt chicken (the pale looking stuff in the top photo)

The next set of photos have no captions, but I'm pretty sure you can figure out what's going on there. The description is written by someone who was happy with their steamed fish, steamed eggplant, and stir-fried rice noodle (background).

The last set of photos is the beehives, where the lemon honey is grown, plus a lemon honey drink they had out by the beehives after walking for two hours and having a lot of trouble finding the place.

Google Translate can help, as can Chinese Pera-Kun if you use Mozilla Firefox.

Enjoy. Let us know how the honey is.

Sorry, yeah. It's in Shanghai. Went back there this morning and can report the following differences from XiaoYang:

1) Xiao Yang pours the oil into the pan directly from the bottle. The guy at Shucai Ji has a bowl of oil & a ladle. I think this is the main reason they're less greasy - they've got a lighter hand with the oil. Although the resulting shengjianbao are still not remotely diet food.

2) The guy at Shucai Ji spends a lot of time pulling the pan of shengjianbao off the burner & then balancing it on the edge of the burner while rocking it back and forth & spinning it around. I don't recall this being done at Xiao Yang.

Oh yeah, and Superbrand Mall also has Ding Tai Feng on the 2nd or 3rd floor, which is good quality xiao long bao (soup dumplings), taiwanese beef noodle soup, hot and sour soup, and a bunch of other stuff, at a price point around TGI Friday's.

Just discovered a competitor to Xiao Yang Shengjian Bao (the pan fried dumplings):

Shucai Ji Shengjian Bao (舒蔡记生煎), on Xinzha Lu, next to Jiangning Lu, a couple blocks behind the Westgate Mall. I like it better than Xiao Yang, actually - it's less greasy, has more sesame seeds. Chewy top, crispy bottom. I still wish the wrapper was more doughy than noodly, but it's a good shengjian bao. The dumplings are also smaller than Xiao Yang, so you can put a whole dumpling in your mouth at once, and not worry about being hosed down with soup.

It's really good. I don't see any reason to go back to Xiao Yang.

Dianping agrees with me:
http://www.dianping.com/shop/504439

Although apparently the two Yunnan Lu locations have much lower quality? Never been to those, so I couldn't comment.

The entire block has been marked for destruction (拆), so go quick. I haven't asked where they'll be moving.

Agree on Element Fresh. Shangri-La also has a branch of the Hong Kong restaurant Fu Lin Men (福临门 Fook Lam Moon?) which serves really good dim sum at correspondingly high prices.

The Superbrand Mall's top floor has a decent Chinese restaurant - comparable price & quality to Crystal Jade, but can't remember the name. Superbrand Mall also features said Element Fresh & a Hooters. Not that I know anything about that . . .

I used to work down by Dongchang Lu, near the stock exchange. Across the street was a standard neighborhood, with la mien and rice plate joints, etc. But none of the food was worth seeking out. It was just like any other Shanghai neighborhood.

The problem with Lujiazui is that it is so big, it might take you 30 minutes to walk 2 blocks, and there's no stores or street life, it's just skyscrapers.

The Hyatt restaurants have good reputations for making high-quality high-price Chinese food, and I guess there's a couple Hyatt's in the area. The Jin Mao is a Hyatt if I'm not mistaken. I've only eaten at Canton restaurant in Jin Mao, and the dim sum was really good once and very ordinary once.

Apologies for the ill-researched report.

Apparently what I ate on Shimen Yi Lu across from Dagu Lu is called niu rou jian bao (牛肉煎饱), and a photo can be found here:

http://www.dianping.com/shop/2965627#ur

That listing contains recommendations for a shop/stand on Jiangsu Lu, near the Yan'an Lu elevated freeway, as well as a rec for a stand near the MeiLong WuCun Junior High (梅陇五村初中). It appears most people are familiar with the curry-beef-and-cabbage flavor I encountered on Shimen Yi Lu, and despise the heretics who use ginger.

That said, I would like to recommend the ginger-containing version produced by Dong Lai Shun (东来顺), or at least the Dong Lai Shun on Shimen Er Lu, between Beijing & Xinzha Lu. There's a guy standing in the doorway to the kitchen in the morning, when the rest of the restaurant is closed. He charges 2 RMB per bao (this may be "friend price"), and they are made with beef, ginger, green onion, and no curry or cabbage. They basically taste the same as the ones I ate in Taiwan, except that they're more baseball shaped. He says he's open from 6:00 a.m. onward. I've never eaten in the restaurant during normal business hours, so I don't know if they're still available then.

I'll suggest Nanjing Guan Tang Bao (南京灌汤包). There's one on Datian Lu (大田路) just south of Xinzha lu. They allege themselves to be a chain, and I see a Dianping listing for other stores with that name. http://www.dianping.com/shop/2294569. I make no guarantees that the Datian Store is an actual licensed franchisee.

In any event, the XLB are pretty good, skins thin, tasty, and cheap 3.5 RMB for a steamer of 8. Major flaw is that the top of the XLB, where the skin is pinched together, is kind of thick. Only one flavor, pork. They also sell the duck soup with rice vermicelli (老鸭粉丝).

A couple street food suggestions:

1) Shimen Yi Lu, across from the Dagu Lu intersection. There's a pan-fried-bun stand in an alleyway that opens onto the west side of Shimen Yi Lu. The buns are sort of baseball-shaped, with flattened tops & bottoms from being pan-fried. I've seen a flatter version in Taiwan called xian bing (馅饼), but I think the proprietor of this stand just calls his product niu rou bao (牛肉饱), or beef buns. In any event, they're pretty good. The filling is a juicy mix of beef and cabbage with some curry-type flavoring, a little sweet, a little spicy. I haven't seen anything like this for sale anywhere else in Shanghai. As with anything else in China, you have to monitor quality. He's got a large flat iron pan for cooking the buns in, and usually serves you a bun fresh out of the pan.

However, I've also seen him keep a bowl of cooked buns sitting out, away from the cooking pan. I'd assume these are buns from a prior frying that hadn't been sold yet. I've had one bun that was kind of sourish - it came from the bowl. And there's obviously nothing preventing buns from migrating from the bowl back into the pan. So maybe try to get one when it looks like he's doing heavy business.

The price is a little odd, something like 1.4 or 1.6 RMB per bun.

2) Bund Area - on Zhaotong Lu (昭通路), which is a little one block street running between Shandong Lu & Henan Lu to the East and West, and between Guangdong Lu and Fuzhou Lu to the North and South (slightly northwest of the Westin Hotel). On the South side of the street, about halfway down, there's a stand that claims to have Korean baked goods. I've got no idea if these things are Korean, but they are unlike anything else I've seen in Shanghai, and once again, taste pretty good.

There's two varieties and three flavors.

One type is like a Cinnamon Roll (e.g. Cinnabon), but smaller, less sweet, and made with white sugar and sesame seeds instead of brown sugar and cinnamon. It's just the swirl structure that it has in common. The bottom is nicely crispy, the dough is soft and slightly sweet, and fresh out of the oven (or even still warm) they're pretty great. 1RMB for 3 buns.

The second type comes in sweet (sugar) and salty (green onion). It's a swirl-shaped bun that they roll flat into an oval shape and then bake till crispy. The inside is mostly crispy, with a very little bit of chewy here and there. 1 RMB per.

If you can't read Chinese, the stand is pretty easy to identify. The signs are yellow overhead and red on the front of the stand. Also, there's three big pans set out - two with flat crispies and one of sweet rolls.

I think they're open later in the day, but the traffic slows down, so your odds of getting stuff hot out of the oven is best in the morning.

Zhaotong Lu is a wet market during the mornings, so it's pretty active.