Shanghai - China - Southern Barbarian

Southern Barbarian is one of those places that might surprise you a little.

Yes it is in Shanghai.

Yes it is a Chinese restaurant.

But don't expect anything particularly typical of most Chinese restaurants. The food served here is from the Yunnan province, which is at the south of China. It is in this province with the largest number of ethnic minorities and as such, when you have many minorities, you cannot have any generalisations of the food. But it's definitely what you would expect!

I'm so bummed I forgot to take a video of how to get here, if you're interested in visiting, do your research beforehand! I am so glad I googled as much as I did and printed out maps as you do get quite easily lost.

Your taxi will take you to an intersection, you enter a cheap, tacky, very quiet shopping complex thing, go out the back, follow the signs they have (which are quite small), go down 2 long corridors that wind and turn, before crossing a small courtyard, going up a flight of stairs and walking down another corridor!

But it is absolutely worth the trek for this little hidden gem, it reminds me a little of Melbourne laneway treasures, and despite it's name, is actually quite a funky little place.

I didn't take any pictures of the interior, as it was pretty much all black, it was quite simple but there was a bustling atmosphere, I was glad I had made a booking ahead of time!

G had brought along a lovely bottle of French wine. It was delicious.

We were quick to order two plates of the speciality which I had been constantly reading about online. Fried goats cheese. Yup. It was cold outside and this was just what the body was craving for. It wasn't goopy, it was actually even the tiniest bit rubbery, which sounds odd, but is actually really nice. The flavour was just wonderful, especially with the red wine!

We demolished two plates. No problemo.

We then got cubes of beef with a bit of chilli. Don't be too scared, the chilli's are more for show than taste. Not too spicy, but full of flavour, and just delightfully tender. I loved that these were all served on toothpicks, it was almost tapas like and reminded me a bit of a Philipino dish called Salpicao which is often had as a snack.

Andrew was craving kebabs. We let him indulge. Nothing overly spectacular, but hey its meat. Wouldn't mind more char on them.

This was a surprisingly good dish. It's a mint leaf salad. Yup, that stuff that's normally used as garnish for your cocktails. It was dressed in a light vinegary but spicy (but not overly) dressing which, when juxtaposed against the mint, made for a very very refreshing taste. It was absolutely addictive and I was so tempted to order a second plate. Mmmmm.

The vegetables were fairly mediocre, could have been seasoned quite a bit more and far too mushy for my taste.

Now try this on for size. Pomegranate flowers. I mean, I always knew there were pomegranates, but who had the bright idea of eating the flowers of all things?!

I really liked this as something different though, the flowers themselves were actually quite crunchy, and oddly sweet. At the centre of the flowers was something even harder, but when bitten into just burst forth with more sweetness, I'm assuming this is a seed or something in the flower.

Other than the fact that I thought there was a little too much spring onion, this was probably one of the dishes I enjoyed the most (although you can't beat fried goat cheese).

We thought we would try to get some fish into our spread (I'm just sort of realising how much we actually ordered as I blog...). I can't remember what sauce this was, but it was all brown, thick, covered the whole fish and had a really strange taste. Almost tangy, but not citrus. Not one of the favoured dishes of the night.

Two of our group ordered chicken soup. Whilst I don't know what it tasted like...they served it with a teaspoon! We could not figure out heads or tails how we were supposed to drink it, as even though the bowl was quite small, it was still taking absolutely ages to drink with the spoon!

So in the end, the traditional Chinese methods took over and down the hatch it all went!

The last thing we ordered was the fried potato pancake. This would seriously make fantastic drunk food. It was carby, oily and crispy. Everything a girl could want surely.

After our meal, our group jumped into a couple of taxi's and went down to the Grand Hyatt to go to the Cloud 9 Bar as I had heard it had an amazing view. When we got up there, we couldn't see the view initially so we shrugged our shoulders, slid into a booth and had desserts, hot chocolates and a few girly cocktails.

On our way out though, we did actually look out the window and realised that we were so high up, we were actually ABOVE the clouds.

It was quite spectacular.

So a fitting end to a very brief visit to Shanghai.

Southern Barbarian

• 2/F, Area E, Ju'Roshine Life Art Space, 169 Jinxian Lu (near Maoming Lu),Shanghai, China
• 5157-5510

Shanghai - China - Xin Ji Shi

When I want to search for restaurants to eat at overseas, or want to search for reviews (if urbanspoon doesn't have any or doesn't exist for the country), I always type "restaurant name blogspot".

It's so difficult when you've been put in charge to organize which restaurants you're going to with a group, when you've never been to the city before!

Xin Ji Shi was recommended by a friend and also by my mother who had been there on a recent visit to Shanghai with my dad, which also came with a plethora of specific dish recommendations as well.

So I went to google it, as you do and came across http://www.goingwithmygut.com with an absolutely marvellous and tantalising review of the place. On top of that, she mentioned at the end of her post that she was compiling a list of Shanghai restaurants for friends that were planning to go and was offering to share her list.

I promptly jumped on her offer and within the day she responded to me with a comprehensive list with review links, addresses and phone numbers and of course a brief blurb about the place.

The world of food bloggers really can be such a wonderful place.

Xin Ji Shi is located in Xin Tian Di in Shanghai, which is a very trendy and nicely done up shopping and eating area. It's been made to look even slightly European, with cobblestones and brick walls. However, when you do walk into Xin Ji Shi, it feels...like a clean, but traditional and homely type place. This ain't no hole in the wall, but it's not screaming out to be noticed either (which can be typical of some Chinese places I know in Melbourne...)

Our group was seated in a semi outdoor area, it wasn't in the warm confines of the building exactly, and there were outdoor heaters but it was still covered on all sides around us.

Whilst I decided to keep my drinking until a bit later in the night, my friends got into some Chinese beer and I sipped on Chinese tea. While nibbling on the delicious roasted peanuts in what I assume is seaweed salt. Or something of the like.

English menus! Pictures! Godsend! The menu naturally was quite generous in size and it took a little while to make a decision on what to eat, but it's nice to feel like the English menu hasn't been skimped on in size because the restaurant might have been too lazy to translate it (as some places do!).

One of the things we had been recommended by my mum to have was the sea cucumber, which I would have liked but at 90 Yuan a head, it was a pricey little number. When I reported this to my mum she was quite surprised, so there must have been a recent price change. Darn!

But nevermind that, we have plenty of other things to eat! Jaime and I love beef tendon, so we were quick to order it, but we were both quite surprised with what we were presented with. I'm typically quite used to getting beef tendon at yum cha, which is usually steamed, a little bit saucy, hot and almost gelatinous in texture, or jelly like anyway.

This beef tendon was chilled, thinly sliced, a little bit chewier than I'm used to and with a delicious spicy kick at the back the throat. We were amazed and very happy with the change, it was so refreshing and almost palette cleansing to have...for a meat dish.

Another dish Jaime and I both quickly decided we needed to order? Jellyfish. Again, I'm used to having it at Chinese restaurants, usually served with duck, long and noodle-y looking and devoured chilled. This was a little bit warm, served in a vinegary, soy sort of sauce, fan shaped and exceptionally crunchy. I don't know how many species of jellyfish you can eat, but I do wish I knew what this one was in particular, we again, both loved this and found it a perfect starting dish to share in size and lightness.

I have no idea what these are.

Seriously.

We tried to ask for vegetables and tried to ask for bok choy. The waiter responded 'Ah, bak chee!' and well, this isn't like any bok choy I've ever seen!

However, this was another surprise which we liked a lot. They were served in a very vinegary sauce that completely cleaned up your palette and were very crunchy and refreshing. I only wish I knew what they actually were....anyone have any ideas?

On to the mains! Oh my goodness. This was one of the chef's specialities, grandmother's recipe pork belly. Or something like that.

Urgh. I haven't had pork belly this decadent in a long time, it was just delicious. There was so much fat on the belly, the pieces just wobbled around on your plate, but the meaty bits were gorgeously cooked and just the perfect texture to bite through. The sauce it was cooked in was so comforting and hearty and just....easily one of the favourite dishes of the night. Also possibly one of the most sinfully delicious dishes I have ever eaten. I just don't have words to describe it!

Next up was fried prawns and chicken in dried red chillis. Whilst this dish looks intimidating to those who don't like spicy, the chillis are really there more for looks and don't add much spice to the dishes. When you managed to fish up a chicken or prawn under the bed of chillis, they were both cooked well, although maybe slightly drier than I like, but that's just me being picky.

Whilst normally soup is served first at most Chinese restaurants (back in Melbourne anyway) for some reason our soup came out last, maybe we needed to make it a special request to have it first?

However, it was actually a good thing for our twice cooked chicken soup to come out last. It was a beautiful chicken broth, that was absolutely bursting with flavour and didn't feel oily. I normally don't like having plain chicken soups as I find them a bit boring, but I easily had two or three servings of this. It was actually the perfect thing to have after all the fatty pork...it felt like it was helping us digest. Or so I like to tell myself.

All in all it was a wonderful meal, every dish was well seasoned, delicious and interesting to eat. I think we managed to pick an interesting mix of dishes as well, which tends to help a little.

I loved how Xin Ji Shi was bustling, but didn't feel that way, we felt like we had our own little corner of the world, but were being well attended to with friendly and (generally) smily waiters who tried very hard to understand my friend's broken Mandarin and speak to us in his broken English. We got there eventually.

And although dinner was over, the night was still young!

We ended up at not one, not two but three roof top bars (and another club afterwards) at the 'Bund', which is the area by the river, which is absolutely glorious at night.

The trendy bar scene tends to be a bit older, the crowd are usually expats who are in their 30's and 40's, who aren't that interesting to us, but when you're with a few of your best friends, who really cares who's around? We had an excellent night, filled with merry making and dancing. And who needs more?

Although if you'd like a bar recommendation, I would probably suggest Bar Rouge, which seems to like lighting everything on fire....

Xin Ji Shi

Xin Tian Di Unit 4, Building 9, 169 Taicang Lu

Shanghai, China

Shanghai - China - Shanghai Dumplings

So back in March (yes, that behind, shhh), I went to Shanghai for the first time in my life. The only other times I had been to China (Hong Kong is not counted as it's such a different scene), was a school 'camp' trip to Shenzen, but it was all the touristy type parks and a second time was in Beijing with my dad for business meetings and a networking event.

Whilst I found Beijing interesting, I was not in love with the city, I found the people overall quite crude and rude, inhospitable and the culture of 'if you're not top dog you'll be eaten' quite prevalent.

Understandably I was a little bit nervous to be going to Shanghai because of this, as this time I was travelling with friends and none of us knew how to speak Mandarin, so was a bit concerned about how we may be treated and not be able to find anywhere we wanted to go!

Ah! But what a vast difference Shanghai is! Shanghai is clean, buzzing, HUGE and I find the people much more relaxed and friendly, there is an overall more comfortable vibe in the city.

I was in Shanghai to meet with 4 of my very good friends from Asia and two of us got in earlier than everyone else, so decided to go explore the city a bit.

After a bit of bantering with the concierge who didn't seem to understand we just wanted a suggestion of what to see, not be immediately directed to a tour, we both grabbed a cab and hot footed it to the old town.

It's a very touristy area of Shanghai, but it's still a pretty little area, with old style architecture and food vendors everywhere.

We were both quite peckish, so we slipped into the closest dumpling store we found (of course, being in Shanghai and all), which was also insanely busy, but upstairs was much mellower.

My friend Jaime was convinced the English menu we were presented with was much smaller than it should be, but I really couldn't be fussed and was just grateful that most of the dishes came with pictures!

I wanted some vegetables, so we got this 'celery and mushrooms' in the menu. What a delightful surprise these were! The celery had a very strong mustardy flavour to it which I absolutely loved, and it was just so crunchy. A nice way to clean up the palette.

I then insisted we had to get these, as the novelty was so intriguing to me. Dumplings you drink out with a straw?! Mine was sadly a bit deflated, although Jaime's came out nice and perky. The soup was scalding hot, so you had to be very careful when drinking with the straw. The soup itself was...well...porky. And really fatty tasting. So gooooooood. But so bad. And the inside of these dumplings is literally all soup.

When you broke them open you just had a thick skin left to eat afterwards!

Of course, we had to have some shanghai dumplings, we got a mixed set and these came in three different flavours (although I don't really remember what they were). There was one spicy one in particular that was super tasty, but otherwise the dumplings themselves were pretty average. The skin was exceptionally thick, but I suppose it's a touristy joint, so the average tourist wouldn't really have a clue....

Alright, the next 4-5 pictures may gross a few of you out a bit, just warning you now. :)

When we finished our meal, we proceeded outside the restaurant where I noticed a few other food vendors, and was absolutely fascinated by these skewers. I chose one and Jaime chose another.

And then we had to wait a few minutes while they pushed them off the skewers and refried them so that they were nice hot and crispy.

I will truly eat most things and could not resist giving these a go. I'm not sure if they were chicks or sparrows, but as they were quite soft all over and lacking bones, I'm assuming they were chicks. They were quite delicious though. Sorry.

Jaime got some soft shell crab, which was covered in a thick batter which was insanely crunchy and delicious. We had two whole crabs, so one each, and I absolutely devoured mine, greedily licking off the salt from my fingers afterwards. Yum.

We finished off with wandering around the Yu Yuan gardens which are gorgeous, filled with little bonsai-esque cherry blossoms which were all gently blooming in shades of pink and magenta.

And then before heading back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of our friends, I randomly decided to get a green tea soft serve ice-cream. BEST GREEN TEA FLAVOURED SOFT SERVE I'VE EVER HAD. The matcha flavour was so strong and intense without being bitter. Every bite was delicious green tea goodness. And it was so super cheap!

So whilst the dumplings were a little lacklustre, I did find myself finding Shanghai (or my first impressions were) more enjoyable and accommodating. And a whole lot cleaner. Was seriously looking forward to tucking into some good dumplings though...