Blade Runner 2020: Eating My Way Through Shanghai

By Nate

I’m not a foodie, I’m an eater. If left to my own devices, I’ll find something simple, butter chicken, pho, carnitas, even Costco Pizza and I’ll roll with it four days a week. Same with restaurants... if you own a spot and can skillfully pull off a style of food I'm into, you'll see my face in your joint repeatedly, eating up & down the menu.

In my prior visits to China, I developed an affinity for Sichuan style food. It’s spicy, full of those peppercorns that make your mouth numb and vibrate. Our first meal in town was at a spot called Lost Heaven. It was the real deal, hot AF, pieces of coagulated blood, full of chunks of fatty beef and flavor. Think of it as the buck-wild cousin of Vietnamese pho. But with this soup, if you try to eat all the broth you’ll melt your face. 

My conference was in an expat heavy enclave, dotted with Starbucks, Ramanda Inns, and Marriots. I was jonesing for something authentically Chinese. Well, into my life walked Lanzhou Lamian -- a style of cuisine centered around knife-cut noodles and wok-fried veggies from the predominately Muslim region near Xi’an. We went for lunch on day one -- I loved it! I hit the same spot three times in 36 hours. 

Each meal set me back about 20 Yuan or about $2.92 US. The highlight of the three meals was the beef noodle soup. The noodles were thick, knife-cut with beautiful irregular edges that soaked up the flavor of the broth.

Eating Nemo. I’m usually up for anything food-wise. One night I was on my own and ended up in a Japanese Restaurant. I was expecting sushi, based on the signage. I was seated at a table the size of a 1980s station wagon. It had a burner in the center like a Korean BBQ spot. There was no sushi on the front of the menu or page one… or two. I was annoyed. Ain’t no way I was gonna sit here and grill my own meat at ten pm by myself. Finally, on page 8 I found the sushi. I ordered the whole fish, an option I first encountered in Vegas a few years back. This is where things went very sideways.

My fish arrived alive. I noticed its tail moving and thought I was imagining things. Nope, his tail moved again. Then his head started to move. I was like “is this mf’er gonna jump off the plate?" They had placed a banana leaf over his eye, I lifted it. I swear Nemo looked at me. The body meat had been cut away and I was supposed to eat it as the fish slowly expired in front of me. Bruh... I contemplated adopting veganism for a moment. Then I thought to myself, not eating him won’t bring him back and muttered: “what would Tony Bourdain do?” So I ate it. It was definitely fresh, it was definitely good, but not an experience I ever, ever need to have again. 

Our final day in Shanghai was a guided bus tour around town. At each stop we'd pull into a new district, the kids would go see the sights, I would just eat: Crab dumplings, yep. Spicy tofu, duh. Steamed pork bao, twice. Savory crepes, waxed. Soup dumplings, I promise you. Dumplings in broth, yeah fam. All of it.

We finished our visit with a pilgrimage to Din Tai Fung. It was literally our last stop before going to the airport. Words cannot describe the joy there, so I'm not going to try. I started with an incredibly clean tasting chicken broth soup to open; more soup dumplings: pork & truffle; then my first vegetable dish of the entire trip; we finished off the meal with spicy shrimp & pork dumplings. So many things get over-hyped nowadays but Ding Tai Fung is as good as billed.

I gotta tell you, Shanghai is a whole food mood. Days later, I think I'm still full.