A Month in China: Foodie Shanghai- and a tale of two noodles!

Hand-Pulling Noodles...

MARVELOUS Shanghai Soup Dumplings!

Shanghai Tea House

     

Making THE best soup dumplings!

         

THE best Shanghai breakfast WonTons!

We did a lot of fun things during our five first days in China in Shanghai, but because this was a "foodie-centric" trip, I am going to devote this post to the "foodie" things we did there, all of which were delicious and highly recommended!  Our first morning in Shanghai we took the “Bund Breakfast Tour” with "Shanghai Lander", http://www.shanghai-lander.com/tour/13 which I had booked via Viator- now that we have used them, we HIGHLY suggest you book directly with them. Doing a walking foodie tour when you first arrive someplace is a great idea, in that it allows you to get to know a bit of the city "off the beaten tourist path", and gives you ideas for things you want to do or go back to during your stay. We met our charming guide at the gorgeous & historic Peace Hotel- which was Victor Sassoon's home and a true part of Jewish Shanghai, and where we will stay if we get back to Shanghai! (We went back there for real, live 1930s Jazz- more on that in my next post). 

The Peace Hotel

We walked down the famous Bund (no crowds at all, contrary to all the sage advice I was given by "old China hands"...), and she then led us down little side streets into old residential neighborhoods you wouldn't believe are there! We first visited a tiny street-stall restaurant for truly wonderful pork-and-greens-filled, hand-made WonTons- more elaborately folded than the WonTons we know in the USA- in hot soup, with a wonderful house-made hot chili condiment. These were THE best wontons we'd ever eaten in our lives, and I Badly wanted to take a portrait of the lady chef who makes them, but she was too "shy" to allow it. :-( Many small stalls were closed for Chinese New Years month, as a lot of the owners take this month to go home to their towns and villages, but we were still able to have a great breakfast of tasty Shanghai dishes, including soup dumplings, fried dumplings, and egg rolls (Note: do NOT eat before you do any kind of a "foodie tour"!), and went to the truly amazing Food Hall, upstairs in a Nanjing Road shopping mall, which was an eye-opener- and if not for this tour we never would have known it even existed!  

The Great WonTon Chef of Shanghai

The BEST Shanghai WonTons!

Breakfast dumplings...

 

The amazing Food Hall...

At the Food Hall...

At the Food Hall...

At the Food Hall...

Down a side street into another world...

Residential downtown Shanghai

Downtown Shanghai...

At the Food Hall...

With our guide at the Food Hall...

 

Hot chestnuts!

Our last day in Shanghai we did two delish "foodie" things: for lunch we took a great, fun "Hand-Pulled and Shaved Noodle Making Class" at Cook in Shanghai: https://www.cookinshanghai.com/ and for dinner, we did an excellent Foodie Walking Tour with Jim of Shanghai Foodie. I booked the Noodle Making Class easily on their website after we were already in China, (you pay with PayPal, making it easy and safe), and we took a taxi to the Chinese address in the email. We then managed, eventually, (asking directions by pointing at things, LOL) to find the building! There was no signage to indicate there was a cooking school in the building, but we took the elevator up to the proper floor... and still didn't see anything that looked like a cooking school down the dingy hallway. We were just about to get back on the elevator and leave, and try to find someone with a phone, when I decided "what the hell" and rang the doorbell on the apartment with the correct number- and voilà!- it Was "Cook in Shanghai"! We had tea while we waited to be joined by 4 others: a German couple living in Shanghai, and a young NYC couple also working in China, and together we all learned to make "Shaved Noodles", first kneading and kneading and kneading the high-gluten dough, then forming it into a long oval and resting it on a chopstick in the palm of one hand, and then, using a shaver, we chipped off thin noodle strips, shaving the noodles directly into a wok of boiling water. Fished out with a strainer and served with scallion oil (and Chinese hot chili paste, my Great Love and one of my Five Food Groups LOL), they were absolutely delicious, and something that we could actually make at home! 

Noodle Class begins!

Making the dough for Shaved Noodles

Chef Dan, kneading...

Chef & Chef!

Noodle Shaver...

Chef Dan learning to shave noodles

Our Chef, teaching us to shave noodles!

 

Chinese spices

Noodle Shavin' Chef Dan!

Shaving my noodles!

Part One of a Yummy Lunch!

Then came instruction on making Hand-Pulled Noodles, which I (laughingly) thought we might actually be able to learn to make, too: Fat Chance! It takes something like a 10-year apprenticeship to make these noodles, and unless you're Really Gifted (and Dan was actually quite good at it, and the two gals in the class were even better), hand-pulled noodles are something you're going to have to enjoy when made by a master chef, such as our teacher! The chef was amazing, and watching him literally whip and twist the rolls of dough into thread-thin noodles faster than the eye (or camera) could follow, over and over again, was incredible, and he laughed as I photographed his every move, documenting it for posterity (LOL). But try as I might, I couldn't even get Close to making a skein of noodles worth boiling in soup! Ms. OCD to the core, I tried over and over and over, long after the others had given up and were slurping the chef's perfect noodles, and noting my frustration, the kind chef even gave me logs of dough to pull that he had already twist-whipped into shape, but it was all for naught! Dan did better, and the German woman and NYC gal did so well that the actually created noodles worth boiling and eating, but my sad ropes of dough were hopelessly lumpy things that fell to bits long before they became noodles. None the less, we all got to enjoy the Chef’s 3 different expertly-pulled noodles: thread-thin ones almost too fabulous to contemplate, round "longevity" ones, and flat ones of linguini-width, served in a bowl with wok-scrambled egg-and-tomato, chili oil, and that crushed chili condiment from heaven- a totally delicious lunch!  We highly recommend doing a Hand-Pulled Noodle Class when you're in China- I know there is one in Beijing, as well- if only to see how it's done, so you can truly appreciate the mastery that goes into creating these delicious things...
 

Our Hand-Pulled Noodle Chef shows how its done...

Voila! Hand-Pulled Noodles!

 

Our attempts at Hand-Pulled Noodles...

Our Hand-Pulled Noodle Chef shows how its done...

Amazingness...

More amazingness...

Noodles!

Noodle Creation: faster than the eye can see!

Noodle-Making Magic...

Looks easy, yes? LOL

Whip it, whip it good! LOL

 

I tried...

The Chef's fab pulled noodles- not mine!

I bought us the noodle-shaver in the hope we might make the Shaved Noodles for special Elkhorn Inn guests, and a small jar of their house-made Baiju (rice wine), that's sweetened with a fruit syrup (wax flowers?), and as a parting gift they gave us red paper-cut designs of our Lunar Signs: I'm of the Year of the Pig, but Dan is of this year- the Year of The Dog- which is Very auspicious- apparently I MUST get him some red underwear! :-) When we left, following their directions, we took the Metro a couple of stops to a wonderful backstreet artisan market in the "old city" of Shanghai, where we braved the insane New Years crowd crush to check out all the lovely shops and stalls full of delish-looking foods we had no room to try! And I wished, yet again and sadly, that I was still a size 6 and had $2000 to outfit us both in embroidered cashmere, and me in $300 brocade heels...

 

Ginger Tea!

Meat-on-a-Stick!

Loved these koi lanterns- but never found them in a shop...

Russian Ice Cream- Putin's fave! LOL

I fell in love with these Koi lanterns... and looked for them all over but never could find them in a shop...

Me and Lucky New Years Dog...

3-D Map of "Old Shanghai"

Russian Ice Cream- obviously Putin's fave... LOL

Dan in the middle of the New Years madness!

Where this is- good luck finding it. LOL

On the Shanghai Metro...

On the Metro! And look: English signage!

That evening, our last one in Shanghai, we took a really great Foodie Walking Tour with Jim, the owner of ShanghaiFoodie, and got to try lots of delicious things at “off the beaten tourist path” places around Shanghai that we Never would have found on our own! Jim is truly a man who loves his city and its fabulous food, and knows it all well, and it was a pleasure to enjoy Shanghai with him at places where he (and we) were welcomed like old friends. We, together with two lucky guys who work in Asia, started our evening at a trendy microbrewery bar in a really cool Shanghai bar/restaurant neighborhood of light-wrapped trees and cute cafes, that, again, we didn't even know existed!

 

Microbrewery Beer Flights!

Europe in Shanghai!

Then we Didi-taxied to a famous one-dish historic restaurant that dates from 1932, where we enjoyed DELICIOUS bottom-fried dumplings filled with pork, shrimp, and water chestnuts, and served with the best, richest, and most flavorful soup I think I've ever had! (We got to try a number of different, regional soup  dumplings around China, and all were delicious- and different from each other! These were unique, with a different filling from others we tried, and pan-fried on the bottom, and the soup was amazingly delicious! It is TOTALLY worth taking this tour if only to get Jim to take you for these dumplings- and to the Tea House!)

THE BEST- and truly unique- Shanghai Soup Dumplings!

Makin' Dumplings!

Then we had super-spicy and really delish Yagur (Muslim) lamb-on-a-stick (this season's trendy food in China) at a busy street stall... 

Muslim Spicy Lamb-on-a-Stick

 















One of the great things about doing a walking foodie tour is that you get to see cool things in neighborhoods that you might otherwise never get to as a tourist with limited time and language; we love the mix of "old and new" that is China- and other parts of Asia we've spent time in, such as Vietnam, Korea, and Japan...

Hot Pot on the street...

Our next stop was at a very special small Tea House, where the delightful and charming owner made us a number of different teas on her special "tea table". She had a funny little clay pot that "peed" when hot water is poured over it, and I wanted one so badly I searched China until I found one- and a little tea-table, too! We learned about the different teas as we enjoyed them with small snacks and nuts, and we totally LOVED this little Tea House and the charming lady who welcomed us so warmly...

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Tea- the real Chinese deal!

The peeing tea piggie!

Jim then took us to a "student hang-out" BBQ restaurant, where we enjoyed delish grilled rolls of thin tofu filled with tiny, skinny-tailed mushrooms, grilled eggplant, taters-on-a-stick, and other BBQ treats...

BBQ fun! The tofu rolls were FAB!

Yummy grilled clams...

Chinese grilled eggplant and taters-on-a-stick!

Baiju Jim!

We then went back to the Tea House for a surprise New Year's Feast that included preserved duck, sliced cold bone-in chicken, Lion's Head Meatballs, and 8-Treasure Rice, with a proper Baiju Toast! Ganbei! :-)  Jim truly knocked himself out to give us all a great Chinese New Year, and one we'll never forget!

A New Years Feast...

Before the evening ended, Jim gifted us all with red New Years envelopes of tea, and then he guided us to the Metro so we could get back to our hotel just like two “old China hands”!  

Next Up: More Shanghai fun!