Getting to know Rachel Platt, City Weekend's new dining columnist

Hello and a big welcome to Rachel Platt, City Weekend’s new Dish columnist. As your trusty expert on Shanghai’s dining scene, you’ll be hearing from her a lot—dishing on new restaurants, burgeoning trends, ridiculous experiences, juicy rumors, all of that good stuff.

Before she come to Shanghai, she was a freelance journalist for ten years in London writing regularly for national newspapers and magazines, including some guest spots on The Guardian's food gossip column, Nibbles. She also worked as a TV director and producer, most notably on "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is", a cookery competition show where top celebrity chefs went head-to-head in a battle to produce the perfect menu.

You’ll surely soon be seeing her around town, so read on and check out the quick-and-dirty interview below to find out a little more about her tastes.

Deserted island foods: Easy: chocolate, naturally. Tea, of the “builders'” variety as we call it in the UK, and bread. I'm cheating a bit as I am counting on using the island's natural resources. I'd eat banana sandwiches for breakfast, lobster for lunch and spit-roast wild boar for dinner (that really is cheating isn't it?)

Torture chamber food: This is a tough one--I don't really hate any foods. I'm not particularly fond of eating animals in their entirety - insects, frogs, snails whatever. Although I love shellfish, so that doesn't really work...

Ideal dinner party guests: I'd have Marilyn Monroe and JFK - just to put all those conspiracy theories to bed, Steve Coogan to make me laugh, David Attenborough because I want him to be my Granddad and I could listen to his voice all day long, and Patrick Swayze circa 1988 as Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing--I'd have the time of my life!

Favorite Shanghai restaurant: The Old Station in Xujiahui is a local favorite of mine, and it’s just a five-minute walk from my house. The food is good Shanghainese fare. The restaurant is in an old monastery and the owners have rather bizarrely added two train carriages where diners can eat, but it just adds to the charm.

Favorite Shanghai food: Sheng jian bao or Lillian's egg tarts, preferably one after the other.

Favorite carbohydrate: This is a tough one! Potatoes are just so versatile: chips, roast tatties, mash, crisps and the list goes on. But I think I would have to choose bread. A good bread is a meal in itself. It's the food I miss most in Shanghai - I've still yet to discover an affordable decent bread.

Guilty pleasure food: A chip butty. Fat fish-and-chip-shop chips drenched in vinegar and laden with salt in buttered soft white bread. With ketchup, of course.

Craziest thing eaten: The food I found the craziest to eat was crocodile. Not so much in that it is weird tasting or even that unusual, it just seemed incredible that I was eating this deadly killer. It was particularly crazy because I was eating it on a camping trip in Karijini National Park in Western Australia and we'd just spent the day on a riverboat, cruising past the magnificent beasts.

Hope you all enjoy our new Dish! Check the Dish blog soon to hear more from Rachel.