THE DISH: The Missing Spice
Follow the crowds to the restaurants you've never heard of
It's 8:15pm on a Wednesday night. A crowd of mid-level office types sits in a shabby entry hallway to a cavernous restaurant with a gray tile floor below, and fluorescent lights above. An amateurish mural of Sichuan-style floral paper cuts adorns the wall. The waitresses wear frayed brown uniforms with missing buttons.
We are at Shanghai's most popular restaurant by a landslide, at least according to Dianping.com, Shanghai's most popular Chinese-language restaurant review site which lists 22,000 restaurants. Dianping members have written 4,477 reviews for Spicy Joint (Sichuan). And yet, local friends who frequent the place say they've never seen a single expat there.
Surprisingly or not, many of Dianping's most popular restaurants (and this is distiguished from Shanghai's best restaurants), such as Tan Gong (Cantonese / Dim Sum) and Xi Duo Wu (Seafood), are rarely patronized by the greater expat population. They offer tasty food, terrific prices, and even English menus--though they often lack mood lighting, white tablecloths or French Concession addresses. To me, it seems the circle of expat Chinese food havens--like Gu Yi (Hunan), Charmant (Taiwan), 1221 (Shanghai), Di Shui Dong (Hunan), etc.--is too rarefied, insular and well, just tiny, compared to the choices available.
It was time for me to investigate this wildly-popular Spicy Joint. I clicked the magic button on the Dianping website which sends recommended dishes direct to my mobile phone. Then I dialed the Spicy Joint reservation center, which automatically assigns you to any of the five branches with open seats. Sadly, as I was not calling two days early, there were no seats. I decided to just show up late at the branch recommended as "least busy." We were fortunate; the wait was a mere half hour. A few things stood out: despite their crummy uniforms, the waitstaff actually smiled. And despite hordes of local folks, there was not a single waiguoren in sight.
I ordered nearly all the recommendations from Dianping with absolutely no regrets. The shuizhuyu with delicate snakehead fish slivers and crunchy beansprouts, and the tender bullfrog with loofah were both thrillingly spiced. The xiangla potato strings, a foot-high tower of shoestring fries with slivers of cilantro and chilies, rivaled any fancy pommes frites. The plum juice tasted like a mixture of Coke, grape juice and sour plum, and this totally bizarre flavor combo was an ideal foil to the numbing spices.
So, to all those who frequent the same-old predictable spots every week; a good number of Dianping's top 20 most buzzed-about restaurants are expat unexplored territory. Spring is the time for new ventures. Why not start at the top, with Spicy Joint? Just make sure you reserve two days early, and order the sour plum juice.
UPDATE: Here are all Spicy Joint branch locations:
Middle Xizang Lu Branch
4F, 500 East Jinling Lu, near Middle Xizang Lu
Pudong Branch
5F, 601 Zhangyang Lu
Cross Region Plaza Branch
5F, 899 Lingling Lu
Caojiadu Branch
4F, 1118 Changshou Lu, near Wanhangdu Lu
Caoxi Lu Branch
280 Caoxi Lu, near Caobao Lu
Reservations: 6470-2777
Want my recommendations (or have your own) for more adventurous eating? Send me an email and I’ll blog about it.
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okay... mostly I'm really interesting in this particular restaurant as comments seem to be popping up everywhere about it, where are all the locations?
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Hi! The CW site only lists the Lingling Lu branch right now, which you can find here. Also, I'm translating the addresses of other branches into English, and I'll post them here in a bit!
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Having read the article in the last City Weekend about dianping.com and popular restaurants you've never heard of, I decided to give one a try. As all 5 locations of Spicy Joint were booked over the Dragon Boat Festival weekend, I decided to try Tan Gong as I am a huge fan of Cantonese food. The decor of the restaurant was nothing special and the service was slow when the restaurant was empty. When the restaurant was full, the service became annoyingly over-attentive in a 'we would like you to leave now as we have customers waiting' sort of way. We ordered several staple favourites which are, in my opinion, the mark of a good Cantonese. I found that the menu tried a little hard however and some of my favourite dishes were given the elbow in favour of more obscure substitutes. We opted for the 'Charcoal Roasted Belly Pork' (38RMB), the 'Hong Kong Fried Noodles' (30RMB) and the 'Fried Shrimp Buns' (38RMB). The pork was still warm when served and this rendered the fat almost liquid, with a crisp top and a delicately spiced and succulent body which yielded to the slighest chomp. This was sublime and was a world away from Bi Fang Teng's rendition. The Hong Kong noodles were 'hai ke yi', but were nothing special for this price. The shrimp buns at 38RMB for 6 were expensive, but what they lacked in value they made up for in pure eating pleasure. The buns were light, sweet, soft on the top and crisp at the bottom, with the perfect amount of filling and not to much juice. Four times the price of Xiao Yang on Wujiang Lu, but four times as good and nowhere near as oily. Yummy. The quality of the dishes was certainly a cut above the usual lower end Cantonese, but for 4 dishes and 2 soft drinks we paid 170RMB and I felt it was a little expensive.They even had the cheek to sneak 8RMB onto the bill for the 'bai chi' without telling us! I prefer my Cantonese served hot and fast, with a dripping pot of tea and a nosiy, crowded atmosphere and this lacked all of the above. Yes, the food quality is better than Bi Fang Teng or Tian Mi Mi, but at 2 or 3 times the price for each dish it's not worth it. If you want my advice, forget this place and head down to Wujiang Lu where you can have all of the dishes for 1/2 the cost and it's much more fun. Or alternatively try Bi Fang Teng (I like the one on Nanjing Xi Lu where you can sit outside). Cantonese is not meant for white table cloths and finery, it's cafe food. Why eat cafe food in a restaurant?
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Thanks for the addresses I'll be sure to check at least one out!
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Am I missing something.... is there an english version to dianping, my character reading is not so good...