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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