For this edition of The Dish two of our favorite Shanghai chefs, Brad Turley of Goga and regular Dish writer, Austin Hu of Madison teamed up to bring you an extra special double dish. Brad will be sounding off first with his predictions for what's to come in the ... Read More
We’ve all been there before. You wake up in the morning with a mouthful of dried saliva and the worst taste known to man. All of a sudden, light has developed the miraculous ability to pierce your brain through your closed eyelids. Yes, my friends, I am talking about ... Read More
Christmas is here which means that it's time to break out the gingerbread. We found three of the best gingerbread houses in Shanghai; it'll take you straight back to your childhood.
IKEA | Furniture
IKEA’s DIY creed trickles down to its gingerbread house kits (RMB40), which come packed ... Read More
By the time you read this, Fulton Place’s closing will be old news. Shanghai is not a city that’s kind to closed restaurants and I am sure some people have already relegated Fulton to a mere footnote in Shanghai’s ever-changing culinary landscape. To me, however, the loss ... Read More
To be honest, I used to think that technology and restaurants were mutually exclusive things. I’m a purist at heart, and I believe that hospitality is the epitome of a “people business.” It wasn’t until I’d worked for a few years that I began to see what ... Read More
I gotta tell you, there really aren’t a lot of perks associated with cooking professionally. The hours are bad, you work all the major holidays, the pay is subpar and how many other jobs list third-degree burns as job hazards? Yes, we eat and drink well and we meet ... Read More
If God rested on the seventh day, I can tell you one thing: he wasn’t in the restaurant business. Anyone who has been in the industry for at least eight days knows there is never any rest. Last time I wrote about the work that goes on behind the ... Read More
The best way to cool down in the summer heat is with a delicious milk tea. We’ve already done the legwork for you and found the top three milk tea joints in town.
3. Café 85oC
For those of you who don’t like the bitter milk tea aftertaste ... Read More
When you’re on the run it’s easy to grab something fast and unhealthy to eat. Luckily lunch at Ba Jia Jiang provides relief by offering cheap, fast and healthy meals. Upon first bite our Taiwan braised pork and shredded chicken meal sets (¥15, there are also tofu and ... Read More
Do you ever get cravings for big stacks of pancakes covered with maple syrup? We do – a lot! Shanghai’s not a very good American breakfast town so we were excited to see Mr. Pancake House .
It’s a little uneven right now, but in time it could really fill ... Read More
Budget-minded diners usually go gaga when they first encounter all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurants. At least for me, growing up in the U.S., eating sushi was an extraordinary, expensive treat. So on my first visits to Shanghai, I gleefully gorged on all-you-can-eat–my favorite place in those days was Uminosachi. But ... Read More
It’s time. You can stop bickering amongst yourselves about the utter and depressing lack of good Mexican food in this town (check our “Great Mexican Food Debate” blog to see passions afire) because I come bearing news of not one, but two stupendous new Mexican offerings. Fiesta! Forever!
Brad ... Read More
You cannot swing a straw in this town without hitting the cellophane top of a milk tea cup. China's largest Chinese-language dining review site, Dianping, currently lists over 300 milk tea purveyors and there are thousands of reviews on the ever-increasing varieties of milk tea flavors, including such ostensible ... Read More
Has it recently gotten a whole lot quieter at the Shanghai’s high-end restaurants? Or is it just me. Of course China would never assert that visa restrictions are designed to proscribe foreigners during the Olympics, however authorities do state that new stringent visa requirements are now ensuring our safety ... Read More
Yak cheese. Hmm. Does the thought get your mouth watering? No? Well, what if you closed your eyes and didn't think about a large hairy beast? Maybe also best to drop any previous assumptions about yak cheese, which "Tibetans traditionally keep on the side of their mouth and suck ... Read More
Just as I was about to chop the organic cauliflower, every light in the studio went off. The camera crew let out a gasp. I fumbled around the countertop. That's when we heard the rolling thunder outside. A producer called out, "Lightning may have struck out the power." Perhaps ... Read More
Ah the life of a food writer. Could there be anything more cushy or pleasurable? And can't anyone eat and write about it? How hard could it be? I often get asked these questions. The short answer is: yes, this job is outrageously fun. Can anyone do it? Well ... Read More
Is there a certain charm, a certain magic to feeling like one is in France, when one is really in Shanghai? A French chef, a French hostess (his wife) and a French owner, walking the boards in a 44-seat varnished wood and glowing copper-toned restaurant in the middle of the ... Read More
Karaku's chef Toyoichiro Seki stands behind the counter in his head-to-toe black chef's uniform. He passes his hand over the bubbling oil in the wok. "What temperature do you fry the tempura at?" I ask. "Oh, I have never used a thermometer," he laughs good-naturedly at the preposterous ... Read More
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 ... Read More
Eating out was an occasion that elicited extreme excitement when I was growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My parents would take me to Charlie's, a dimly-lit working class joint near Harvard Square with dark red vinyl booths. We ate immense portions of Greek salad, pork chops and chicken wings ... Read More
CW Beijing's dining columnist reflects on dining between cities
After visiting several of your city's great restaurants, I was impressed by the stress placed on intimacy and warmth in enhancing the dining experience. Beijing continues to pride itself on the size of its skyscrapers and the width of ... Read More
"We're experimenting with some of Heston Blumenthal's approaches to French fries," Eric Johnson, chef partner of Jean-Georges, told me a few months ago. "Come in anytime, our kitchen is your kitchen," he said. I did not need any more prompting. Heston Blumenthal is the chef extraordinaire at three-Michelin-starred ... Read More
According to a report from the Journal of Food Safety, all of China is going to the hospital in a hand basket, and it's a wonder we've even survived this long. We chopstick-using, communal-dish-sharing, germ-spreading devotees are guilty of ruthless, non-stop, everyday "double dipping." Astonishingly, this food safety ... Read More
Is your diet legal? Sometimes I wish mine wasn't: USDA and Japanese beef, some of my favorites, are black market foods in China. And Russian sturgeon fishing is currently banned, so if you see Russian caviar on the menu, it's poached. But rare foods are rarely cheap, and ... Read More