As Seen by TV

These were taken some months ago in the maze of streets around my office building (mainly around Qinglian Street).  It marks the outer edge of “Old Shanghai” where there are intense amounts of construction going on (certainly nothing special in Shanghai).  I noticed the prospect of a good sky comin’ on, so I grabbed my camera/tripod and headed out to capture these (quite a shame that Shanghai doesn’t usually have these vespertine colors that I am drawn to).

I was strolling around the city this past weekend doing some shopping and happened to stumble upon a parade in preparation…

Week 51, this is the second post in my “Mission: Lunch” series, which will showcase some of the lunches I have had the [mis]fortune of having.

First up was “the spiciest thing on our menu”, a hot beef noodle to which I added some Chinese cabbage at Ajisen Ramen, a Japanese restaurant located in the Infiniti Mall on Huai Hai Road (*update* just found out via wikipedia, that they have over 86 locations in Shanghai alone!)… good stuff (but not spicy enough for me!).

Second and third up are from the company hot spot, where we take new colleagues for their first lunch, definitely a good spot.  A Hunan-style restuarant located just around the corner of the office on Yunnan Road (south of Huai Hai Road).  Their spicy string beans are mighty good, although I am biased as this is one of my favorite dishes (picture #2).  Image #3 shows roughly 2/3′s of the dishes from that day… which included bullfrog (square dish), 2 varieties of tofu dishes (one with shredded pork that was amazing), cabbages, pork, chicken, normal eggs and quail eggs.

The last image is of a pickled pepper sort (very unlike the ones you can find in the US which have no spice-factor whatsoever), from a hot pot spot that were so damn tasty I just had to snap a shot.  I was with 2 other guys, and we held a little contest to see how many we could each eat.  Contestant #1 had zero (0).  Contestant #2 had three (3).  While contestant #3 had six (6).
I’ll let you decide which one was me.

Later that evening [after the spicy peppers] I finally knocked in my first 8-ball off a break… which I have been trying to do for years.  Yes, it was a good day…. yay me!

This is the first post in my “Mission: Lunch” series, which will showcase some of the lunches I have had the [mis]fortune of having over whichever given week.  This was a pretty damn good week… although I have to admit that some of these meals were prior to this past week, hopefully you forgive me.  Also forgive the iPhone camera quality…

First, a little background information… I work in an office building called the Huai Hai Tower located on Ren Min Road and (you guessed it) Huai Hai Road, in south Huangpo.

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The first two images are from lunch a couple weeks back, when it was still warm outside.  Kevin and I hit up a hole in the wall, this is ALL they served… tangyaun.  With 2 choices, vegetable or meat.  The meat ones were absolutely delicious, simliar to a dumpling with a pork gravy inside.  While the vegetable ones looked kinda like tea leaves mixed with crude oil, and were sweet as hell (*update*, wikipedia has me to believe they were actually filled with a “ground black sesame seeds mixed with sugar and lard“).

The next two images are from another little place located on Yunnan South Road, just off of Ren Min Road…  authentic spicy chicken hotpot (notice the chicken foot!).

While the last two are from a random restaurant Kanishk and I randomly walked into (for dinner, hence the beer!) somwhere around Linping Road in Hongkou.   It was filled with locals, so you know it had to be good.  There wasn’t a thing we ordered that wasn’t spicy (besides the rice), I’d have to say that the Hunan-style cuisine is by far my favorite.  The last picture is of one of my favorite dishes, consisting of green beans that have a light crunch to them, cooked with chili peppers and mixed with shredded meat (in this case pork, but shrimp & beef are also used).