Eating in Chinese

Some of my friends who had traveled east, told me how difficult it was to have food in these parts. Either it was the lack of vegetarian food or the different crawling or other creatures on the menu that were the point of contention, the gist was that food was going to be very very difficult here. So I was mentally preparing myself for a big diet which would have been good for me, I believe. But fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, it was not to be.

I find the food here at Shanghai quite to my liking. To be fair to my friends, they had not come to Shanghai. They had visited the southern parts where, my Chinese colleague tells me, the menu has a lot of crawling creatures. Of course I am sticking to vegetarian and sea-food only. But still liking it. I don't think I have had so many vegetables in a single meal. Hmm, come to think of it, possibly only with the exception of an Onam Sadhya! There is a choice of spicy and non spicy food and the cooking style is also very different. The timings of food are also pretty early. I mean the lunch timing starts at about 11:30, seen many go even earlier, and dinner from anytime after 5:30pm.

For the past many days it has been fish, prawns, and a whole lot of different vegetables. I even found an Indian restaurant near my hotel which serves halal meat, so once a week a visit there is also on the itinerary. We don't just go there because you get chicken. It is also the communication angle. You see, the menu cards at most of the restaurants are in Chinese. So I depend on my Chinese friends to tell me which items are the ones I can have ie, the ones which fall into the category of "no pork, no meat, no chicken". So during the weekends, when my friend is not around, it is "safe" to go to the Indian restaurant.

One day, in an adventurous mood, we decided to try out one of the restaurants nearby. One of my Indian colleagues ordered what he thought was spicy fried prawns. Unfortunately, it turned out to be prawns boiled in some broth. I was thankful that it was prawns and not something else. We are hoping to get our deciphering or the Chinese menu better, so now we carry around a pizza hut menu pamphlet which has both English and Chinese. So now we compare the comma separated text in the pizza hit menu to the restaurant menu to figure out what is what! And we have had some success at that too! Hoping that we have better success next weekend.

The only issue faced are with the use of chopsticks. Smaller restaurants do not have spoon and fork. But they don't mind if you bring along your own. So carry for yourselves if you are not comfortable eating with chopsticks.

There are a wide range of restaurants here and a lot of different styles of preparations. I have been told that the preparation style of dishes vary depending on the province that the dish is attributed to. There are spicy kind, sweet kind, bland kind, all sorts of different ones. Shanghai food is supposed to be of the sweet kind. The picture above would give you an indication that the food is spicy. For instance, in one of the restaurants that we went, we had the dish in the first picture has both styles. The darker side is spicy, where as the lighter, yellowish side is not. This dish is kept at the center of the table where an electric stove is turned on. The fish(yes it is cut, cleaned and raw when it is brought to the table first) and other vegetables that you ordered are then put into this and left alone for 5 - 10 minutes. Then you can take from here and eat. Simple and cooked right in front of you. Such is the setting in this particular restaurant. The food is served hot and I found the service in most restaurants that I went till now to be excellent.

Two thing are for sure, I am not going to be liking "Chinese" food when I get back home and my diet plans have gone for a toss! Bring on the food!