A beautiful day in Shanghai – the view from our apartment


Bright blue skies and sunny weather.. what a lovely way to celebrate Chinese New Year this week! Of course, let’s not forget the fact that it’s about 0 celcius, weather that is barely tolerable for weak ‘lil me. Chris and I are quite unaccustomed to this kind of freezing cold.. we’ve stocked up on gloves, hats, scarves, etc, but nothing stops the cold on our faces. It’s pretty crazy, I can’t say I’m a winter kinda girl. Bring on summer!

The streets of Shanghai were, disturbingly, quiet. I’ve never seen it so devoid of crowds before.. Not that I’m complaining. We thoroughly enjoyed our stroll around the streets of Shanghai. Until, that is, we reached Nanjing Road – kind of like the Orchard Road of Singapore, the Rodeo Drive of California, the George Street of Sydney.. you get the picture. It was TEEMING with people!! Pretty overwhelming, and of course we were subjected to the standard push-and-shove of the people – which quite frankly shits me to tears. It still was good fun walking around together and soaking in the crazy atmosphere.

The teeming crowds of Nanjing Road, Shanghai

I think Shanghai has a slight overpopulation problem.. 😉

Ye Shanghai
338 Huang Pi Nan Road
North Block, Xin Tian Di
Shanghai, China
$$$$-

Our Chinese New Year Eve dinner was a Ye Shanghai, a renovated “Shikumen” old-style house. I’d heard great reviews about the restaurant – it’s a well-regarded expat haunt.. all dark and red and black inside, with great Shanghainese food. We were fortunate to get a reservation at such late notice (we’d only booked about 3 days prior) considering all the other (more traditional) Asian restaurants were fully booked for the night. It’s fancy inside, with very attentive service. Actually, it makes a fantastic first-date place 😉

We didn’t order very much, since we’d eaten throughout the day and weren’t feeling particularly peckish 😉 Just chose 3 small-ish dishes to share which turned out to be the perfect choice. Chris decided to be adventurous and get the Wuxi Crispy Eel. It looked odd in the menu’s photo, and it looked even odder when it arrived at our table. It’s like these small slivers of eel, deep-fried til they’re crisp, and glazed in a sort of shiny sweet sticky sauce. SO WEIRD! It had the texture of crispy fries, with a very very mild fish taste. The sweet-ish glaze actually went really well with the natural saltiness of the eel. It did taste quite nice, but looked terribly weird and was also a weird thought to be eating deep fried eel fries 😉

Chris enjoyed the Baked Cod Fish the most – a small portion of tender, moist cod fish sitting jauntily on top of a puff pastry. I thought the puff pastry was a little random, especially since the cod fish has more of a teriyaki glaze instead of a sauce.. so the dry puff pastry didn’t really ‘go’ with it. I personally think it would have been a lot better with a drizzle of sauce and sitting atop some buttery potato mash or even a small pat of moist rice.

We both adored the Crispy Rice with Shrimps, Chicken and Ham in Light Chinese Sauce. It was quite a novel dish – crispy puffs of baked rice arrived dry at our table, then the waitress poured the seafood and gravy all over it with a sizzle. Quite a novelty 😉 The gravy had a lovely rich stock flavour and the seafood was plump and juicy, and a generous portion indeed. It was delicious!

Not a cheap meal for Shanghai standards – it was 233? (US$34.00) for both of us. However, a great place to take someone if you want to impress, and a lovely restaurant to visit for a special occasion.

Ye Shanghai

A delicious Jasmin tea in a pretty mug, and some ‘complimentary’ peanuts
(which we found out later we were charged for without being asked *eyeroll*)

Nibbling away whilst waiting for our food

Chris chills out

The very curious Wuxi Crispy Eel

Baked Cod Fish

Crispy Rice with Shrimps, Chicken and Ham in Light Chinese Sauce

Happy Chinese New Year 🙂