Uighur Restaurant

We had a party of 12 for this visit to the Uighur Restaurant and it was nice to be able to order everything we possibly wanted on the menu. As usual we started off with some Xin Jiang black beer.

Salad with cucumber, tomatoes and onions. Loved the zingy dressing.

Xin Jiang flapjacks. A bit thicker than pizza base it was an excellent side dish to have with all the lamb.

Roasted leg of lamb, chopped up in pieces.

The always-perfect lamb skewers.

"Big pan chicken". It's similar to a mild yellow curry with potatoes and peppers. Loved the sauce and the potatoes but the chicken was a bit too bony.

Some kind of lamb stew the waitress recommended. It tasted so much better than it looked! The lamb was very very tender (think loin) and it's soaked up all that yummy sauce.

Hot and sour potato thread. Slightly crunchy and spicy the dish was another hit.

Another lamb stew recommended to us. While the taste was good the cut of meat was a little too chewy for me.

Dinner with loads of beer came to RMB100 per head.

Uighur Restaurant

1 Shanxi Rd. South, (nr. Yan An Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 6255-0843

Mansion Veranda

Finally I got a chance to have a look around the Mansion Hotel. Converted from a rather neat looking old house, the place is appropriately decorated with a 30's theme.

While the room rates are pretty steep the lunch deal at the restaurant is not bad at all. For RMB108 we got to choose from the set lunch menu with 3 to 4 starters and main courses plus a drink.

For starter C had a watermelon salad with mozzarella cheese. An interesting dish and she seemed to enjoy it.

R's Caesar salad.

My cream of mushroom soup. It was actually quite nice with coarsely liquidised mushrooms.

For main we all picked the mini burgers. Cute and tasty they were a little too salty for me.
Mansion Veranda
5/F, Mansion Hotel, 82 Xin Le Rd. (nr. Xiang Yang Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 5403-6692

Bubba's Texas BBQ

Bubba's came to mind when I decided to have another meat fest. The place was actually nice and quiet over lunch with quicker (and better) service!

C's Mongolian beef brisket (RMB75) with potato salad and coleslaw. She always loved the brisket and the Mongolian one is actually leaner then the US one.
I went for the ultimate triple meat combo (RMB140). The spread included baby pork ribs, pulled pork and Mongolian beef brisket. Loved everything on the plate, especially the ribs. They were nicely flavoured and very very tender and the meat fell off the bone. To my horror I actually managed to finish everything. My stomach is ever expending these days! Bubba's Texas BBQ
2262 Hong Qiao Rd. (nr. Jian He Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 6242-2612

New Flower City Hotpot

Finally we got to have our hotpot extravaganza! A big thank you for to G for taking us to this place!

I knew we were in the right place when we got presented the tray of dipping sauces. There were soy, chili sauce, freshly chopped chili, minced garlic, chopped spring onions, parsley, cilantro, XO sauce to name a few. Pretty hardcore!

The dish which the restaurant for: thinly sliced beef loin. The pieces were so thin they were like paper. The marbled cut if the meat made it very tender and cooking time was less than 10 seconds. It was so good we had to have second serving.

Beef cubes. They look fatty at a glance but I guess it's the exact same reason that they were very tender and juicy - unlike stew meat.

Ox tongue. It was my first time having it in hotpot; to be honest it tasted just like beef. If I had to eat it on a regular basis I think I would have it in Korean-style BBQ. It's more interesting when it's fried and a little crunchy.

The assortment of meat balls and vegetables.

Hand-made wonton. They were pretty good.

The bag of dough is called "fish noodle". It had a floury consistency but I am pretty sure there's mashed up fish in in. It's usually a little thinner than what we had here.

Lamb in thin slices. It's the only dish we didn't finish that night: the meat was so fat we got intimidated. I did try a piece and after I picked all the fat off there was not much left. The little meat I got to have was actually very very nice. It was pack full of what lamb should taste like-very rich and almost gamy. A nice surprise!

Hand-made pork and mushroom balls. My husband's favourite.

Some kind of tofu thing with lots of air pockets. Basically it worked like a sponge soaking up all the soup base.

We got ice cream for dessert! Yes! Dinner for 5 came to RMB1200. Will come back next winter for another round of meat fest!

New Flower City Hotpot

58 Dong Hu Rd. (nr. Huai Hai Rd.) Shanghai. Tel: 5467-0336

better than nothing

When will we get Crispy Creme in Shanghai? To satisfy my craving I settled for some local donut chain. Well they were better than nothing....the dough was too heavy and greasy and it didn't have that fluffy melt-in-your-mouth feeling at all. Perhaps I'm being too picky.

My Place Singaporean Restaurant

I like Singaporean food in general so I jumped the opportunity to go try one when C mentioned it. We had four of us that day and we got to try a few thing son the menu.

Stir-fried snow peas with minced pork. Not bad.
We saw the next table with the noodles and decided to try one. The waitress called it Malaysian fried noodles...I guess it was somewhat like mee goreng. Sweet and moist it was not a bad addition to have on the side. I don't think I could just have it on its own as it was quite heavy.
Black pepper beef. It was probably the best dish for the day. Would have been better if there was more beef.

Curry mutton. It was rather disappointing because the sauce didn't have that fragrant curry smell at all. In fact it didn't have much taste and the mutton was very fatty. Usually I would be able to enjoy the potatoes but since the sauce was nothing special the spud was also very blah.

Hainen chicken. The taste wasn't bad but I didn't really enjoy it as we got the the bony wing bit (I know some people rave about it). I like my chicken meaty. We also tried the chicken rice but it was a bit to the plain side.

We had a red bean based dessert to finish off our meal. I kind of enjoyed it because it wasn't too sweet but then again I crave sugar and it wasn't all that satisfying.

My Place

3/F, Pudong International Food Inn, 601 Zhang Yang Rd. (nr. Pudong South Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 5137-9787

Bohemia Cafe and Bar

Another visit to Tai Kang Road - somehow the place seems to keep me going back again and again. On this visit at least I got something useful: soap plates for the lovely handmade soaps I got for my birthday (thank you E!).

Before our shopping excursion we paid Bohemia a visit. We were lucky to be able to get an outdoor table during the really busy lunch period. U's chicken and roasted vegetables sandwich. She didn't say much about it and I'm guessing it wasn't bad.
My shepherd's pie was not as good as I expected. Somehow the sauce was way too sweet and the mince too runny. Should have gone for the bangers and mash!Lunch with 2 drinks came to around RMB200. A bit pricey for what you get!


Bohemia Cafe and Bar
No. 42, Lane 248 Taikang Rd. (nr. Sinan Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 6415-0065

Home Hong Kong Cafe

A quick solo lunch at Home HK Cafe.

Stir-fried beef with kale in Chiu Chow sauce (~RMB40). It was excellent! The sauce was slightly spicy (think satay sauce), and with the tender beef and crisp kale it was refreshingly good and well made.

The fried rice with beef (~RMB30) was average. It had way too little beef and it didn't really compare to the version I had in Hong Kong not too long ago.
Home Hong Kong Cafe
1213 Nanjing Rd. West (nr. Shanxi Rd.), Shanghai. Tel: 6279-2929

my birthday meal #7

We gave the clubhouse restaurant a try for our last meal at the resort.

My first ever chrysanthemum iced tea and I was impressed! I particularly liked the chrysanthemum ice cubes.

We shared some beef satays. They were lean but nothing special.

My nasi goreng was not bad but it was a little too sweet in general with small spicy patches here and there. The chef needed to stir a bit more!

We had to switch tables and moved indoor half way through our meal cos a bunch of very noisy golfers came sat right next to us. Bummer. Here's my husband's burger. He seemed to enjoy it.

The house special flour-less chocolate cake wasn't all that special after all. The winner was actually the Longjing ice cream! It was not overly sweet and it had a distinct Longjing tea fragrance. It was so much better than what we had expected (we thought it'd be like green tea and we don't like it one bit). Would love to go back for more!

my birthday meal #6

Another nice day started with an excellent breakfast. My husband's fry-up. Not bad but too stingy with the sausages and bacon.

My French toasts. I loved the thickness of the toast!

my birthday meal #5

On our second night's stay at the resort we decided to have our dinner at the Chinese restaurant. When we were presented the set dinner menu we were amazed to see that it's a 10-course dinner! We secretly hoped that it wasn't going to take forever to eat the meal.

To start off we got given some cold pickled vegetables with cucumber, radish and cabbage. Not bad.

Our starter, from left: Shaoxing drunken chicken, marinated jelly fish, and mock chicken. The drunken was pretty bony and we couldn't really get much meat off it. And mock chicken was actually like tofu and it wasn't bad at all but most surprisingly of all I actually loved the jelly fish. It was crunchy and the vinegar-base marinate was a perfect match.

First course: shrimps with longjing tea leaves. Of course we had already tried the exact same dish the previous afternoon and we were happy to be having more.

Steamed crab with egg. It sounded weird and it tasted weird. Basically it's a bowl of water downed egg with a hairy crab leg in the middle. We had a little bite of the egg and it didn't really agree with us at all...it was really really fishy and salty.
We swapped the usually fatty grandma pork for some ma po tofu instead - glad we did it cos the tofu was very nicely cooked.

The fried rice again was excellent.

We told the waitress that we did not wish to have shark's fin (and we tried to convince her that shark's fin is bad but she wasn't interested). She was happy and quick to suggest a switch with our soup so we got some West Lake beef soup instead. I am not really keen on these thick northern soups they remind me of eating corn starch paste. My husband enjoyed his however and thought it was pretty good.

Crispy chicken with red chili. Too bad they were wings cos it was a lot of work trying to get to the meat. The little meat we got was really good though, even with the skin off we could still taste the chili seasonings.

Stir-fried chrysanthemum greens. It was our first time ever trying chrysanthemum greens. We assume it's the sprouts of the flower.

Finally for dessert we got the usual fruit combo with dragon fruit once again, and some sweet azuki bean paste jelly. I am guessing azuki bean is actually red bean. The "jelly" was more like a mousse and it tasted very plain and boring. We were happy and full from the meal though so we didn't really care.