Just Desserts

My cravings for xiao long bao (soupy dumplings) and shallot pancakes have gone unsatisfied after a trip to Beijing / Shanghai where they fed us pretty crappy xiao long bao on the tour.

So, I was excited that we got to go out to Ashfield to a place with apparently awesome xiao long bao. The first thing I noticed that along Liverpool Road, there were so many restaurants with the word ‘Shanghai’ in its name. ‘Shanghai Night’, ‘Taste of Shanghai’, ‘Shanghai Food House’ and they are all next to each other. You’d think, this would be bad for business, due to the rule of monopolising. However, each restaurant had about 20 people lining up, waiting to get in. I guess the Chinese don’t follow the basic laws of economics! ;-)

Anyway, I found the food in the restaurant to be quite polarised. Things were done quite well and quite poorly and there was no in between.

Let’s start with the food in the done “quite poorly” category…

The shallot pancakes. It essentially tasted like really bland sandpaper. I was so disappointed, as this is usually my favourite dish. 

The dumplings. If they look bland, it’s because they were. They tasted like those microwaved frozen dumplings from Coles. 

Jellyfish salad. A scathing review from my fellow blogger who said “even the jellyfish salad my godsister makes from the packet tastes better than this”.

Now for the stuff worth ordering;

Fried dumplings - flaming hot soupy dumplings! If you’re like me and you love fried stuff, you’ll love this dish. It’s just like improving on xiao long bao by frying it. Genius!

Fried pork buns - soupy, pork filled buns. We ended up getting two of these by mistake and I certainly wasn’t complaining. This was probably my favourite dish of the night and I know I’ll be craving this for weeks to come.

And last but not least, some pretty “up there” xiao long bao! It had all the right elements - soup so hot that it’ll burn your tongue and a nice casing which wasn’t too thick. Mmmm. We ended up ordering 3 of these.

The final three were done to perfection! I should have stopped there, but we all ordered the fried icecream to finish. That was another mistake. The fried icecream casing (which was too thick) tasted like minty powder which wasn’t too great. 

Overall, it was a good restaurant if you know what to order. And at $15 each, it was a pretty cheap dinner too.

New Shanghai Chinese Restuarant
273 Liverpool Road
Ashfield, NSW 2131
Ph: (02) 9797 7284

The view from Bar Rouge, rooftop bar.

It was our first night in Shanghai (and final night in China) so a few of us wanted to make the most of the night. How would we make the most of the night? We’d heard of an awesome bar which lit up the whole bar top in the process of mixing drinks and wanted to see that in action. Given our pub crawl some nights earlier involved thongs, shorts and a t-shirt (and we were STILL overdressed, see: Chinese dudes wearing their t-shirts as if they just scored a goal in soccer and want to share their beer belly with the world), we thought - hey, there wouldn’t be a dress code here either.

There was.

This was one of the ‘hoity toity’ clubs with a dress regulations sign at the door which meant we were probably going to get knocked back (given that we were all wearing everything prohibited by the stupid sign).

We weren’t.

I’m not sure if it was because it was a Sunday night, so no one really cared, or if it was because we were tourists or because we were extremely good looking (of course it’s the latter) surprisingly, we were welcomed in. Woo-frigging-hoo!

The first thing that struck me was the amazing views the rooftop bar had. It was as good as a taking a harbour cruise by the water and you could see the whole skyline. The second thing that struck me was the sleek design of the bar (both at their inside and outside seating areas). On the inside, there was a red and black theme happening which was carried over in the artworks of Asian chicks with bright red lipstick on the walls. On the outside, there was this white seating kind of theme happening amongst some trees, as if it was a tropical resort. It sounds a bit weird, but it worked. 

Things started to go downhill (in the service department), when we went to order drinks and I became pissed me off over how long it took for them to;

1. Serve us - perhaps we did look like homeless people as we didn’t comply with the dress regulations and they were afraid to serve us for fear of us eating / attacking them.
2. Move the drink that they had already made, in one quick motion onto the countertop so we could move away. That seemed like it took 20 minutes to occur and it was as if each bartender was henceforth paralysed in the arms and couldn’t lift up the drink onto the countertop. It’s not a bloody steak mate, you don’t need to rest it.

The whole process felt like it took a good 40 minutes of just standing there at the bar, while the staff members just talked to each other or stood there oblivious or ignored us. 

Also, being a ‘hoity toity’ type of bar, be prepared to be overcharged ridiculous amounts of money for a drink. One of the guys had a beer and it was 60RMB (about 6 bucks Australian). It’s ok when you compare it to Aussie bars where a beer can set you back 10 bucks but given that if you went to the local Chinese supermarket (e.g. Walmart), you could get a six pack of Coronas for 20RMB (about 3 bucks Australian), it was a massive rip off.

In essence, my point is, pay the extra 20 RMB and get them to actually make a cocktail rather than just use a bottle opener to open your beer, which requires 99% less effort.

Aside from the lapse (read: non-existence) of service and the overpriced drinks, the cocktail (mango mojito) was delicious. Bam! Drinking that mojito in amongst some amazing views and with great company was a nice way to say Ciao, China!

Bar Rouge
7f, Bund 18, 1 Zhongshan Dong Yi Road
(Near Nanjing Road), Shanghai.