Nooooo Reservations

So, I think I did mention in my first post that I would put up some pictures of delicious food--so sorry to disappoint!! I will attempt at this point...first a conversion factor: 1 USD = ~6.8 yuan or we just call it "kuai"

My favorite: Beard Papa's 7 kuai/puff of yum. That's just about $1-ish for one. So, less than half the price of a US BP cream puff. If I could find a closer location to me I'd eat one every other day.

The lettering is sort of difficult to make out under the winking lemonhead but it says "Happy Lemon". They've got boba, and fruit smoothies, and teas, and lemon drinks etc. I got the Lemon Pineapple with Nato de Coco. I kid you not, I stood and waited for more than 15 minutes for this beverage and although refreshing, I don't know if I want to stand and wait that long again. My camera had died right after this picture so I can't even show you the huge crowd waiting for their orders. 7 kuai for my drink.

This one is for Susan Tran. Shanghai egg custard tarts or "dan tat/dan ta". SO fricken good. Custard part is creamy and smooth and not egg like (is there even egg in this one?) and the pastry is flaky and crispy and not oily like Golden Gate Bakery in SF--maybe that is blasphemous--but I say these are so much better.

I was trying to avoid this place but this morning I tried to go shopping at 9am and found out the stores in that area wouldn't open for another hr at least--so to avoid heat stroke I headed to a surefire spot: Starbucks. I've heard it said that they don't sell coffee--they sell the "Starbucks experience" and I have to say I'm almost grateful for the fact they are everywhere. Here I sat for an hour in deliciously conditioned air. It wasn't too hot, and it wasn't too cold...it was juuust right. The cushy chairs and soft global beats playing in the background are the perfect respite from muggy and sometimes stinky SH air. All this, if you are wiling to sell your soul or pay 30 kuai for a tall latte. You can bet I sipped this bad boy down to the very last cold sour drop.

Today's lunch: 1 bowl of spicy beef noodle soup for 5 kuai. Yah my coffee cost 6x this much!! There's a lot of these tiny no-nonsense eateries where locals usually eat. It's very bare bones, most of the times you sit with strangers at your table, but you get very fresh food prepared quickly and it's dirt cheap! I saw this man kneading dough for the noodles this morning and made a mental note to come back for lunch. If you've never had fresh noodles, the texture is nothing like the dried kind. It's very..."kew" is what my mom calls it and I think it means something like al dente, chewy in a good way, or sometimes Van likes to call it "bouncy," but not in the way where you have to chew for a long time or have it stick in your throat. This place had a giant picture menu as well as one on the opposite wall that was even more comprehensive but all in Chinese script. Guess which one I used?

I don't know why I like ramen so much...I think whenever I watched Naruto sip those bowl of noodles so noisily it just seemed to appeal to me. I've never tried Santa Ramen but I did make my dad drive me to San Mateo for my birthday to eat at this other ramen place, whose name escapes me right now. This Ajisen chain is very popular in SH and I liked it enough that I ate there for 2 dinners in a row. It's in the 18-30 kuai range--a lot pricier than the noodles I had for lunch, but still under $4 USD for dinner. The one in the pic is spicy sour ramen and it's a lot yummier than the name sounds. I'll probably end up eating here once a week.

I had loads more yummy things to eat but frankly most of the time I'm so excited that I forget to take pictures until the plate/bowl is already half empty...then it just looks ugly. Also snapping pictures of food really doesn't help my attempt at blending in with the locals, but screw that, I promised delicious food posts right? :)