Craving Chinese Food

It was Sunday night and I had spent the Saturday after St. Patrick's day hung over. I was probably a little low on sodium and was craving NYC-style Chinese food (not that stuff we got in Boston). Sure we are living in the largest city in China, but in our neighborhood it's actually easier to find internationally styled eateries. Since being here I have learned that Sichuan (also spelled Szechuan) cuisine is the most globally widespread cuisine referred to as Chinese food. There are Sichuan style restaurants here, but there are also the cuisines of Hong Kong, Hunan, Fujian, Cantonese, and others. On top of that there are noodle shops, dim sum spots, seafood restaurants and many other variations of Chinese food I don't yet recognize. It's intimidating picking what restaurant to patronize, plus i'm used to eating Western cuisines five to seven nights a week. Most New Yorkers have their go-to Chinese food restaurants that deliver but I've barely even eaten Chinese food so far, despite craving it.

The only authentic Chinese food I have had has been from Din Tai Fung, a chain of restaurants specializing in soup dumplings. Overall the food was excellent, but both locations I went to were on the third or fourth floor of a large shopping mall. Adjacent to clothing retailers, atop multiple escalators, and with bathrooms located outside the eatery, Din Tai Fung is not what I had imagined as authentic Chinese dining in China. My first experience at the chain was with another husband of a Nike employee. He's Asian-American so when the food came they presented me, and not him, with a laminated and illustrated placard explaining how to eat soup dumplings in three different languages. That didn't throw me off as much as the size of the soup dumplings, way smaller with less broth than the ones I learned to love in Chinatown. The food was good, but unfamiliar enough that I left hungry for Chinese food.

The second time I went to Din Tai Fung, Katy and I were at dinner with a new co-worker of hers who told us about her past year in Shanghai. We asked a lot of questions about Nike, food, transportation and her experience in the city. She's from New Jersey and it was nice to be chin-wagging in an intimate group of East Coasters. At one point the conversation was flowing and I even forgot we were eating, or in a Chinese food restaurant, or even in Shanghai - then someone realized we hadn't received half of the dishes we'd ordered. Chinese dinner service usually involves many dishes coming out as they are prepared and then shared by the table. Dumplings come out first but then everything else comes out fairly quickly, unlike a European course-based experience. The break between eating sessions suited me, but further left me yearning for a more authentic experience (or something familiar). Where in China does an ex-pat have to go to get some authentic New York City-styled Chinese-food? At least they have really good peanut butter here. . .

To be honest I haven't done much in the way of dining-out research, so I shouldn't expect to know anything or get the experience I desire. Most of our research into food and eating here has been focused on grocery stores and the relative safety of produce. We found some good resources for ex-pats on where to shop and what types of products to be wary of. We are blessed that the closest grocery store to us, City'Super, is new, trustworthy, and has plenty of imported brands we recognize. We shop there but prefer to get produce from Hunter-Gatherer, a small chain which works directly with farms to source their produce. Their produce is good, they have some comforts not found at City'Super, plus their prepared food is fresh, healthy and somewhat familiar. It's still an experience shopping there: the other day I accidentally bought Cava Cava oranges instead of Navels, yellow kiwis instead of green ones, and a Dragon Fruit which is going bad because I am intimidated to cut it up.

We have been cooking breakfast almost every  morning as well as some nights, but buying lunch everyday and going out for dinner more than either of us is used to. Last night we picked up bagel sandwiches from a local Shanghai chain started by a Californian called Spread the bagel, whose website boasts "Authentic New York in Shanghai."  They are pretty good bagels, but they messed up our order the first time, and Katy's bagel sandwich was made with the sliced halves upside down. Good food here, but it's definitely not familiar.

Even if the food was perfectly familiar, I don't think we could just avoid cooking for ourselves altogether. It is a big city with plenty of options but it's just not who we are. Tonight, we weren't in the mood to cook, hadn't planned anything, and didn't feel like running to the grocery store to figure it out. Instead we started using the food delivery service called Sherpa. It's a great site/app like Foodler or GrubHub which you use to order and track your food delivery. There are hundreds of restaurants to order from. We used Sherpa tonight to order Thai food because it's familiar but we didn't want to dine out at our local Thai restaurant (that we've already been to twice). For now, in China, Thai is my go-to because it's more the same because it is still international cuisine. I don't want to wish away the rest of our gastronomic experience here but I am definitely looking forward to getting back to New York in a couple of months and (over)-eating Chinese food in New York City with extra soy sauce.