Current location:	Shanghai, China
Current mood:	satisfied
Current music:	Peter Gun by Art of Noise
Entry tags:	asia shanghai food tim nike business nik

Food in asia... Thoughts and stuff...
Well, here is my review of the Japanese resteraunt attached to the hotel. Its a bit raw, I have not edited it. I just wrote it out on my Blackberry and sent it to my gmail account. It was a good dinner, just a little odd. I thought you might like it. Oh and I had Chinese food today for lunch, man it was good stuff. I am sitting on the 8th floor in the Nike office in downtown Shanghai. The others from Nike are starting to come in so we will swamp the hotel pretty soon I am sure.

Lunch: Chopped chicken and vegetables that you stuff into a light pastry with sesame seeds (the guy I went with said it was a Chinese hamburger. I laughed my butt off at the one. :-)
Chinese steak in some sort of a chinese bbq sauce. Pretty good, very tender. Oh and it has knife beans with it. You would like those (a cross between asparigus and beans, good stuff).
Dim Sum = Shanghai Dumplings. Good stuff, pork and a light soup inside it. Making my mouth water right now. You had to bite it and drink the soup out of it before eating it. Very good.
Fried bean curds, ok sounds icky, but it was good. He told me it was vegetarian fried chicken. lol

Oh and I had a sprite too. A drink that tasted the same, whoohoo! Ok a good lunch. Much better than my dinner last night.


Dinner on Sunday night:


Green tea here does NOT = green tea at home.
It has a different taste to it. It is indeed like the stuff in uwijamia (Asian supermarket).
Kind of earthy almost a toasted rice flavor.

Things I have never had before. Like what resembled a kind of translucent watery potato. Vegetables that were made of all sorts of different things. I definetly found a squash variant but one thing was like a small zuchini but a different taste. Oh and this fish cake of sorts. Not too sure what it was but it was good.

A radish that was mush that was cold that came with the tempura. I put that in the dipping broth (not a sauce but more of a broth) as suggested and swished it around and it thickened it up and gave it a bit of spice. Came with a shrimp too but that was much more mushy that I am used to. Still tasted good though.

Now a vinegar dish. Very thin sea weed she says. We'll see. ... Very good. Its the txture and firmness of cooked rice noodles. Tangy. It uses a vinegar but its sweet too. Tastes a little like pickled ginger the sauce it is in. Its in a little bowl (like a small teacup).

Sashimi was very good. I tell ya though having the shrimp you are about to eat looking at you (the head is still on along with the eyes and stuff) is a little odd.

The sushi is very good (duh). However the miso tastes funny. Maybe I am used to the american style but... Its almost bitter with a slightly burnt taste? I dunno. Oh and the soy sauce is sweet with almost a bbq flavor to it. Odd.

Miso also came last. Then came the green tea. Its definetly backwards from how we do it. How very odd.

Ok so one more. Dessert is a assortment of fruit. Strawberry pineapple orange slices and 2 small almost grapes. They are about the same size but have a verry tough skin almost avacado tough they are light od green and they have a seed or pit or something like that. Very interesting. I had one not the other. Tasted ok but can't get past the skin. I asked and the name of these is dragon fruit or dragon's eye fruit. One or the other.

Lessons learned.
Eat what you know last. Just in case you run into a taste you don't like and don't want it to be the last one in your mouth.

Just because they speak a little english doesn't mean that they can tell you what they are serving you.

I like English tea (black tea) more than green tea. I will try jasmin tea next.