Shanghai Vixen

Due to the nefarious workings of the net nanny, I cannot post comments, so to:

What's the Chinese name of the Dadi place? I spent a few minutes on Dianping and couldn't identify it...

Oops, sorry, I'm a flake. It's actually Deda 德大西餐, 四川中路359号靠南京西路. Its similar sister institution is Donghai 东海 a few doors down.

The Shanghainese "Western" restaurants are so awesome, and such a cultural/culinary evolution intricately woven of the city's multiple cultural and political influences. I so love going to my neighborhood one, Richard's on Guangyuan, and watching the people there, what they order and how they eat it.

I think it was topped off when my study lightbulb exploded, showering me in glass and sending my Lao Shanghai crashingly, smashingly towards the ground. I was too exhausted to even be upset.

It started out well enough, with a lunch pilgrimage to Dadi, one of the two Old Shanghainese-Western restaurants on Nanjing Dong Lu facing demolition. Great place, classy-silly in that old sort of way, full of dignified old men chattering the afternoon away. The pasta was mediocre, but the borscht was meltingly delicious. Afterwards, I mosed over the the MoCA presser for the Gaudi opening - an hour late, to miss the speeches and get a catalogue. Had a nice hang out with D, one of my only remaining friends at the staff-hemeroughing museum. Afterwards, I lounged in People's Park, fielding a call from Good Bug in Beijing and three accostations from the tea scam people; I just laughed in their faces, to their apparent bewilderment.