We were on a business trip to Shanghai and had a evening to ourselves to explore the local cuisine of China. It was a great luck to find this tour and also our fluent English speaking guide - Jim !
Jim arrived well ahead of time, with a very comfortable private Buick Van for us. He first took us to French concession area and subsequently to different bylanes of Shanghai City, to help us experience a medley of amazing and mouthwatering local/traditional street food/ local spirit. Before dropping us back to hotel, he took us to a rooftop bar in Julu area to finish our trip with a relaxing drink and some terrific conversation. Btw, Jim is a master conversationist and knows a lot about all the provinces of China. Our conversation ranged from economy to local market, panda, spice-level in different province, technical advancement, global political scenario and automobile industry in China etc. I gained a lot of useful insights from him.
The food trail covered so much in three and a half hours. It is difficult to have this experience on your own if you don't know the Chinese language and don't get radio taxi so easily without a local sim card. Moreover, some of these eateries don't have a signage or shop name, they are just popular in their neighbourhood :
1. Traditional noodles with spicy pork, soft tofu, shitake mushroom and peanut sauce
2. Tea icecreams with tapioca balls and Oreo
3. Dumplings (3 types - chives, mushroom & pork, only pork), along with small skewers of
lamb, chicken, squid, glutinous rice, garlic scapes, potato, shitake mushroom, enokitake mushrooms tied with dry tofu.
4. Pancake-wrap called as Jianping (top dish of all)
5. Local spirit (made of different qualities of rice) called as Baijiu (white spirit, with 45-55% alcohol) and Fenjiu (wine like spirit, like Spanish Sherry). It is matured in traditional clay pots.
6. Local fruits like Pamello grapefruit, Jujubi and pomegranate juice.
7. Desserts - Yang Zhi Gan lu (mango, Pamello, tapioca in coconut milk) and Mang guo Lao Zhu (3 flavours of jelly balls over mango sorbet).
Overall, a 5 star rating to the trip, and most importantly to Jim !