I'd first heard about New Shanghai reading Char's blog and then came across it again in a few other foodie blogs. The unquestioned consensus is that the food here is good and the service, well it can vary. For us, it was just a tad unnerving that the waitress looking after our table didn't say a single word to us. We sat down and ordered, she didn't write anything down, didn't nod her head or even utter a word of acknowledgement. She'd walked over to us in silence and just as quietly, walked away.
J is finding amusement in a lot of things lately and this teabag in a teapot was one of them. Whilst common to find the teabag in a teapot at Korean/Jap restaurants and at most cafes, it's quite unusual to see it's appearance at a Chinese restaurant.
Crab Meat Xiao Long Bao. This was one of the recommended dishes; they were lovely and very quickly gobbled up. Skin was just thick enough and inside it was a golden tasting soup that fortunately wasn't too hot.
Drunken Chicken with Peanut Sauce Noodles. I was having cravings for both Drucken Chicken and noodles and this one neatly satisfied the two. We were actually quite surprised how big this came out; in the photo it's only tiny. Had we known how big this was, we probably wouldn't have ordered the third dish.
Stir Fried duck with steamed cornmeal buns. We waited over half an hour for this one and when we went to chase the order, the waitress (who had nothing to do with our table whatsoever) promptly replies, 'It's ready' and ever so quickly walks away. If you'd seen us at that moment, you would've seen both our jaws drop and then us cackling away at such a interesting response. Normally you would at least get something along the lines of 'I'm so sorry. Let me go check for you'. But alas no...anyway, that waitress didn't actually come back out with the dish straight away, we still ended up waiting a couple more minutes.
We weren't too sure how to eat this one but thought it'd looked good in the picture on the menu. We figured you must eat it like this. The cornmeal bun with a bit of duck, a bit of cucumber and a bit of shallot.
Lately, J&I seem to be ordering a bit too much food (and/or overestimating how much we can actually eat). We were stuffed by the time we ate all the food and were really struggling with those buns. My parents have always been right - eating buns fills you up way too quickly.
This could've been quite a cheap meal but the dish with the cornmeal buns was actually quite expensive (almost $20). I'm still glad that we tried it and in a way, it's almost like a slightly different take of the duck pancake which I love. Admittedly though, this one is quite a bit more filling.
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