Shanghai Drunken Shrimp

Yeah I've said all kinds of nasty things about Shanghai's cuisine. I will again. Nearly every Shanghainese person I've talked to about food has been quietly understanding -- "yes, we Shanghainese people are the only people who enjoy the taste of Shanghai food," they usually say. They're correct.

China is a big country (really?) and there's a lot of different styles of cooking here. Most of what is called Chinese food outside of China is derived from Cantonese food, because it's mostly the southern Chinese that have ventured abroad over the years. So the chances are rare that you've had Shanghai food unless you've been to Shanghai.

Consider yourself blessed. Shanghai food is the most oily-greasy food I've ever had. Even the vegetable dishes are served sitting in a pool of (often rancid) oil. Add two scoops of sugar and MSG to that -- yeah I don't know why either -- leave out anything spicy, and destroy anything subtle.

So it took some special motivation to once again venture into a Shanghai-style food restaurant. Drunken shrimp!

Drunken shrimp -- you may have seen a dish by this name on a menu in your country, but those are usually cooked. In Shanghai, drunken shrimp is not only raw -- it's alive !! Now I've heard many a Shanghai person talk with disgust about how the Cantonese eat all sorts of weird creatures, but eating a live animal is as weird as it gets. OK, some Americans eat raw oysters, which are actually alive also, but these Shanghai shrimp have little claws -- they bite back as you try to eat them.



They're served in a bowl, alive, swimming in sweet alcohol. It's a good way to go, I think -- if a giant were going to consume me, I'd prefer to have a bath in strong liquor first also. The alcohol helps to make them a little less feisty, too, as if humans needed more of an advantage over little shrimps.

So I rounded up some friends to dine at Shanghai Ren Jia, on a swanky section of Nanjing Road. Shanghai Ren Jia is a local upscale chain. They serve Shanghai food, and people actually pay for it. We started out with plenty of beer and an appetizer of cow's stomach. The cow's stomach was one of the better dishes of the 15 or so that we tried -- soft chewy texture, with little criss-cross indentations that are not only pleasant to look at, but soak up the sauce nicely.



When the drunken shrimp arrived, in a clear glass bowl, I cautiously tried to remove the cover to take a closer look. The waitress nearly slapped my hand and held the lid down, explaining the shrimp needed to have more time to get drunk and stupid. Then she poured me more beer.



After 5 minutes of mutual intoxication and toasts, the shrimp and I went head to head. Using chopsticks, I pulled out one of the larger shrimp and held it up for the camera. A long shrimp arm slowly reached out and pinched my finger. We laughed. Then I put the little guy on my plate and used my fingers to remove his head. The drunken arms struck out again, from the decapitated head, but slower this time. I then placed the slowly twitching body into my mouth and chewed. Tender and delicious. Soft and sweet. Live meat.

Chicken Heads

Every month I organize a little music party in Shanghai called The Antidote. We usually do it at C's Bar on Dingxi Lu. Next door to C's Bar is Uncle's BBQ. They do Dongbei-style barbecue here (Dongbei means northeast China). So I've been going to Uncle's quite a lot since they opened last year. I like how you can just go and point to the raw skewers without having to read the menu. Some of the stuff is weird meat that my native Chinese friends don't even know the words for, much less able to translate to English, so we have to use charades. The waiter just points to his own body parts to explain what this and that is on the skewers. They got hearts, necks, tongues, just about every weird thing you can imagine. But I was delighted to see a new item last night -- chicken heads! They have skewers with 2 or 3 little chicken heads on them. They slice the chicken heads vertically down the center, and spread them out, so you see the profile of each chicken head from both sides at once.



I have to say, these were really difficult to consume because I just didn't find much meat to eat on them. I picked at them for several minutes with my front teeth, tried to pull off edible parts, and eventually just put the whole head in my mouth. That didn't work. It was just a solid and rubbery boney mass.

Disappointed with the chicken heads, we ordered some tongues. I'd had tongues like these before, at a dim sum restaurant in Oakland, California. Peony Pavilion, I think. They had this enormous platter with like 30 or 50 duck tongues on them. Did you know ducks have a bone in the middle of their tongues? Do people? I tried feeling around for my tongue bone but I almost gagged.



Anyway, these tongues were kind of bigger than the other duck tongues I'd had, so I said are you sure they're ducks? For a while there was some confusion because someone suggested they were actually lamb tongues, but that would be silly, lamb tongues would look totally different, probably like little cow tongues. But I'm certain these were duck tongues because I know the Mandarin Chinese word for duck is "yah-zi" and it also means male prostitute. One that makes a ton of cash entertaining rich married ladies. And to think I've been doing that for free all these years...

There's not much meat on those heads and tongues, so we ordered more. One of my favorite items here is actually the cow cartilage, er, beef tendon. It has a nice firm chewiness and a subtle flavor perfect for sprinkling the spice powders on. It was first translated to me as "cow viens" but I didn't think that was possible. When checking out weird meat, you really have to be inquisitive.