“today for late lunch we went to Arugula, this old house converted into a coffee/resto. we had smoked salmon potato soup, some mashies, sandwich (w/ a big slab of salmon) and some weak salad and fries. for dinner we went into this “chic” little french place – next to another french resto by the same owner – called 570. (all number-only places are supposed to be chic.) owned by a bald frenchie who speaks mandarin, the menu was sparse, and the prix fixe had only two choices in each course: tomato bruschetta or hearts of artichoke*; tagine lamb shank w/ couscous* or homemade pasta of the day; vanilla mascarpone or chocolate profiterole*. the starred ones are what i picked; my mom has only the handmade spaghetti w/ tomato sauce, and dad had grilled salmon with more mashies. quality is just okay and the tagine is not tagine at all – braised lamb shanks more like, not the unique moroccan flavor.”

“today we went to this taiwanese-opened vegetarian buffet – all elaborate and shit but service sucky, tell you later. there are like 5000 things to eat but your email reminded me of one of them – this chilled slice of bitter melon with a slice of banana and some sort of cream in the middle. pretty interesting. otherwise there were a lot of fake meats and stuff that weren’t so impressive. their vege eel is better than golden lotus’ fish – really like fish in texture and had like 2 layers of skin, one fried and one slimy.”

“i did eat yak cheese last night”

“DINNER LAST NIGHT AFTER RETURNING TO SHANGHAI WAS AT THIS JAPANESE-STYLE (OPENED BY TW PPL) WESTERN RESTAURANT WITH SIZZLING STEAK PLATTERS, CURRY RICE OF ALL KINDS, AND OTHER SORTS OF WESTERNIZED FOOD. I HAD THE SEA BASS TONKATSU CURRY RICE WITH PICKLED VEGGIES, AND SHARED A VEGGIE APPETIZER – LONG STEMS OF CARROTS AND CUCUMBERS (LIKE 10 INCHES LONG) WITH 4 TYPES OF DIPS (SWEET YOGURT, THOUSAND-ISLAND MAYO, CUCUMBER MINT, AND SHOYU SESAME TERIYAKI THING.”

“tonight, we had the most beautifully steamed fish – some sort of sea fish, a grouper or something – beeeautifully done.  the fish was a fat and chunky fish but every inch of it was cooked just right – nothing hard, nothing raw, everything was like…feathery.  haven’t had this sort of perfection in years.  and the oil soy sauce thing was not too salty either.  then there was roasted pigeon, and then a clay pot with crab and vermicelli, and then your favorite type of chicken (yellow skin, cooked in broth) served in this wooden barrel thing with the broth, and this cantonese soup cooked the right way (over a slow fire in a specially-shaped pot) - winter melon and a type of dried cuttlefish — and then there were fireworks on tv…right over our table.”

“we had a long dinner – ate at this elaborate southeast asian resto – and then i spent a long time picking dvds.”

“you shoulda come along last night
it’s like my kinda restaurant
beautiful presentation
menus are hand written and illustrated – each one is different
like a book
lots of small dishes
we had this tea
taiwanese ppl opened it – there’s a distinct design aesthetic in the ambience and the food styling
pickled daikon cut into fan-slices, stacked on a tower – looks like a tree trunk
tofu pudding
not good  - worse than bad panna cotta”