“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.”