Orient Expressed

Excuse the delay in posting this latest entry. I've had my mum and one of my sisters to visit. They arrived at the weekend and have been cooing and gawping their way round the city since. That tall building syndrome thing again. For these two however the skyscrapers have really gone to their heads - or at least the gins and tonics and white Russians served within the skyscrapers. Whereas most people go on pub crawls, these two have made it a personal mission to visit every sky-high bar in town. They are hitting Cloud 9 on the top floor of the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt (in the Jinmao Tower) tomorrow, they have sipped Champagne in the 789 bar on the top three floors of the new Le Royal Meridien, and they seem to have turned the JW Lounge at the JW Marriott into their local (they are not actually staying there, which would surely be a surprise to their new friends the bar manager and concierge).

Having them here has also reminded me how much entertainment the food can provide here. I took them to something of an institution in Shanghai, a restaurant called Dongbei Ren. The restaurant is named after the region in the north (bei) east (dong) of China, where the food is a heartier affair than further south - not necessarily spicy, but full of richer meat dishes to shut out the numbing cold that cloaks much of that area for a large part of the year. Anyway, among the lamb and mutton dishes (more prevalent further north, both in the east and especially in the north west, on account of that region's Islamic influence), the beef, and aubergines served with a sauted potatoes, there were silkworms. These had the pair of them giggling and wincing in equal measure - I felt like I was back in the UK watching Carol Vorderman about to devour witchetty grubs in "I'm A Celebrity". I wasn't allowed to order them.

I will though. And I'll tell you about it. I know discussing "weird", "alien", "no-way!" food is a cliche, but who cares. It's only a cliche because there's a shared fascination with eating the strange, the unusual and the downright disgusting, and so people like talking about it. And, thus, so will I. So far I haven't got further than chicken's feet. They are pretty good, and on a par with pigs trotters - obviously. Ok, without quite as much to get your tongue round, but still with that lip-smacking gelatinous quality and concentrated flavour of the chicken in question (as pig trotters have with a pork flavour) that any carnivore would warm to. As has been explained before, it is not the flesh that is so satisfying (there is none) but the crunch and chew of each metatarsal and the way it releases little bursts of goodness. Why the UK and America ships all its chicken feet over to China is now a mystery to me. I think there's a new garnish you are all missing out on...

There will be boundaries I am not willing to cross though. Monkey's semen (because it could potentially be the most tragic way to contract a STD); ducks' tongues (because I don't see the point); and braised ox penis, to name a few. Now this last one I have been, I admit, tempted by. They serve it in the Xinjiang restaurant at the end of my road, and when the icy Shanghai winter was so biting it was making me feel the pinch in my own privates, back-up from what would surely have been a pretty well-packed ox seemed like it might be a good idea. Fortunately on that occasion a delicious spicy dish of roasted hare nestled in a basket of dried chillies came to my rescue, as I came to my senses...I left with my modesty in tact. On second thoughts they say you should try everything once. Hmmm, I might wait till the folks have gone home. Eating ox penis is not the sort of thing you want to do in front of your mum.