Orient Expressed

I had the pleasure for the first time last week of tasting snake wine.

Myself and a colleague went on a midnight bike ride to research a story he was planning on "Shanghai Afterdark".

Before you snigger and roll your eyes, the concept for this was family friendly - well, not that you'd necessarily be taking your five year old out at 3am in Shanghai, but you know what I mean: above board, legal, something you'd tell your mum about.

We didn't want to talk about clubs, restaurants, and, er, massage parlours and bathhouses. They get enough attention in the press here already.

Last week a friend came over from London for a week with his girlfriend, to visit me of course, but also to celebrate his birthday somewhere a bit different from the White Horse in Brixton.

He wasn't disappointed, not least because we went to the Shangri-La's fine dining effort, Jade on 36, for his birthday blow-out.

Now hotel dining in Shanghai is often tarred with the same brush as hotel dining is all around the world. There are lots of eat and drink all you can Champagne brunches (good value, but not exactly discerning) and "Global-village-world-food-stations" where cuisines from everywhere from Kerala to Kentucky are shoe-horned into a menu.

But at the Shangri-La they have managed to create a restaurant that means business, both in terms of those looking to impress their guests (a view across the financial centre Pudong or back to the West and the Bund) and those who come looking for serious food.

It was off to the Tongchuan wholesale seafood market again this weekend. It was the third time I have been and it is one of the best nights out you can have in Shanghai.

The place is chaotic, huge and dirty, and it makes our own Billingsgate look like the Harrods Food Hall.

However like Billingsgate it functions as the city's wholesale market. But unlike Billingsgate it is also like a giant restaurant.

Xiao long xia season has arrived and the city is tearing these little crayfish limb from limb.

It's not pretty but it sure as hell is tasty, and on any given street you can see hitherto civilised people jostling and pushing their way to the front of queues that lead into the bustling canteens where the little crustaceans are being served.

This is not a rarefied experience. After waiting half an hour for a spot, you get marched to one of the formica tables and are packed in, sat down and given a menu.

From the low-brow to the high brow. I swapped the plastic bibs for starched napkins and the braised crayfish for beautifully steamed shrimp tonight, at Family Li Imperial Cuisine on the Bund.

The occasion? Li being the first Chinese restaurant (in China - in fact may be Chinese restaurant anywhere) to be accepted into Relais & Chateau (R&C).

Perhaps this is not such exciting news in the UK, where R&C has a staid and old-fashioned reputation (although this is, it must be said, hardly something they are ashamed of, I would imagine, judging by the properties they choose to be members - uh oh, you know what I mean, the properties, not necessarily the cooking - take members like the Fat Duck and the Vineyard, not old fashioned at all... er, let's get back to the evening). But here it is another little detail signifying everyone's obsession with being here.