Eating up Shanghai: the cold dishes

It's my second day in Shanghai, and I've been eating like a starved woman. (Yes my darling J, I will definitely gain weight as you've been wishing and praying!) I guess it's because I haven't had a chance to eat good Chinese food in a long while, and also because I've had to walk a lot in Shanghai. Anyway, here are some of the dishes I've savored in this megacity. Let's start with the cold appetizers (liang2 pan4), shall we?

Jellyfish with cucumber and radishes in soy-sesame dressing (Yi Cha Yi Zuo)

Cold silken tofu with century eggs and preserved vegetables in dark soy sauce and sesame oil (Liu Yuan)

Cucumber skins marinated in rice vinegar (Yuan Yuan)

Minced salted vegetables with tofu (Liu Yuan)

My favorite! Lotus roots stuffed with glutinous rice in a sticky and sweet osmanthus syrup. Da-yum!!! I love it so much I had it for both lunch and dinner (Yuan Yuan and Liu Yuan)

Scone so good it deserves its own post

Anotai's scones are all I crave these days. It's hard to find scones in Bangkok (or even in California) that are buttery and moist like the one above at Anotai. Most scones are just dry and cakey, even those at top afternoon tea places like The Oriental Hotel.

I love the unique flavorings that Anotai use for their scones too, such as lavender, rose petals, blueberry and prune and zest. The one pictured above is infused with butterfly pea petals--violet colored edible flowers commonly used in Thai food and desserts. It's supposedly good for those with greying hair too. My aunt grows her own butterfly peas organically at home, eats about 10-15 raw petals daily, and her hair magically turned back to black. Cool huh?

Oh, and the accompanying jam is also really uncommon (I have a thing for unique/ weird stuffs, especially when it comes to food flavorings and pairings). It's mulberry jam. I don't even know what mulberries look like. I only know that silk worms eat mulberry leaves...or at least that's what I remembered learning while in primary school. Anyway, this mulberry jam has a pretty complex flavor. Neither very sweet nor tart. It's kind of figgish to me actually.

Together, the buttery scone, the airy whipped cream and the gooey mulberry jam melded together into a mouthful of delight, and did I mention that it's totally 'melt-in-the-mouth'? So divine! (And yes I know the cream is not the traditional devonshire clotted cream, but the scones are so rich that they don't need another layer of richness on them)

I can't write anymore...I'm getting so hungry already after writing this!

Anotai Vegetarian Restaurant

976/17 Soi Rama 9 Hospital

Tel: 02-641-5366

My favorite Italian eatery in Bangkok

I love Rossano's. Both the food, the ambience, and the service. I first went there for my dad's birthday last week, and it was so good that I just went back there again for dinner with my dad. Rossano's is owned by the owner of L'Opera--an Italian restaurant in Sukhumvit 39 that has been around since way back when. I have been to L'Opera before, but I wasn't impressed by anything. Neither the food, the decor or the service. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that its sister restaurant has turned out so magnificently.

The private room on the second floor. I love the way the extra long bread sticks in the vase doubled as decorative pieces.

Bronze pots and pans (definitely imported) decorate the high walls. Very creative and adds a nice authentic touch

Rossano's was probably converted from a house, and stepping into the restaurant made me feel like I was stepping into someone's home in Tuscany. The restaurant has a very homey, warm and slightly rustic feel from both its decor and the color scheme of yellow ochre, bronze and dark chocolate.

Anyway, on to the food. The bread basket itself was already impressive. Not just because of the wide variety, but also because of how yummy each of the bread choices was. I personally loved the thin bread crisps the most. They're brushed with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt and thyme, then baked till brittle and crispy.

Next is another one of my favorite salads--Rossano's signature crab meat salad. It's really delicious, but in a very different way than Antonio's rich and creamy mushroom-truffle-gorgonzola salad. This crab meat salad was just very light and bursting with natural freshness from the cherry tomatoes, chilled avocado (the temperature here was the key to making the buttery avocado taste refreshing), and sweet crab meat. The dressing was probably extra virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar. The reduced balsamic vinegar was just drizzled on for an extra kick.

The crab meat salad beautifully plated above. By the way, this was just half the actual serving. My dad told the waitress to divide the salad for us. Imagine if I had to finish the entire salad myself!

The huge lump of fresh crab meat on top of a cute little avocado ball

Our second course was the porcini risotto. Many places make this dish, but few can make it so perfectly. At Rossano, the arborio rice was al dente (yes this rule applies to rice too, not just pasta); the porcini mushrooms were succulent and unbelievably fragrant (not like the porcini filling at Antonio's that didn't smell like anything); and the porcini broth melded perfectly with the starch from the rice to form a rich, adhesive sauce. On top of all that, Rossano's recipe called for 2 extra flavor enhancers: Parma ham bits and linguini-like strips of cheese. The end result was completely satisfying, although I must say that the first few spoonfuls were much better than the ones later...probably because the residual heat made the fragrance of the porcini and parma ham more obvious to my senses at the beginning, and as the heat wore down, so did the fragrance.

The porcini risotto with milky white strands of cheese and too-tiny-to-be-seen parma ham bits. Oh, and also the shadow from my head.

Finally, my dad and I enjoyed a bowl of potato gnocchi with fresh lobster in a stewed tomato-basil sauce. This is my favorite dish because it's so comforting...somehow potatos and most other starchy stuffs (except white rice) tend to have that effect on me. Plus, it was cooked so perfectly. I've had lots of gnocchi elsewhere, and this place seriously makes the BEST gnocchi. They're soft, smooth, and almost fluffy! Most other places would make gnocchi that are rubbery and flour-y (can't think of a better word to describe a dough that has too high of a flour-potato ratio).

I also love the stewed tomato-basil sauce that Rossano's chef paired with the gnocchi. I always found the typical four cheese sauce, or worse, gorgonzola sauce, too heavy and rich to accompany gnocchi. Stewed tomatoes and basil, on the other hand, made for a light and refreshing sauce that both contrasted and complimented these little potato dumplings.

The gnocchi that won a huge place in my heart. Love the fact that they were all irregularly shaped too--an unintentional yet effective way to scream "homemade!"

Can't wait to bring J here soon! I still haven't tried a lot of dishes...so I'll keep you guys updated on the other good eats in my future posts. =)

Rossano's

167 Sukhumvit 21/3

Tel: 02-661-7449

Antonio's--my first visit

I've heard so much about Antonio's. A friend claimed that it's the best Italian eatery in Southeast Asia, and my bro said that it has the best grilled steak in Bangkok. How could I not give it a try, right?

J and I finally made the trip to Antonio's tonight. It's a small restaurant, half-filled with expats, with a very simple and cozy decor. (I like Rossano's decor and ambience much better...and I'll show that in another post.) The service though, was superb. The staff were so enthusiastic and just seemed genuinely happy to serve. If there's anything to give credit to Antonio's, I'd say it provided the best service I've experienced in Bangkok. We were impressed by the staff's huge grin and friendly yet unintrusive chat, as well as their speedy service. For example, we were served with a plate of warm homemade focaccia in less than 5 minutes after being seated.

Homemade focaccia with basil-tomato topping on the side

After that, the waiter brought us a huge plate of the day's special--fresh (as in alive and still kicking on the plate) mud crab from Phuket, scallops from Japan, mushrooms from Chiangmai, clams from the US, etc. Then he went on to recommend how each item should be cooked. We went with his recommendations of:

Mixed salad in truffle-gorgonzola dressing (see the black specks?) topped with mushrooms stir fried with garlic, olive oil and chilli

This salad was really, really yummy. One of the best salads I've had (my other favorite is the tuna nicoise salad at Vanilla). I'd never expected truffle and gorgonzola to go together so well, because I'd thought that the gorgonzola would be too overpowering. But it was just right. The fragrance from the truffle was the first thing I noticed, followed by the slightly salty and creamy gorgonzola. The mushrooms were really flavorful as well, and I think it was made to suit Thai people's taste because typical Italian food I've had tend to be a lot blander than this.

Porcini ravioli with black and white truffle cream sauce

Our second dish was the famous ravioli--the signature dish that was often featured in the restaurant's reviews. The sauce was good, but I guess it lost the 'wow' factor a little bit because I've had something similar before in the salad. The porcini-ricotta filling was ok. I couldn't smell the porcini as much because the truffle scent was quite strong. But I've heard that the ravioli with foie gras filling is to-die-for, so the next time I might order that instead.

The waiter also served us some pieces of bread to mop up the sauce, and I must say that the bread went better with the sauce than the ravioli (oops sorry chef). Our plates were mopped clean.

J mopping up his sauce even before tackling the ravioli

Our main course was again, another famous dish here: angel hair pasta with olive oil, garlic, and chilli, as well as one whole mud crab (that I saw moving its legs earlier)! While this dish was good, it reminded both J and I of stir-fried Chinese noodles (mee sua with crab meat) that we could get at Ah Yat at half the price. We both prefer tomato-based sauces much better, so next time we'll give this a pass and try something else.

The mud crab pasta came with lots of crab roe, all of which I gave to J. The massive amount of cholesterol irked me

J and I will definitely come back here to try other dishes. The chefs here flavor their food well, so we just need to experiment with the rest of the menu to find our own favorites. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's the best Italian eatery in Bangkok though. Three dishes are barely representative of a restaurant, right?

Antonio's

59/1 Sukhumvit 31

Tel: 02-258-4247

Thai style vegetarian at Anotai

I've written about the food at Anotai before, so I'll just show you guys some of the food pics in this post =)

Seaweed-wrapped agedashi tofu with wasabi-mayo dip and papaya slaw

Mizuna salad (some organic veg I've never heard of) in lemon-sesame dressing, mixed with lots of dried cranberries

Unpolished red rice. My bro said that it's the kind of rice that prisoners used to eat until the health craze hit Thailand. Now this type of rice is pricey!

Stir fried sweet gourd (texture of bittergourd but very sweet) with egg and carrots

Eggplants and tofu in a basil-fermented soy beans (dou jiang) sauce

Anotai Vegetarian Restaurant

976/17 Soi Rama 9 Hospital

Tel: 02-641-5366