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Friday, March 31, 2017

Can You Read Me the Menu? I'll Have the Xiaolongbao

This is the menu of the restaurant that my nephew took me to the afternoon that I arrived in Shanghai.  I immediately knew I might be in trouble without him.  I also knew that I was going to love the food on this trip.  This is a small restaurant in the Pudong East neighborhood near his apartment, and while many things were closed because of the New Years holiday, this was open.
I had my very first taste of Xiaolongbao, the famous Shanghai soup dumplings, here, and so my love affair with them began.  Thankfully he taught me how they were supposed to be eaten, which I tried to comply with but it takes some practice.  So practice I did.  You hold the dumpling with chopsticks in one hand and a spoon under it in the other.  Now comes the tricky part.  It is challenging to bite into the dumpling *and* get the soup at the same time.  So you bite and inhale so as to (with some practice) suck the soup into your mouth along with the bite.  If you are not successful, that is what the spoon is for.  The catch what might fall out so that you don't loose it completely.  And that is really the key to hte thing.  It is just delicious and fun and a little bit challenging.

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