NOW IS THE TIME FOR EELS AND OLD WINE

Once you go further in you encounter more of the Shanghai eateries. Fat noodles with pork chops, and red-stewed pork. More working class than North Point, where the better-heeled exiles ended up, but the food was just as good, albeit more pedestrian.

There had been waves of Shanghainese coming in from the end of the war till the beginning of the cultural revolution, as well as refugees from Zhejiang, Anhui, and Fuzhou.
Their world had ended, they would rebuild elsewhere.

Nothing gives people hope as much as their own food in a warmer wetter place where everyone else speaks some kind of gibberish.

Which explains why there are Chinese restaurants all over the United States, Indonesian restaurants all over Holland, and Irish pubs everywhere where American expats gather. Assuming, of course, that corned beef and overcooked grey cabbage are in fact food.
Which is extraordinairily doubtful at best.


Of course one thing that they really longed for was eel quick-braised with garlic, soy sauce and rice wine, then topped with oil-sizzled garlic; 響油鱔絲 ('heung yau sin si').

It is doubtful that I can get any native English-speakers in the United States to try this. If they still think in Dutch or Flemish their culinary curiosity would get the better of them, though.
We like eel. Sometimes passionately.

First rinse the gutted eel well to remove any traces of blood, chop into long segments. Then blanch very briefly. Frazzle some fatty pork in hot oil to render flavour, then either take it out or leave it in. Dump plenty of chopped garlic into the pan, and some slivered ginger, followed shortly by the eel. Stir-fry, splash with regular soy sauce and a little dark soy sauce, add two or three tablespoons of sugar, plus generous ground pepper, flame with rice wine or sherry, make glossy with starch water. Decant to a plate. Strew some chopped scallion, and put a few tablespoons of minced garlic on top in the center. Heat up a modicum of regular fry oil and some sesame oil till smoking, pour it over over the minced garlic for a sizzly effect.

The key is layered intensified flavours, with reduction to make it silken. The sizzled garlic at the end is a lagniappe, but essential. Scallions are there for colour and added aroma.


One cannot call this the breakfast of champions, but it definitely is the dinner and late night feast of champions. Especially at a place near Prince Edward.

If you could find Golden Bat cigarettes, you'd pass the pack around.
It was much favoured by intellectuals and artists.
There was a niche for it.

That plus a bottle of Shikumen (石庫門 'sek fu mun' ) or equivalent yellow liquor (上海老酒 'seung hoi lou jau'), and you'd have plenty of reason to dawdle and be cheerful.



The young Shanghainese art students at the croissant place were, as you would expect, rather unfamiliar with much of these things. They had come over once the country had opened up, and were unfamiliar with how the world had once been.
And not very good cooks besides.



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