Eating Out: The Liquid Laundry

Originally posted 5th February 2015

We’ve been having quite a lot of meals out since we got to China. It’s not like us at all and it takes some getting used to. We have had meals with Richard’s colleagues, meals with customers and the odd one or two because we wanted to go out and try a particular type of food. We are now living in an area popular with Japanese and Korean ex-pats, so there are a large number of their restaurants and shops around about for us to investigate.   Most of Richard’s western colleagues come into Shanghai on a three week in, three-week back home regime if they come from the UK or for a couple of days if they are travelling up from Hong Kong. They naturally get tired of eating hotel food, so we have been out on the

Chicken Dish with Head

town with them. They tend to head for western food restaurants on Hongmei Lu (a pedestrian street full of western food places) so we have been to a Spanish tapas bar (twice) and a Thai restaurant there, but also a Chinese restaurant in the hotel where we were staying. In the Chinese restaurant we ordered poultry  -both a duck and a chicken dish. The head of the bird came with the rest of the dish, so that one would be able to confirm what one was eating. That’s a little disconcerting. (The same is true if you buy a chicken or duck in the supermarket). One of the recent graduates working out of town in one of the factories as a management accountant is of Indian descent and often seeks out an Indian meal when she comes into Shanghai on a weekend trip.

At the Liquid Laundry

Richard’s been out on the town more often than I have, of course, and has been out to a fancy restaurant on The Bund over looking the Hangpu river. He has also been out with various customers during the week, and at the weekends we have both met up with some customers and their partners for meals out on a more social level. Last weekend we went to the Liquid Laundry, a microbrewery that makes some excellent beer and selling western-style pub food, with a couple who have come out to Shanghai two weeks ahead of us. It was rather dark (so the photos aren’t great), rather loud (so that I could only just hear the conversation) and has a good young vibe. Charlie would love it. This weekend we shall be off to a Beijing (Peking) Duck restaurant with another customer. So many people are taking a lot of trouble to make us feel that we are settling in well and are at the same time introducing us the wide variety of food available here.

Brewing Kettles at The Liquid Laundry

The Franck Restaurant

Last week the firm’s local lawyer (an American from Brooklyn of Italian descent who lives in Shanghai with his Cantonese wife whom he met in Hong Kong) took us out to a superb French restaurant in the Old French Concession. A little corner of France with excellent French bread, wine and food – I had Bourride for example, Richard had Confit de Porc with Chou (actually Brussels Sprouts, but it didn’t matter) - and waiters with French attitude to match.

Farine Boulangerie

It doesn’t feel appropriate for me to be whisking my camera out on many of these occasions, so little of the food we have eaten has been recorded, but I did go back to the French Concession yesterday to visit the Propaganda Poster Museum (the subject of another blog post) and managed to take some photos of the outside of the French Bistro, Franck's, and the inside and outside of his very expensive Café-cum-Boulangerie, Farine,

Franck's Bread

where I bought the most expensive bread I have ever bought, an espresso and a mini cake. Western-style living is possible in Shanghai and many live it. But it comes with a big city price tag. One can eat much, much more frugally if one eats as the locals do, which we enjoy doing when we are out on our own or back in the flat and cooking for ourselves.