Fork It Over The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater-Mantesh by Unknown (rm book recommendations .TXT) 📕

for I dislike tofu as I do no other Asian edible. The real shock came the next morning, when my tour of the city began. I rode a subway from my hotel to the “special economic zone” of Pudong, climbed the stairs, and stepped outside.

I was aware that Shanghai had been turned into the financial and commercial heart of an imminent New World Order. Now I was seeing firsthand what had come to pass. Never before had I gazed upon such vastness, ambition, and audacity of scale. It made the city I came from, New York, seem outdated, or at least old-fashioned.

To one side of me was the third-tallest building in the world, the Jin Mao Tower (1,380 feet), a kind of neo–Empire State Building, and 1 6 6

A L A N R I C H M A N

on the other was the world-of-tomorrow Oriental Pearl TV Tower (even taller, but not a building and thus ineligible for world’s-highest competitions). Encircling these monuments to aspirational central planning was a modernized district of apartment complexes and wide avenues.

Soon to come, I learned, was the Shanghai World Financial Center, planned at 1,518 feet, which would make it the tallest building in the world. (In display models it resembles a fraternity pledge paddle, which will assure it not being named the most beautiful building in the world.)

Shanghai has always gleamed in my fantasies as a magnificent curiosity, one of the world’s most alluring and mysterious destinations.

I knew times had changed, but I was soon to find that the storied city I had traveled so far to explore had essentially vanished. It had been replaced by a metropolis I had no idea could exist, not in China or elsewhere. I had arrived at the anointed showplace of modern Asia.

A decade earlier, the economic district I was walking through was nothing more than primitive villages with black-tiled houses and rice paddies. Elsewhere, the transformation of Shanghai has been less startling but equally dramatic. The Socialist-modernist skyline of the new-sprung city has comic-book overtones—fanciful buildings topped with spires, fins, needles, and tiaras. Shanghai today is hubris unbound, and it has been constructed with such swiftness one might be tempted to believe the fragile and unholy alliance of capitalism and communism that spawned such a massive project could be the most efficient ideology of the twenty-first century, replacing the outdated fundamentals of tired old democracy.

The rebuilding of the city seems to have been for a clear purpose: to eclipse Tokyo, Singapore, and even China’s very own (but secretly despised) Hong Kong as the preeminent city of Asia. Throughout the centuries, cities that have achieved world prominence have boasted historical importance, grand scale, an industrious (or easily manipulated) populace, and, not least, an impressive cuisine. (Every city but London, that is, where the principal culinary triumph of the empire was the importation of tea.) Inasmuch as millions of American tourists have F O R K I T O V E R

1 6 7

returned from packaged trips to China complaining that the meals they ate couldn’t compare to the delicious fried wontons drizzled with duck sauce they’d enjoyed back home, I decided to assume a great responsibility. I would find out whether Shanghai qualified as a culinary capital of the world.

The cuisine of Shanghai is unfamiliar to Americans, who are most comfortable with variations on the theme of Cantonese. That means a multitude of shrimp as well as sauces with plenty of cornstarch bounce.

Shanghai was once known as the land of fish and rice, but its cooking has evolved far beyond such simplicity.

Restaurant meals invariably begin with cold, marinated appetizers that take some getting used to, because they’re often made from animal parts unfamiliar to American palates. The courses that follow are more accessible, consisting of stir-fried dishes, hot pots, and dim sum.

Steamed white rice is rarely consumed in restaurants, because it has come to symbolize both unseemly poverty and starchy corpulence.

Glutinous rice, which is heavier and stickier than white rice, is often a component of casseroles, and black vinegar is a cherished condiment. Eels, turtles, and crabs are prized, and so is bony fish, considered sweeter than a simple fillet.

I tried snake, thanks to Wing. He owns nine Chinese restaurants in New York City, but one of the reasons he often visits his birthplace of Shanghai is to eat dishes he can’t find back home. We were at Xiao Nan Guo, one of his favorite restaurants, which seats 1,100 and is a cross between a banquet hall and an amphitheater. The decor incorporates elements of latter-day Italy (Tuscan-like window treatments), merrie old England (rough-hewn stone walls), and contemporary Miami Beach (neon palm trees). The cuisine of Shanghai’s Chinese restaurants is much more coherent than the decor of Shanghai’s Chinese restaurants.

“How do you eat snake?” I asked Wing.

“Like eating spareribs,” he replied.

Indeed, the chunks of snake did have a meat-on-the-bone quality, although snake meat is much chewier than rib meat, probably because 1 6 8

A L A N R I C H M A N

snakes wiggle around a lot and pork ribs do not. Snake, despite what I’ve heard, does not resemble chicken. Snake eating encompasses elements of skate wing, beef jerky, and old cowboy movies.

A few days after this experience, I was touring an ancient garden when I attempted to impress an attractive young guide by boasting that I’d eaten some fine snake.

“I think if you want to eat snake,” she said, “you should go to Guangzhou. It is very famous. They eat the cat, too. The cat is like the tiger, and the snake is like the dragon, so they eat it together in one bowl. But I don’t like it. I am afraid.”

I later asked Wing if he’d ever eaten cat in Guangzhou (formerly Canton). He had, of course. He’d been the guest at a dinner party with cat meatballs on the menu. His only complaint was that the stingy host had skimped on them. You know what