nanamoose

A Franco-Japanese War (involving pastries)

I have a serious, serious problem with breads in Hong Kong. Correction, I have a serious problem with “baked goods” in Hong Kong. There are all these lovely pretty cake shops selling cakes that look more like jewelry than food and above all, are less than meets the eye, but no proper boulangeries or patisseries that actually serve good bread, pastries, and cakes with a substance.

Especially pastries. I think pastries are gravely overlooked in Hong Kong. People are obsessed with pretty, crafty cakes so that cake shops and cake schools alike are overflowed with Hong Kong “OL”s who have no knowledge whatsoever in relation to cakes and probably have never cooked, and will never cook again, in their lives. There is first of all Zoe with their HK$30 odd-a-tiny-piece-cakes and freezing cold air conditioning, then there’s Teresa Festival with their inexperienced staff and minimal drinks selection, Antique Patisserie with their HK$50-a-piece-of-Happy-Birthday-sign-policy and Mandarin Oriental’s jewel-like cakes. Recently there is even a bakery which specializes in cupcakes that opened at Elements in Kowloon. There is nothing honestly wrong with these beautiful cakes except they lack the heart and soul that makes them interesting. Perhaps like the perfect man who, for me, requires that little deficiency in order to be “perfect”, so do food and especially baked goods precisely since its “prettiness” means so much.

Now you can imagine what pain this phenomenon brings to a self-confessed palmier lover like myself, and what a refreshing experience it was for her when she found the best palmier-like pastry ever at the new Tokyo Midtown. The Sacristain at “BE”, or Boulangepicier, in the basement of Tokyo Midtown is a long, stick-like pastry covered in molten sugar that tastes almost like caramel yet lacks the overpowering sweetness. In Hong Kong, pastries are often relegated to a mere breakfast snack at shops like Delifrance and Maxim’s and stuffed with all kinds of funny fillings like pork floss and curry chicken, yet at BE pastries and breads are given prime attention. Choose from a selection of savoury and sweet pastries and enough fine breads to make your mouth water. If that’s not enough for you, perhaps the fact that BE is part of the Alain Ducasse group and a quadruple chain, two branches of which are in Tokyo and the rest in Paris, will be enough for BE to redeem itself.

Just when I was reminiscing over the demise of Japanese ingenuity in the baking world, I was given a brief insight into the Parisien bakery scene and stumbled upon Patisserie Sadaharu Aoki and its variations on the macha theme. I guess the Japanese are still going strong after all.

Inauguration of "My Favourite Restaurants" in Shanghai

It is easy to become delusional in Shanghai. You often believe yourself to be in Europe only to be immediately transported back to mainland China with the snap of a finger, the yell of “fuwuyuan!” (server!), the sight of a man spitting into a perfectly manicured garden or the typos on the menu. However, to my surprise, my experience at Casa 13 on Huashan Road was rid of all such similar mishaps.

Casa 13 is the latest addition to the ever expanding Eduardo Vargas family (Azul, Viva, iiiit) and features Mediterranean classics in a secluded renovated 1920s house in the heart of the French Concession. My one time experience there was flawless by Shanghai standards – the food was great and perfect for sharing (and those who know me will know that I’m a sucker for all things tapas!), the service polite, and the house tastefully decorated.

This is the perfect place to impress a date or to round up a group of friends, sit out in the terrace while kick starting the meal with the charcuterie board over a glass of sangria. On the night I was there I received a little notebook named “My Favourite Restaurants” from my friend K. Might as well, Casa 13 can the first one listed.

Casa 13 is on No. 13, 1100 Huashan Lu
near Xingguo Lu 华山路1100号13室 近兴国路

Tel: (86) 21-5238-2782

Japanese Influence in Yao Culture? (or Vice Versa?)

After an action packed day in Yangshuo we set off to Lonji Titian. Dragon’s Spine Rice Terraces, as they call Longji in English, is an area a good 4 hour drive north of Guilin and populated by the Zhuang and Yao minorities. On the way we passed by Baisha market and decided to experience the hustle and bustle of a typical Chinese market. Baisha offers almost anything you can imagine, and in the largest scale I have ever seen. Every service, or product, is offered in row-upon-row –folds. There are the prêt-a-manger food stalls offering dog meat, cat meat and rabbit meat and occupying a semi-open air space the size of big delinquent warehouse. Then there are the dentists, a handful of them operating on patients from a single display table (one with a promotional display saying “咳声脱牙”, something which I do not understand to this day. Do dentists in China deal with coughs as well?) and chair on the sidewalk side by side with the chicken vendors. There are the barbers who line the park while men get their shaves sitting on single wooden chairs, and the glutinous rice cake makers by the dozens, all rubbing and churning out the exact same food. Even the patrons shop in the exact same way, live chicken in hand albeit grabbed in slightly different ways, some by the feet and some by the wings.

Arriving at Longji we had to choose between visiting the Zhuang minorities in Ping An or the Yao minorities in Jinkeng due to our time constraints. Being adventurous backpackers as we are (no doubt about that - we left our luggage to the poor village women who charged us RMB20 to carry our suitcases in baskets up for us) we decided to skip the more popular and more easily accessed Ping An and head further inland to the Jinkeng Yao Village.

As we watched the black turbaned and pink jacketed Yao women disappear swiftly uphill with our 15kg suitcases on their backs, we processed slowly up into the Yao village perching alongside the rice terraces. Jinkeng reminded me, much to my surprise, of the set for the Tom Cruise movie the Last Samurai. Even the Yao houses and the cobblestoned streets looked oddly Japanese. The rice terraces, each only a few feet wide, are painted an autumnal golden yellow. Smoke rises gently from some of the houses. I realize it is perhaps inching towards supper time. The only noise that is breaking the quietness and stillness of the valley is the sound of schoolchildren shouting and laughing in the local school playground. Jinkeng seems almost idyllic, an existence that is increasingly hard to find in modern day China.

After a leisurely 3 hour hike we arrive at our hotel, Meijinglou, or Beautiful Scenery Mansion which occupies a typical吊脚楼 (literally - “hanging feet structure” - the sizes of each floor increases slightly as we progress upwards to reveal “feet” – or extended wooden pillars - hanging from the four corners of the floor above). Outside the hotel, where our luggage is being offloaded, gathers a loose crowd of around 20 Yao women selling their wares in various forms. I decide to buy from our porter in acknowledgment of her hard work and paid RMB100 for an extensively embroidered bright pink jacket and RMB20 for a hand woven belt. I will probably never get to wear them but such is the magic spell a beautiful place like Jinkeng casts on its visitors - you feel like you become a Yao, living high amongst the mist, care free.

10 reasons not to visit Lapis Casa in Shanghai

1. I was trying to find my way to Lapis Casa from the northern end of Xintiandi on the corner of Taicang Road and Huangpi West Road. I called up and reported my location, asking for directions to the hotel. The staff on duty said, “We are located on the north of Xintiandi near 企業天地, where Bellagio (the Taiwanese restaurant) is.”

“Ok, but I am now at the corner of Xintiandi on the junction of Taicang Road and Huangpi West Road. Is your hotel located on the other corner of Xintiandi along Taicang Road?”

“Yes”. But when I walked over to the other side there was nothing but Paul’s (and what joy the sight of Paul’s brought me! I had been waiting for years for the arrival of Paul’s in HK and who would have thought that Shanghai would beat us to it in bringing this famed French bakery to the city? Favourite pickup at Paul: palmier – unfortunately, or fortunately, they don’t sell it here in Shanghai) and Starbucks. So I called again, this time giving them names of all streets enclosing Xintiandi plus my exact location. Still, they gave me the standardized answer. It was only after about 5 minutes down the conversation was I finally able to squeeze some useful information out of his confusing directions which led me to finally find the hotel.

2. The door did not open when I tried to insert my key card into the door. My mother had arrived earlier & had complained of the same problem with her keys, after which they claimed to have been caused by a mechanical failure of the locks, and which they supposedly later fixed. The same problem repeated itself after checkout. Total failures at attempts to open door – 3.

3. It was written in the hotel literature that the rooms are equipped with DVD players. However, I turned the room upside down and found no DVD player. I called reception and was told that they would bring a DVD player to the room. However, the TV was installed on a blank wall with no cabinet whatsoever underneath. The DVD player had to sit on a chair moved over from the dressing table. It took the staff half an hour to figure out how to connect the DVD player to the TV.

4. The sink was leaking water. The bathroom went wet before anyone took a shower.

5. The rainforest shower head was about 5 inches from the top of my head.

6. The temperature adjuster is super sensitive yet super slow at sending signals. The slightest movement in the adjuster turns the water super hot or super cold, about five minutes after the knob is turned. Water pressure is also low.

7. Towels are small and thin, amenities meager.

8. Breakfast is served at the adjacent River Seine French Restaurant. Food was already disappointing, but the biggest joke came when the toaster did not work. A manager came to fix the problem but burnt our toast. I asked a second member of staff to come take a look, “Your toaster is broken. Can you fix the problem?”

“Oh, it’s not broken, there’s just a little malfunction.”

9. When we complained about the various problems above to the reception during check out, our initial response was – no response at all. Zilch. Not a word of apology, not even, “Oh really?”Just an embarrassing glance. After persistent complaints they finally mumbled, “But we’ve had a lot of customers from overseas. They all like our place very much and return to us. If you return next time we will give you an upgrade.”

10. Jia just opened not far from here. Who needs Lapis when we have Jia?

Staying at Lapis Casa is like staying at a mediocre bed and breakfast in Europe, with a price tag of RMB1,700. Sure there is some “old Shanghai charm”like its predecessor, restaurant Lapis Lazuii on Dong Ping Lu. But like Lapis Lazuii Lapis Casa is a meretricious place.

Farewell Lapis Casa! Looks like will not be seeing you for a long while.

If you want to visit Tenya, my favourite all you can eat Japanese toro restaurant in Shanghai, however, the restaurant is located right inside Lapis Casa and you can find it on 68 Taicang Road, near Shun Chang Road (Tenya tel: 021-53836886, Lapis Casa tel: 021-53821600)

Impression – Li River

The introductory pamphlet on our “luxury” cruise for the local Chinese describes the dramatic karst peaks which envelopes the winding, emerald green Li River that runs, in part, from Guilin to Yangshuo as “grotesque peaks”. Cannot really blame the cruise company. After all, what better word to describe these oddly shaped and bizarre-looking mountain peaks than the word “grotesque”? The Tang Dynasty poet Han Yu described them as blue jade hairpins running through a green silk belt which is the Li River – and if you imagine blue hairpins plugged on top of a piece of green silk the image isn’t particular that poetic either.

I have visited the Li River some fifteen years ago with a Hong Kong tour group and did not have such fond memories of it. All I remembered from the trip was the tour guide’s continuous reminder of how beautiful Guilin was with the saying, “Guilin’s landscape triumphs heaven and earth, Yangshuo’s landscape triumphs Guilin” and waterway caves lit up with tacky rainbow-coloured lights. I had left thinking, “So, this is all there is to the world-renowned Guilin!” I learned a couple of years later that when you travel with tour groups from Hong Kong, “this” would be all there is no matter where you go. I vowed soon after this realization never to travel with a Hong Kong tour group again.

My impression of Guilin was therefore scarred for a good fifteen years, to be redeemed only until the recent film The Painted Veil, which was set in the ancient town of Huang Yao along downstream Li River. Intrigued by how beautiful the area looked with Edward Norton in it I decided to take a trip to Guilin to see for myself...