We found the China that we remember…

We went for dinner tonight away from the apartment towards an area that we used to eat at when we were here four years ago. It’s probably only about half a mile from our current apartment, but clearly all the things that I have been making mental notes about that have changed, have not changed when you get off the beaten track a bit. This particular restaurant is called the Big Frog and every time we tried to go 4 years ago it was too busy and we couldn’t get in. Tonight was no exception, the place was packed. In fact, we waited for quite a while for a seat. Once it was finally our turn we followed the waiter upstairs to a room that was so filled with smoke that you could cook meat in it. Ah, the China I remember. We know that it can be different now so we asked to be moved to another table because it was too smokey. Now remember that I told you this was the old China, which also means that no one speaks any English, none, notta. After a bit of sign language we were lead downstairs and out the front door. Today was a rather warm day, so it was still quite warm tonight. There were some temporary tables set up in front of the restaurant for the abundance of patrons they had tonight. There wasn’t a table available outside either so they ran back inside, found a disassembled plastic table and set it up for us, followed by some plastic chairs. So now we have a place to sit and eat, but it is on an extremely busy, smelly, and noisy darkish street, but it is slightly better than the room filled with so much smoke that you couldn’t see clearly across the room.

Now it’s time to order our food. There is no English on the menu, not a single picture on the menu and no idea what they have except probably frog since it’s called the Big Frog (which isn’t in English either, but we recognize the symbol for frog). Oh and large pans full of Cray fish. Everyone around us is wearing plastic gloves and diving elbow deep into giant piles of Cray fish. I just can’t do Cray Fish in such a polluted place so we’ve got to figure something else out since we have now waited forever, had them set up a special table for us and besides the fact we are starving. Our waitress hands us a menu, stands and stares waiting for us to make a decision. We try to tell her that we need time, but she doesn’t get it so we let her stand there. She doesn’t speak any English and we try with our little bit of mandarin to figure it out and mostly it’s an awkward interaction. Finally Aiden asks her in Mandarin what she would order. She points to a few items on the menu that are completely in Chinese characters. Jeff tries to use his phone to translate the menu items, but it’s so dark that his phone is having issues. We finally decide on a few things with the waitress, not really knowing for sure what we are ordering. Our first item arrives. The phone has translated that it is some sort of golden, needle mushrooms. We have had these mushrooms before and really enjoyed them. The item that arrives might have had a few mushrooms in it, but mostly it is tripe. Tripe is cow intestine. And not only is it tripe, but it is SUPER spicy. Hmmmm, maybe the next item will be more in line with what we are expecting.  The next item is a soup with some sort of meat in it, probably beef, and noodles. It is also SUPER spicy, but with plenty of water it is consumed. Last item to arrive is a HUGE bowl with enormous fried frog parts. These must be the biggest bull frogs imaginable.

This is Claire holding up a frog leg, yummy! Notice the "Blond" Chinese lady behind Claire. We see that a lot here. Sad since they have such beautiful black hair, this orange color is not appealing to me.

 The kids said they saw a delivery of frogs and the frogs were plate size. I try to imagine my food was never alive so I do not look at the delivery.  This is perhaps the oddest concoction of ingredients that I could imagine; fried frog, sliced lotus roots and potato chips. Yes, you read that right, potato chips. Not the rippled sort, but the smooth, salted thick ones (like Tim’s Cascade potato chips).  This is super yummy!

This meal is nostalgic of most of our China experiences 4 years ago. I have another post written, but I haven’t posted it yet about all the amazing changes that we have seen in Shanghai. When I post that entry you will appreciate how far parts of Shanghai have come in a very short time. For now we enjoyed another adventure of not knowing for sure what we have eaten and eating things that we might not have normally ordered. The little things you take for granted when you are home. 

This picture is dark and we had eaten a lot of it when I thought to take a picture, but you can see the round, holey things those are lotus root slices. The flat, cream colored things at the top are potato chips. We have seen this dish at other restaurants, but we didn't know what it was until it was our turn to eat it.