FOOD IN ASIA: HOW TO NOT END AND BEGIN A YEAR.

Believe it or not, Shanghai actually has Italian restaurants. Of course its never going to compare to the Italian food you will find in New York (or, uhm...Italy)...but I mean, honestly given the circumstances I was quite impressed.


We treated ourselves to a nice Italian dinner at Da Marco on New Years Eve.


Some nice little bruschettas appeared next to our bread basket. The tomato was particularly flavorful in this mixture.


We all shared an order of the sea bass ravioli with prawns and spinach in a tomato base. I found the sea bass meat to be somewhat lost and overshadowed in this robust mixture...so cheese-filled raviolis might have been a better choice for this dish.


And then my salt baked fish (forget what kind...) with dressed spinach greens and grilled vegetables. Tender, perfectly cooked meat. Simple and straightforward. Enjoyed every bite...there was mere bones and skin left after I got through him (I hate eating fish skin).

And what is a meal in Shanghai without a grand finale of sweetness. 3 diners. 4 desserts. Naturally.


I dont remember what these puppies were called...but basically like balls of ice cream rolled around in different forms of crushed sweetness.


Blueberry cheesecake...definitely no New York cheesecake.


And then some sort of chocolate mousse cake, which if I recall correctly was our table favorite.

The overall quality of food was definitely nothing to complain about. My biggest gripe was the SERVICE we received. One of the dishes one diner at our table received was nothing CLOSE to what she had ordered...we stared at the plate in front of us questioning it's components and finally hailed the waiter over to inquire as to whether or not the dish was indeed what she had ordered. He took the plate away and said he would check with the kitchen. You are a waiter at a fairly small Italian restaurant. The dish she ordered was a SPECIAL - which means you should be able to recognize it. And even if it wasn't a special you should be able to recognize every plate that is being pumped out of that kitchen!! The waiter then returns to the table WITH the same plate in hand and confirms that the dish is, indeed, NOT what she had ordered...and asks if she would still be interested in receiving the original dish she had ordered. Did he REALLLLLYYY think that she would just be super understanding and offer to accept whatever sea creatures accidentally landed on her plate in whatever sauce they decided to swim around in???? HELL NO - take that plate away, you idiot. Furthermore - the managers were absolute IDIOTS. I understand that New Year's Eve is a busy night...but that does not mean you can harass our table every 10 minutes, asking if we are through with our meal. There is still wine in our glasses and dinner conversation to be had. I cannot stand being rushed through a meal. There's a line waiting through the door for reservations? Not my problem. Maybe you shouldn't have overextended your reservation service, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. AND ALSO - why doesn't your restaurant order a few more CHAIRS!?!?!?! One of the chairs at our 4-person table was taken away from us (UGH, where is my purse supposed to sit??) and during the CASINO NIGHT portion of the evening, we were asked to give up our seats so that diners could use them instead. Your restaurant should be equipped to handle the maximum amount of guests that will find themselves dining here. And at the very least Da Marco should have provided some sort of cheap, plastic seating for the black jack tables. Needless to say, I stormed out of there with a few angry Chinese words (thickly laced with wine) flowing out of my mouth.


We then hopped in a cab and instructed him to take us to the Bund - with which we were immediately scoffed at. What. Is. The. Problem. Apparently the Bund would have been impossible to reach via cab and the cab driver dropped us off at the subway station...nice. Ya'll know how I hate taking public forms of transportation in the evening...but the subway was still mighty packed at that late hour as the rest of Shanghai was also making their way over to the Bund to watch the firework display with the Pudong skyline in the background. The streets were terribly packed and one seriously had to fight his or her way through to make it out alive. It was time to get aggressive because we did NOT want to spend New Years outside on the street!!!!


Thank god we made our way indoors to Lounge 18. Seeing the skyline from behind glass windows is a lot safer and less aggravating.


And of course we had a great view of the fireworks display at midnight.

If you think taking the subway and pushing my way through the crowds is painful enough - you don't want to read about how I managed to make my way back to the hotel. Obviously cabs were not an option. We stupidly tried for a few minutes, but soon realized that the chances of finding an available cab were about just as probable as me never eating dessert again for the rest of my life. We somehow jammed our way onto a random bus...did we know where the bus was going? No, of course not. But being in the bus seemed to be a better situation than standing outside. The ride was insufferable, as I was really not in any condition to stand on a lurching vehicle while holding onto a handle bar. I wanted nothing more than to beg the girl sitting in the seat nearest me if she would so kindly allow me to take a seat on her lap. These were dire circumstances. We made it to a fairly large, well-known road and decided to get off and take our chances with finding a cab. We walked around aimlessly down the street for over 15 minutes...and eventually found ourselves in front of a big club in Shanghai where we were finally able to snag ourselves an open cab. That is not to say that in the interim I didn't stop cabs and maniacally beg people sitting inside if we could hop in with him/her screaming that I didn't care WHERE the cab was going and that I just simply needed to be INSIDE ONE. Thankfully I avoided a potential kidnapping situation - and eventually made it home to my hotel.

What better way to start the New Year than with a gut-busting LUNCH BUFFET at the Shangri-La Hotel. I didn't make any ridiculous, inane New Year's resolutions such as not eating chocolate for a year or vowing to lose 20+ pounds in 2 weeks, so it's not like I was breaking any promises to myself.

The buffet was quite the international affair featuring foods from ALL OVER THE WORLD. I go a little A.D.D. in these types of environments and could not help taking food from as many stations as possible. Here are a few plates I put together:


Some dimsum and steamed cod with some sort of mashed up stuff and roe on it.


Hand-made noodles in soup.


Middle eastern medley.


Some finds from the sushi bar.


Matcha and chocolate ice cream with almond shavings.


Some fruits to make me feel better about myself.


And the dessert platter. I took one of each of the artisan desserts and had at least one bite of each variety. Sick.

Are you grossed out by my FOOD IN ASIA series yet???