This was our first dinner in Shanghai. Gen told the concierge he wanted to eat seafood and we were sent here. He warned us that no one spoke English and there is no English menu, but all you do is point to your food and they cook it for you. It was a little more complicated than that, unfortunately. The extent of our Chinese was learned from
Rush Hour, and it wasn't quite adequate. So we sat at the table for about 15 minutes, looking in vain for someone who looked like they might speak English or Japanese. Luckily, they managed to scrounge up an English menu and a very patient waiter to walk us around. And you really do just go up to the tanks and point at what you want, then tell them how to cook it.
This is the shark fin section. We didn't order from there. Expensive! Also, cruel. Do you know they just catch the sharks, cut off the fin, then throw them back in the water to die?
Abalone section. We didn't order any of this, either. Also expensive. I think they also had bird's nest. Shark fin, abalone, and bird's nest are always grouped together on menus.
Here's a rather unattractive picture of me with our first two courses. On the right is BBQ pork and on the left are scallops steamed with garlic. All of the restaurants we went to used non-disposable chopsticks. Better for the environment I suppose, but they're so slippery! Sometimes I had to resort to stabbing the food.
Second course. Crab sauteed with ginger and green onions. It was so messy. But delicious.
And the last course. This one was a little weird. The back of the plate is some kind of shrimp salad. It had shrimp, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and cantaloupe in a sweet mayo dressing, kind of like
cole slaw dressing. The front of the plate are the shrimp heads, deep fried with
chilies and garlic. This is when you can really tell we didn't speak the language. The shrimp heads were actually pretty good. I've never had them before. Then we finished with a peach and a mango. It was honestly the best mango ever. Gen's favorite part of the meal was the crab, but mine was the mango. Portions in China are HUGE compared to Japan. We're so used to teeny-tiny plates that we over-ordered at every single meal. This was a very tasty and fun meal, despite the initial ordering issues.
This was our first dinner in Shanghai. Gen told the concierge he wanted to eat seafood and we were sent here. He warned us that no one spoke English and there is no English menu, but all you do is point to your food and they cook it for you. It was a little more complicated than that, unfortunately. The extent of our Chinese was learned from Rush Hour, and it wasn't quite adequate. So we sat at the table for about 15 minutes, looking in vain for someone who looked like they might speak English or Japanese. Luckily, they managed to scrounge up an English menu and a very patient waiter to walk us around. And you really do just go up to the tanks and point at what you want, then tell them how to cook it.
This is the shark fin section. We didn't order from there. Expensive! Also, cruel. Do you know they just catch the sharks, cut off the fin, then throw them back in the water to die? 
Abalone section. We didn't order any of this, either. Also expensive. I think they also had bird's nest. Shark fin, abalone, and bird's nest are always grouped together on menus.
Here's a rather unattractive picture of me with our first two courses. On the right is BBQ pork and on the left are scallops steamed with garlic. All of the restaurants we went to used non-disposable chopsticks. Better for the environment I suppose, but they're so slippery! Sometimes I had to resort to stabbing the food.
Second course. Crab sauteed with ginger and green onions. It was so messy. But delicious.
And the last course. This one was a little weird. The back of the plate is some kind of shrimp salad. It had shrimp, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and cantaloupe in a sweet mayo dressing, kind of like cole slaw dressing. The front of the plate are the shrimp heads, deep fried with chilies and garlic. This is when you can really tell we didn't speak the language. The shrimp heads were actually pretty good. I've never had them before. Then we finished with a peach and a mango. It was honestly the best mango ever. Gen's favorite part of the meal was the crab, but mine was the mango. Portions in China are HUGE compared to Japan. We're so used to teeny-tiny plates that we over-ordered at every single meal. This was a very tasty and fun meal, despite the initial ordering issues.
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