Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Highlight 164: More than Chinese food in Shanghai - Restaurant: Komaya

Chinese are adventurous eaters and as such are rewarded with interesting eats from around the world. With the sizable Japanese expat crowd in Shanghai came some pretty authentic Japanese izakaya eats. Take this salmon soft bone bowl, it probably would have been shunned by diners at most main stream American Japanese places, but in Shanghai, the dinner crowd ordered up with gusto. This is a textual dish. Most who enjoy it find the crunchy chew addictive.

Having spent less than a week together this month, J and I were in the mood for a bit of celebrating, just for being in the same city. So he ordered one of his favorite fun-drinking sake, the "man mountain." The name always makes me laugh. Here, they are serious about sake service. Check out this cool contraption! It gets an ice core inserted in the middle to keep the sake cool throughout.

The sake steamed clams are quite refreshing, thanks to the abundance of shredded ginger.

These sweet shrimps are just awesome. So fresh, they were still moving at the table. The waitress waited for us to pull off the head, which she then took back to the kitchen for grilling. Later we got to savor the charred heads with our sukiyaki.

Here is the sukiyaki already divided into individual bowls. The meat is super tender and the broth very flavorful.

Because the owner knows our friend, we received a bonus dish of puffed salmon skins. Very crunchy and salty like grease less cracklings.

We ordered more than one yakitori, but most were devoured quickly and didn't stick around for photos. The pork skewer I managed to rescue from J was awesome. Very very juicy and fatty. :)

The large squid was cooked well, so every piece managed to stay tender.

The last thing served was my favorite, a large chicken meat ball. It's nice to eat eggs that are so orange at the yoke again. The pale yellow American pasteurized variety simply cannot match in flavor. Nothing beats the meatball broken into pieces and dipped in the egg yoke and washed down with good sake.

1 comment:

Eat, Drink, Man.. said...

DAMN! Looks like heaven!