Shanghainese Dinner @ Jing An Si

Hmmmm. It seems pretty obvious that I've been living my life around the HSK test these days. Well, this post is also related to the HSK. I've been attending a HSK prep course on top of the language classes I'm taking at ECNU. To cut to the chase, this HSK prep course was literally like a HSK boot camp! (No surprise, it's run by Koreans) They really work you HARD and people end up getting "miracle" results. Well, our HSK teacher promised to treat students to a nice meal if we never missed class. My lovely friend Sun Joo & I were the only 2 students who never missed class for the past 1mth & half. So our teacher took us to a REALLY fancy REALLY yummy Shanghainese restaurant, located neart Jing An Si.

The highlights:

• Stuffed Lotus Roots: Some Asian countries (like Japan, Korea & China) eat lotus roots and if you haven't tried it, it's SO yummy! It has a chewy sweet taste to it, and the one we had was stuffed with glutinous rice, with glazed syrup poured over.

• Green Pea Soup : this was absolutely DELICIOUS!!! it's a little bit different from the 'American' style green pea soup - it's served warm and it's sweet. They garnish the soup with peanut bits. It's SOOOO good! The texture is so smooth and I think they added some special broth or something. I really want to know the receipe!
  
  
  
• L'escargots aka the SNAIL : I don't think this is a traditional Chinese dish, but who knows! At first I thought they were some sort of sea shells with baked cheese stuffing (sounds delicious already), but after my first bite, my HSK teacher told me it was snail. To be honest, this was my first experience eating snails. But like they all say, "it tastes like chicken". HEHE! It was actually really good -

This restaurant is fancy and can be super expensive （some dishes priced at 1388元), but if you order smartly（there are 10元 appetizers too) you can actually have a really nice meal with somewhat of a reasonable price. Highly recommend to make reservations before you go.

Shang Hai Ren Jia 上海人家
(6 locations in Shanghai)
We were at:
1600 Nanjing Rd W. 南京西路1600号 （机场航站楼4F - the bldg next to 久光)