Got off the plane at Pudong Airport in late afternoon. Wife and kids were still in another city so I was in Shanghai by myself for almost two days.
I booked the hotel in Jing’an on the assumption that there was an airport bus direct to the Jing’an station. Lucky me the bus route was cancelled a few months prior, after the bus station worker told me in I thought Shanghainese (which I don’t speak) and pointed to the announcement. Fine, I would take the subway instead. A little longer but no biggie. I didn’t take the magnetic levitation train (431 km/h before 2021, 300 km/h after 2021) since that would take me to only half way between Pudong and Jing’an, and I had to change to the same subway line afterwards.
The subway was overland for a number of stations before it headed underground.
A giant parking lot of miles and miles of what looked like new cars. Unsold electrical vehicle inventory?
Some elevated roadway being built.
Arrived at Jing’an station. Right above ground was the giant Jing’an Temple complex.
Walked a few blocks to my hotel. Along the way, I spotted my dinner choice- Ren He Guan. Ren He Guan was a Shanghai food specialist. Shanghai cuisine (上海菜/ 沪菜/ 本帮菜) is different from Zhejiang food, and Suzhou food. Shanghai being the largest city in China, has good representations of cuisine from every province. But since I was in Shanghai, I wanted to eat Shanghai food. Because its the first night. I was jetlagged, so I just wanted something simple and close by. I would settle into the hotel first before coming back out to eat.
I also saw Peet’s Coffee. Ok. I didn’t come all the way here to get the same coffee as I would back home, since they started in Berkeley.
There’s actually two Ren He Guan location in the same building. Upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs was the Michelin location with the kitchen that cooked a wider range of dishes, that was more popular and harder to get into. Downstairs was the noodle shop, which I went to. I had:
Yellow fish noodle. I picked the yellow fish noodle because I haven’t had wild caught yellow fish for a long time. Yellow fish is a flaky white fish that’s delicate and delicious. My first mistake was that I should recognize because the noodle was only 48 yuan, that I was definitely not getting the wild caught version. The noodle itself was pretty decent, but the fish was definitely a bit more fishy because its the farm raised version. I would have paid for the wild caught version if they had it.
Choice of 3 appetizers. Some pickled vegetable with fava beans, pickled cucumbers and pickled cabbage.
Sauteed vegetable.
Ren He Guan had the 1920’s old Shanghai decor going in their restaurant, which was to say, absolutely fabulous. 1920s was when Shanghai, before the recent renaissance, was at its pinnacle in the last century, when there was a certain hipness attached to things from that era. It fell into hard times after that and only starting in the 90’s that Shanghai came roaring back.
Decent start to the trip.
I didn’t include the map location in the forum software, because Chinese locations are usually mapped wrong. So here’s the correct location:
