There is a rather smart Chinese restaurant called Shanghai Blue near my office that Nadia and I have longed to try. It is out of the price range of a casual work day lunch so we've been pinning our hopes on some company involved in the industry we write about offering to take us.
Today our wish was granted.
I'm not overly fond of the usual MSG-laden, different-flavoured-gloop-cooked-with-the-bog-standard-choice-of-three types-of-meat-or-prawn-and-crispy-duck-if-you-are-lucky that seems to be standard Chinese restaurant fare. But from the outside menu that we have regularly drooled over we knew it wasn't going to be in the bog standard league.
And we were right. No MSG. Just a varied, unusual, beautifully cooked and presented menu.
We went for dim sum or the Chinese equivalent of tapas with everyone ordering a couple of dishes which all go in the middle of the table to share.
Had some amazing charcoal grilled pork and duck but also tried some completely new dishes:
Baby octopus - not at all like the pulpo served in Spain as they looked more like alien octopus.
Razor clams and jelly fish - razor clams I've had served in their shells as tapas but these were served without their shells. The jelly fish was thankfully un-jelly fish looking being shredded to look like glassy, flat, rice noodles and cooked with chilli. It was quite chewy but surprisingly quite nice. (Wonder what the nutritional value of jelly fish is?)
Thousand flower tea - they bung a large seed-like thing in a special pot add boiling water and it buds into an exotic looking flower.
Now we just want to go back and try some more...