Breakfast in Shanghai, Visiting Wuxi

Breakfast at the Ramada was surprisingly good. My stomach was still getting used to solid food after the whole Taiwan ordeal, but my eyes were excited with the large selection.

It was cool that they had a bunch of steamers. Unfortunately, har gow and siu mai weren’t hiding in them. There were meat-filled steamed buns, other dumplings, mantou, and custard buns.

Yes, my plate was a North American breakfast: pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon-like mystery meat, and a sausage. A dumpling that had corn and pork filling made it onto the plate. I typically enjoy when something is sweet and savoury, but there was more corn in filling. The corn made it just too sweet for my liking.

They had an egg station, which cooked the eggs to your preference, so I got an over-easy egg. Let me just say, an over-easy egg never tasted so good with salt and white pepper. It would’ve been ten times better if there was black pepper, but we Chinese rarely use black pepper. Since I'm white-washed, I was missing the black pepper.

Dad’s dessert plate had some tasty looking fruit preserve-filled danishes and steamed egg custard buns.

My parents loved these custard buns. It looked like these were properly made, unlike the hard stuff we get served back in Ottawa. The custard was oozing out. My parents still talk about these custard buns.

After breakfast, our group met up for the first time on our tour bus. There were some young faces for once, unlike the tour in Guilin. People also spoke English, too! Our tour group consisted of some Aussies, Americans, and Canadians. Awesome! I won't be a mute anymore!

We went to an old part of Shanghai and did some shopping at the Yu Yuan Bazaar. The place was bustling with tourists. When we walked by the food stalls, my parents needed to remind me not to be tempted. There were skewers of stuff, stinky tofu, soup dumplings, meatballs, and fish balls.

I took stalker pictures of other people snacking, since I couldn’t eat them myself. Do you eat your snacks with your pinky high up in the air?

The restaurant that we went to for lunch wasn’t good at all. Most of our meals during our tour around the cities were included in the price. But if only I knew that the food wasn’t great before we went. I could’ve gone for some good soup dumplings, or at least the Ajisen Ramen a few doors down.

These dishes were a bit bland. I stuck to the least bland dish of them all, the curried potatoes and the fried pork.

We were given a steamer of some sad soup dumplings. The pleats weren’t uniform and the wrappers were quite thick. I can’t tell you about the soup, because all of the dumplings stuck to the steamer, pouring the soup on the plate below. It was upsetting that these were so fail. Is it really that hard to put wax paper or napa cabbage underneath the dumplings? Come on!

Once our sad lunch was finished, we drove to Wuxi and immediately visited the Jichang Garden. The tour guide mentioned that the area is used for filming old movies and dramas. Okay, maybe not the elephant.

This is the original bridge. It’s thousands of years old. They’ve closed it off from foot traffic to preserve it. After a nice afternoon stroll, we boarded the bus and departed for Wuxi in time for dinner.

Aunt IS brought out a bar of chocolate that she brought from home. How did this ever survive throughout our whole trip? The roasted almonds weren’t as fragrant as I hoped, but they tasted amazing with dark chocolate.

We drove by this large mall. I was surprised we didn’t get to walk around, cause we drove by the mall a few times.

We began our dinner with a large bowl of soup. There was watery beer and a bottle of Coke.

Our other dishes included: a few stir-frys of strips of bean curd, veggies and shrimp, and other veggies. There were steamed eggs, a large bowl of noodle soup, sweet and sour fish. The sweet and sour-like pork was a famous Wuxi dish. It tasted like they used a bit of five spice.

We had slices of watermelon for dessert. Based on traveling around Asia, I can tell you that restaurants love giving watermelon for dessert. It’s a cheap but tasty dessert that they can serve – I totally understand.

Once everyone was finished eating, we boarded the bus and went to a nearby hotel for the night.



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Arriving in Shanghai: Muslim Restaurant

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Breakfast in Wuxi, Visiting Nanjing
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More links from the Tea in Asia 2011 trip:

• Arriving in HK: Hello from Hong Kong!
• Day Trip to Macau: Window Shopping in Macau
• Arriving in Guilin, China: Breakfast and Tea Tasting
• Arriving in Taiwan: Seafood Dinner
• Arriving in Shanghai: Muslim Restaurant