Eating with Caroline and Co.

My cousin Y. from California has arrived with her three children to visit her mother, who lives downstairs from us. Today (Sunday) we went out for both lunch and dinner together. It rained on and off all day. The littlest one, Caroline (age 2), carried her own umbrella. We went to two of the best restaurants in the neighborhood.

We had lunch at Peng's Family Garden on Deng Feng Road, which features Hong Kong style food. They make the best Cantonese fried chicken I've ever had. We also had steamed rock cod (photo right), duck with a layer of taro and then crispy taro flakes (phenomenal), and other dishes.











Dinner was at a new Shanghai restaurant on Da An Road. A big selection of small eats (photo), two kinds of xiaolung bao (soup dumplings), one with minced chicken and the other with the leaf of si-gua （a gourd). Two kinds of scallion pancake, thin and thick. Two kinds of soup, chicken and beef, which are steamed, not boiled, so the meat is delicately cooked.
On the way home we stopped at the mung-bean and pearl barley stand for red-bean ice and dou-hua (silky chilled tofu) （overkill）.