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Interview: Coco Zhao, from jazz to M. Butterfly
Week Around the Ists
The That's Shanghai Food & Drink Award winners were released over the weekend, for all you foodies that are curious about what Shanghai likes. And what Shanghai likes, for the most part, is established chains - whether or not they are actually the "best" in their categories. Hey, don't get huffy with us. The guys at That's Shanghai thought the same thing.
Of the chains to make it onto the Food & Drink Awards, there was Element Fresh (of course) for American, South Beauty for Sichuan/Hunanese, Crystal Jade for Cantonese, Xiao Nan Guo for Shanghainese, Simply Thai for Thai food and Paulaner Brauhaus for beer - which for us was the most "Really, Shanghai residents? REALLY?!" win of the night.
That having been said, there were things we agreed with. Da Marco is still the best Italian in town, hands down. The Fat Olive, with its comfy couches and well-priced wine selection, quickly became our favorite for Al Fresco drinking when it opened this year. Cantina Agave has brought to Shanghai something that it was sorely lacking: decent Mexican food, and that earns it its Best New Restaurant title in our book. Our Cali friends will quibble, but they don't understand what a wasteland it was before. Oh yes, and we love Cotton Ding. If you want to meet the Personality of the Year, come to our happy hours.
Other notes:
- Staff at Boonna have always been much friendlier to us than staff at Wagas, so we're happy they finally knocked them off their throne for Best Cafe. But come on, That's. We know hipsters, and that's not a hipster cafe. No hipster cafe would play that much Britney Spears on repeat - even ironically.
- We love Gary Wang and we love Shelter, but we don't think numerous mentions in the New York Times makes it qualify as a hidden gem anymore. But then again, we don't want people publicizing real hidden gems so we'll let it pass.
- Din Tai Fung got a mention for having the best dish in Shanghai: Xiao long bao. Their xiao long bao are pretty amazing, so we guess there's not much we can say about that except: Shanghai, how do you feel about a Taiwanese place consistently being recognized for making the best version of your hometown dish?
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Thanks for the post. I think everyone enjoyed the awards night, even that Swiss chap who was inadvertently left off the VIP mailing list by our Editor in Chief. We can't be blamed (or applauded) for the choices because the winners were decided by our online poll, and we were pretty strict about it too. All the naughty boys and girls were thrown out of class.
Totally agree with you guys about not wanting hidden gems to be publicized. In fact, is it actually possible to do a popular vote on something like that? Probably not. If everybody knew about the place already it's not exactly hidden, is it? In all honesty, we could have come up with a better name for that category, but we didn't have enough room for the words "Places that we think deserve recognition because they're just really cool for whatever reason" on the placards. So the words "Hidden Gem" seemed to fit the bill, however imperfectly.
Shanghaiers doesn't worry about Din Tai Fung having the best dish, because only clueless foreigners would even suggest such a thing. Chinese food reviews give the restaurant average marks. The xiaolongbao is definitely below par for Shanghai. Atmosphere is nice though.
JFK- don't sweat it, I got in eventually!
Super688- where's better? I'm happy to travel
Thats Shanghai are only trying to reward advertisers. If you don't advertise in Thats Shanghai, you are not going to be on the candidate list.
This is, how some of Shanghais worst restaurants make it on the candidate list.
If you can't get your restaurant going, advertise in That's Shanghai!
Simply Thai is simply Shanghais worst Thai food, even by American standards. Element Fresh serve colorful but tasteless food and Da Marco's Italian could only impress people who usually feed at McAvoid or suburbian compound dwellers.
Thats Shanghai's shameful yearly self-degradation exercise.
Billions of flies could not be wrong. People, eat more shit!
Pirx- an obvious argument that's been trotted out ever since The Coliseum won best Amphitheatre.
If McDonalds was up for "Best Burger" in a popular vote then it might well have won. After all, more people have eaten there than, say, Gourmet Cafe.
What would you prefer- some kind of weighting system based on the address of the voters? Only allowing entrants who don't advertise anywhere and have unmarked entrances with passwords?
Like Churchill said, democracy is the worst system, apart from all the others.