you used to be alright

nothing is better than a big plate of meat

1. i don’t know when this turned into a food blog. food is not the only thing in my life – there’s also basketball and bicycles and . . . man my life is really empty.

2. apologies for the crappy photo, but this was taken with my iphone, one-handed.

location: dong bei ren
no.1 south shaanxi road, near yan’an road
shanghai

dish: giant dish of pork bones with meat straws (yes! meat straws!) to suck out the marrow.

dong bei ren is a fun restaurant to bring the tourists – they have the flaming dragon fish, then all the waitresses (who all look like rosy-cheeked apparitions from a 1960′s era issue of ‘china reconstructs’) come over and sing the fish song. they ran out of fish last night, but still came over to sing. the food is over-salted and not the best representation of north-east food, but with the singing, the beer opening with chopsticks, the central location, the dumplings and the sticky, crispy, sweet potato dessert, dong bei ren is good fun.

if you really would rather just eat without all the other trappings, i have a couple of other places around town that are more suitable, but when you get visitors, this is a great place to go.