The 2024 Asia's 50 Best Restaurants were recently announced, and Shanghai's Fu Hehui once again ranked 19th in the mainland.
Catering tea: Rose black tea Phoenix single fir
This season's menu is concise, subtle, full of greenery, spring breeze and rain.
Tea pairing: Enshi Yulu
At the beginning, a small tart with crystal clear green turned out to be a preserved egg with pepper in Hunan cuisine, adding avocado to the pepper sauce is more soft, and the transparent preserved egg protein reveals a clear freshness.
Followed by a plate can be said to be Beijing and Shanghai contrasting with each other, Beijing's traditional cold vegetables mustard dun'er, choose Shandong golden Chinese cabbage to do, mustard sauce mixed with yellow pepper and pine nuts, not flushed at all, and mustard seeds soft beads; Shanghai classic cold dish fragrant dried Ma Lantou, picked Chongming's Ma Lantou with fresh cordyceps flowers, dried bean curd turned into a delicate tofu sauce, embellished with two bunches of mustard seedlings, one purple and one green, carefully distinguished, the aroma is slightly different.
A bowl of cold noodle soup, done well and elegantly, the dragon beard noodles are white and silky, and the noodle soup is the juice distilled by Chaoshan horseshoe tomato, Yunnan tree tomato and Chongming green tomato, slightly sour and fresh, a few drops of tea oil of Bitan drifting snow, carefully studied it is a tea made of a mixture of budding jasmine and early spring buds, and you just smell the fragrance of fresh jasmine when you look down, and the ingenuity is always hidden in an inadvertent place.
Fried triangle is the old Beijing hutong in the old snacks, has been almost lost, the last time I ate it was in the Qing Palace Imperial Chef opened a shop, I didn't expect that one day I can eat in Shanghai, do very exquisite, the traditional filling is a rough stew, here changed to mung bean starch made of jelly, with carrots, mustard greens, coriander, especially the northern coriander, eat delicate and interesting.
Turn your head and go south to Taizhou, the soup comes from the fortune soup of Linhai, I have not eaten this soup, but this plate in front of me is extremely comfortable, the soup is thick and moist, the red bud taro is fine and crisp and tender, and there are coconut white, bean noodles, fried tofu and small mustard greens under the scoop, which are finely chopped and complicated, and finally return to a beautiful bean.
Of course, I want to eat spring bamboo shoots in spring, this dish is the best in the season, and I try to imitate the appearance of nature is too cute, and it is still delicious! Roll the bamboo shoots into the tips of the freshly unearthed bamboo shoots with tofu skin, the tender bamboo shoots and Ningbo bamboo shoots bran in the middle, the cauliflower and the ice beauty are just like grass and trees, a thin layer of vegetable powder is like greenery, white sesame seeds are like gravel, and the soil is fried with breadcrumbs and pepper oil, the crumbs are crispy and fragrant, and we happily eat all the soil.
Spring is still the season of morel mushrooms, the fresh mushrooms of Yunnan are huge, stuffed with full of quinoa and water chestnuts, glutinous with graininess, the origin of the two green leaves is not to say that you can't guess at all, it is actually a quinoa seedling from Shanxi, the fragrance is slightly astringent, both form an echo, and feel novel.
There are more special ingredients, yellow ginseng from Gansu Shandan, which is said to be a pure natural plant that grows on the Loess Plateau, looks like ginseng, tastes like carrots, and uses the braised red sauce of the Bengang, with fried green and white asparagus, salty and sweet intertwined, fresh and tender.
Snow swallow resembles a bird's nest, but it is actually a secretion of wood pith, which is generally used as a dessert, and here it is put into spring vegetables, with verdant lettuce balls, set against the turquoise lettuce leaf juice, and at the bottom is the tender tofu made by yourself, which is cleverly blended with bamboo fungus, with an extra layer of smooth and crispy taste.
The waiter brought the kettle for cooking, and knew that our staple food was coming, and this time it was replaced with a new kettle, which was round and white, and simple and cute, in order to match a pot full of tender vegetables!
Once the lid is lifted, there are eight treasures: peas, green beans are sweet, gourd, gingerbread melon is crispy and soft, Yunnan beets pull out the silk twigs, and the spores cabbage roll out small folds.
We are happy for green vegetables, in fact, there is a special intention in it, spinach juice is used to dye green food, but the kitchen always feels that it is not ideal, so we find blue butterfly pea flowers and yellow lemon flowers, and mix yellow and blue by themselves, so as to get this unique green in front of us.
Spring desserts are also full of green vegetables, clear the mouth with a frost, crack a crisp piece of saccharified perilla leaves, and mix with the honeydew melon, green grapes, and yellow watermelon below, which is cool and slightly bitter.
The big dessert is more interesting, inspired by the home-cooked celery lily, the Gansu lily milk ball hides the tender glutinous corn germ, the milk fragrance is sweet, a few silk fruit celery leaves, around the celery tender stems, green shadow sparse.
More provocative is a few drops of sesame oil, extracted from pine needles, lemongrass and ginger, just echoing the tea pairing, Sichuan Meishan orchid flowers and Mengding nectar three kilns to get the flower tea, plus fresh pine needles, green and fragrant.
The dessert after the meal is the seasonal Qingtuan, the green glutinous rice with the pure lotus paste and olive kernel core, after eating, I feel that the spring of Shanghai has really come......