Quarantine in Shanghai – Food Special (Chinese)

Instead of boring you my daily meals in individually single blogpost, I compiled them into 14-days all the meals in one posts.

I have not split lunch and dinners because the meal choices are the same for both. There are only two in-house restaurant to choose from – the Chinese restaurant and the Western cafe.

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This became my daily routine every morning – wake up at 5.30am, prepare myself, and then login to the ordering system at 7am to order the meals for the day. Breakfast is served between 7.30-9.30am, lunch from 12-2pm, and dinner from 6-9pm. And delivery is the same – a knock at the door, and then you pick up the meal from the rack outside.

I was quite impressed with the packaging, especially those items with soup or sauces. They were sealed in an aluminium container that kept the food fresh until you want to consume them. The plastic containers used were of higher quality (not those used by normal China food delivery service), I guessed with Covid, everyone was more cautious about getting contamination during delivery.

Chinese Restaurant 红山餐厅

There were around 10 items from the Chinese restaurant.

Cantonese BBQ meats 明炉烧味双拼

This was my first order – Cantonese BBQ meats 明炉烧味双拼. Two kinds of sweet roasted meat were provided. In this example, it was charsiew and roast duck. I had soy sauce chicken with charsiew, roast chicken with charsiew, you get it. Charsiew is always one of the two.

After the initial “excitement”, this dish has become my must-have to compliment the cup noodles, in this instance with the Master Kang’s Beef Noodles.

Sichuan spicy boiled fish with rice 川南水煮鱼

The previous Chinese description 酸菜鱼 and the final product were different. It was supposed to be Sauerkraut fish and instead it was Sichuan spicy fish. Not that I was complaining, the portion of fish was quite generous. Fish used was a freshwater fish, quite muddy tasting. But it was the accompany cabbage and bean sprouts that hit the spot. Did not order this again.

PS: The description was changed after I complained about the food item 😉

Braised beef brisket and carrots with rice 柱候萝卜牛腩饭

There was no carrots, but radish (which is way better). And that was the only fault I can find with this braised beef brisket. The brown sauce that came with it made me ate all the rice for the first time.

Reordered this item another time and did a variation. I dumped blanched instant noodles into the sauce and in these “special” time, to get beef brisket noodles was a blessing.

Stir-fry pork belly with jalapeno 尖椒小炒肉饭

The stir-fry pork belly was another item that I ordered another time because I loved the jalapeno and it was very well with other dishes as the portion was not gigantic like the braised beef.

Casserole cauliflower 干锅有机花菜

I ordered the cauliflower as a side dish to the Western choice. It came with rice and cabbage. Not really delicious, the meagre amount of pork belly just did not helped.

Mushroom chicken in garlic sauce 菌菇蒜子焖鸡

The first weekend dinner and I decided to go big – order a mushroom chicken and a horfun. The horfun I will comment later. But it was the most generous portion of mushroom with chicken I have every ordered for ¥26 – it came with more than 20 full baby shiitake mushrooms! The sauce was garlicky and quite nice, but I was overwhelmed by the mushrooms. Each set came with a banana and the chicken came with side of cabbage.

¥20 Specials

Not everyone in quarantine has an expense account, so there were some ¥20 specials in the menu.

Beef Horfun 干炒牛河

I ordered the dry fried beef horfun together with the mushroom chicken. It was quite bland with very few slices of beef. But when I combined it with the mushroom chicken sauce, it was transformed into something nice. It tasted like the wet fried hor fun that you get in Fujian.

Mapo tofu 麻婆豆腐

This was one of the three ¥20 special – the mapo tofu set came with a bowl of rice a side of cabbage. It tasted like the Lee Kum Kee mapo tofu sauce, and there was almost no minced meat. But really it was a really good bargain as it was quite filling.

Yangzhou fried rice 扬州炒饭

It was one of the worst Yangzhou fried rice I have ever eaten, and I have eaten many fried rice. The rice was clumpy, there was no taste and there’s only bits of peas and other frozen vegetable bits in the egg fried rice. Reminded me of that time I was in Germany and order fried rice, and still that was better. The set came with a banana, a side of cabbage. I made a cup of instant soup to compliment the meal. I had to put some chili sauce (that were left over from a Western meal) to make it palatable.

You must be wondering about the broccoli you saw in the pictures. That was a separate order from the Western menu. I had broccoli at least once a day to make sure I get enough greens and fibre.

Piece de resistance

While most of the items were between ¥20-48, there were two special items that cost ¥238 each, the sea cucumber with abalone and shark fins. The guys that quarantined with me at the same (and chatting in the WeChat group) decided that we should all celebrate the end of quarantine by ordering these on the last day for lunch and dinner, Who say you cannot indulge in something nice and socialise during quarantine?

Sea cucumber with abalone in superior sauce 辽参烩鲍鱼

You knew it was special when you saw that it was delivered in a thermal bag instead of a regular paper bag,

The revealing was disappointing. It had three pieces of broccoli boiled to death, slices of abalone mushroom, two baby abalones and a sea cucumber in a thick gooey red sauce. I like red sauce, they are rice killers.

The abalone was not as tender as I would like, and the sea cucumber was also not braised enough. The sauce was so salty that I could not even bear to drizzle it on the rice. Overall it was a rather disappointing meal. But given the circumstances, it was still a nice end to the quarantine.

That’s all in the Chinese section. In Part II, I will go through the Western restaurant choices.

Caveat: Not all quarantine experience will be exactly like mine. I was lucky to get a pretty decent quarantine centre. I have read horrific accounts of poorly cleaned rooms, broken facilities and crappy food. Thank God for looking over me.