Quarantine in Shanghai – Food Special (Western)

In Part 1 of the Food Special, I showed all the Chinese choices available during quarantine. In the Western section, the choices were more varied.

There were two room serv ice restaurants available. Red Mountain 红山餐厅 offered a completely Chinese menu. The cafe offered a more international menu. First up, breakfast.

Breakfast

There were only two choices for breakfast and you can only order breakfast when the system come online at 7am and last order was 9am. For Set A (Chinese), you get two Chinese chives buns, a hardboiled egg and a packet of orange juice. For Set B (Western), you get three mini sweet bread, a hardboiled egg and a packet of UHT milk. I didn’t miss much.

Japanese Choices

The classic Japanese dish for beginners – teriyaki chicken. A chicken thigh was grilled and then caramelised with this thick, demi-sweet sauce, and accompanied with rice. It was really nice, especially this was the second last day of quarantine.

It tasted like supermarket-variety pre-packaged Japanese grilled unagi with a very sweet sauce. The eel was quite thin but there was quite a generous portion. Quite strangely paired with a cherry tomato and half a boiled egg. Came with rice and a side dish of Peking cabbage.

Next up, stir-fry Japanese udon with beef. The sauce is a teriyaki like sauce, very sweet and savoury at the same time. Relative to the rest of the meals, it was quite a small portion. Paired with my instant Japanese tomato soup in a cup.

There were three Japanese items in the International selection. I reckon Japanese food is more accepted by the Chinese palate. The Japanese tonkatsu (pork cutlet) rice was made with a very thin and lean piece of pork. By the time I got it delivered to the room, the crust had turned soggy and beyond salvation. Thank goodness there were some packets of chilli sauce that came with the meal.

International Choices

Next, we travel from Japan to Italy. Surprisingly, the spaghetti bolognese was delicious – good flavours and ample minced beef. And the half a boiled egg made its appearance again.

The black pepper chicken did not have the usual black pepper sauce. Instead there’s a very strong taste of cumin, which for some reason I started to feel nausea recently when I take them. Mental note – don’t order this again,

Imagine Heinz baked beans, but instead of beans, you get all these mushrooms. That’s exactly what this mushroom in tomato sauce was. Surprising, it had a very comforting taste to it. But the tomato sauce was overwhelming after a while. I liked baked beans, but a whole meal with only that? No thanks.

After the first week in quarantine, the Singapore curry chicken became a homesick person’s only solace in this confined space. And surprising the curry was really authentic. There’s the potato with the curry, but they used local potato which crumpled slightly. But still the sauce was good, tasted like Prima’s curry paste with a nice coconut flavour.

The best way to eat the curry was with bread. Remember the breakfast bread? That’s why I ordered the Western set, so that I can save the bread for the curry. And what did I do with the egg? I added it to the salad.

Salads

This was the first dinner I had in the hotel, a chicken breast salad. I was thinking that since I will be stuck indoors with very little room to exercise, I better make sure my diet is in check.

Besides the green salad, there’s the roast beef salad on a bed of quinoa and barley rice. Came with Italian dressing.

It was served warm, but I discovered that by leaving it in the fridge overnight, it tasted brilliant in the morning for breakfast.

The avocado salad, which was made up with the same mesclun as the roast beef and chicken breast salads, also came with Italian dressing. You only have two choices when it comes to dressing, Italian or thousand island.

Local Choices

One of the two local choices – Shanghai noodles soup had a very nice soup base. However the ribs were the letdown here.

And the stir-fry black pepper beef in my opinion was the best meal I had in this menu, The beef was tender and full of the fiery flavour of black pepper. The green pepper and mushroom complimented with the stir-fry. So good with rice and came with a side of broccoli.

And again, you saw the broccoli and baby cabbage – these are side dish choices in the cafe menu which I ordered to supplement the Chinese menu. So there you have – everything on the menus of the two restaurants in Quarantine Point #19.

The food was not bad, enough variety for 14 days, but it would be an issue if you have dietary restrictions (nothing except the broccoli, baby cabbage and avocado salads were vegetarian). But after a while, I started to variate the meals with cup noodles. Here’s a surprise find – Haidilao’s tomato beef mung bean vermicelli.

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Surprisingly, it was really delicious with chunks of real beef slices. Will buy a case back to Singapore.