Shanghai: Brasa Chicken
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What to do when your sink is full of dirty dishes and your ayi doesn’t come until tomorrow? Order delivery! I had been meaning to try Brasa Chicken for awhile. It’s another Vargas concept and I had been hearing good things. Rotisserie chicken in a city of no ovens – pretty smart idea. So I picked up the phone and ordered a while chicken with a side of roasted potatoes. The prices aren’t bad at all – the whole meal only cost us $90RMB and there was plenty of chicken leftover. Thirty minutes later a knock at the door signaled that our dinner had arrived.
Brasa’s chicken is not bad. But not that great either.. on a whole its just.. mediocre. When I picture roasted chicken, I imagine a bird that has been turning on a spit, cooking in its own juices until the meat is so tender that it just falls off the bone. Brasa’s chicken is a little undercooked, so there is no falling-off-the-bone action at all. Worse yet, their roasted potatoes were completely RAW on the inside.
The two sauces that come on the side are a nice touch, but could not save the bird. You can pick from either a green sauce (a chimichurri?) and a smokey red sauce, I passed on both and pulled out a bottle of BBQ sauce Adrian had brought me from Texas. Much better.
Would I order again? Probably not.
Enjoy!
Brasa Chicken
888 Shanxi Nan Lu at Jianguo Lu
陕西路888号近江国西路
+86 400 820 0401
www.brasachicken.com.cn
Shanghai: Crawfish Boil
Happy Summer Equinox! Today marks the very first day of summer – and summer in Shanghai means plenty ofyang mei berries (杨梅), hot sweaty bike rides, and lots and lots of crawfish, aka xiao long xia (小龙虾). I consider myself an adventurous eater, but the unrefrigerated, oily crawdads peddled on Shouning Lu might just be a little TOO adventurous for me. Luckily, our friend Mark invited us along for an annual Southern-style crawfish boil taking place at Cuvee Kaiba in Jing’an. I had been looking forward to this for an entire week!
Our gracious and generous host, Jason, is a boy from down south who boils up his crawfish with plenty of lemons, potatoes, corn, and spices galore. His crawfish boil was done Louisiana style, meaning the whole pot is dumped on a long table for the hungry masses to share.
Jason’s crawfish were exceptionally clean – nothing but tasty goodness inside those heads. I dug in with much gusto, resulting in lips numb from the spice!
What a great way to start the summer. Thanks to Mark and Jason for a delicious afternoon!
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