One of the awesome things of living in Shanghai is having fresh affordable seafood. I just love love LOVE seafood.
An Evening in Shanghai with Friends and amazing seafood.
Earlier this year, our dear friends organised a dinner for eating fresh seafood. Servaas is Belgian, his wife Vera is Russian – but both speak fluent Chinese and i just LOVE that they stay away from typical “expat” things and know Shanghai like a local. Like going to this huge wholesale fish market! It is where restaurants come to get their seafood supply actually! It turned out to be only a 10 minutes drive from our home.
The market was HUGE. Every kind of seafood you can imagine – they had it. And it was my first time to see live sea urchin! I actually had no idea how it looked before this day. There is also a big of bargaining! That’s how local these two are – they even know how to bargain with the fish vendors! imagine that! It was an adventure just walking through the seafood market and trying to identify the various types of fishes, lobsters, crabs. There were SO many types of lobsters, and you could actually see the difference physically :)
THE SEAFOOD!
After buying your fresh seafood, you walk to the end of the street where there are about 2-3 restaurants specialised in seafood. You can also just order their seafood, but it turns out cheaper if you buy the seafood yourself. They weigh each piece of seafood you bring in, and then add a small fee for cooking it based on the weight (i think!).
We had 3 lobsters in total! 3 fresh live huge lobsters! 2 were cooked in a “butter sauce”. I didn’t like this cooking version but I could see why westerners like it. Although, it wasn’t very buttery. It had a sauce that is like the “Portuguese” sauce often seen in Hong Kong. The 3rd lobster was steamed with lots of garlic and vermicelli, and the asians at the table all preferred this one! Even John who is actually westerner as he grew up in Belgium. We also had stir fried clams in black bean sauce, and fresh deep fried mantis shrimp. I probably won’t order the mantis shrimp again cos it was so little meat!! But it was BEAUTIFULLY fried.
I already now exactly what i want to order next time! Fresh scallops steamed with lots of garlic and vermicelli. And lobster stir fried with chilli, ginger, and spring onion. My mouth is watering at the thought of it!
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Louknam - Can you told me the name of the market because i really wanna visit there