... pork joints, marrow, & gloves...

Started the evening with a few drinks at Barbarossa, a beautiful Moroccan bar & restaurant in the middle of People's Square. Ada & Isabel, our lovely hosts from LB/Shanghai, herded our motley crew of hangovers into a bus to be taken roughly 100 meters down the street. We got off the bus and then had to walk back about 50 meters to cross the street and enter the park that's in the middle of People's Square. It's funny when you're treated as though you're incapable of crossing the street by yourself, but taking a look at the number of people in our party, perhaps they were right... Anyhow, this bar was lovely, standing in a secluded spot amidst trees and a large, carefully landscaped pond filled with water lillies. You couldn't even see the traffic, and it's probably the only place I was in all week where hordes of people weren't milling around...

We had a quick drink inside, amidst piles of cushions in a hookah lounge that was just a little too full to be truly comfortable. But didn't stay long, because our hosts had booked a large reservation for us, to hang out with the LB/Shanghai agency folks, so our group hopped on the bus again and were driven to a restaurant, a Manchurian spot where we were escorted to two long tables, with 12 heads to each side, facing each other. The meal that followed was simultaneously delicious and horrifying, and i've been having flashbacks of it for days... Here's what i can remember (or can't forget...)
Glass noodles
Fried flat corn cakes
fried mushrooms
Pork Knuckles
Fried rice with vegetables
Grilled Legs of mutton
Heaping piles of dried red chilis
Braised beef in Sauce
Deep fried banana fritters
Knotted sweet bread
Fried Bread (parathas)
and much much more... I think the kicker for me were the gloves they gave us prior to bringing out a heaping pile of pork knuckles. The gloves were to pull the meat off the bone, and the fluorescent straw they furnished us with...was to suck out the marrow! The bones were about an 3/4" in diameter, and sitting on a plate all together looked like some godawful medieval scene from a painting of Genghis Khan feasting with his lieutenants. Although I nibbled, seeing as how we were at the discretion of our hosts, I've been harboring a loud Hell No inside me about having to eat Pork Knuckles. it's good to get that out... the legs of lamb that swiftly followed were no joke either...


Vegetarianism has never looked so good...




I could try to describe the rest of that meal to you but I really would rather not. Some parts were delicious, the breads were particularly well made, but i've blotted out some things I ate from my memory, because i don't want to think about them. Suffice to say, when waiters start piling dishes of food ON TOP of one another, stacking them into towers of courses, you know there's something inherently wrong with the meal you're being asked to eat... It was like some perverse adventure in culinary sadism. Although i try to be accomodating wherever I go, what was running through my head the whole time we were there was: "This is so not sustainable." If you've ever come into contact with hardcore vegans or vegetarians, you know that the amount of resources it takes to raise cattle is preposterously high compared to the amount of resources it takes to grow the elements of a vegetarian meal. If you've seen the numbers, and then happen to sit through a single meal where you're served a dozen animals over the course of an hour, it starts to grate on you. There are better, wiser, more responsible ways to eat... I guess that makes me a party pooper, since I'm not all gung ho about piles of food... but i ate all of it, so i don't know what that makes me... troubled in the tract, most likely...
:-( master cleanse here i come...

After the meal (which had a few casualties, as a few of our diners went home sick), we headed over to a bar to have a few drinks and put a final period on what was a really enjoyable and productive week. We saw some great work, some fantastic ideas, and some things that i thought were fabulous. Below is my favorite Burnett ad from 2Q08, a demented spot from my friends in LB/Sao Paulo:




Also spent a few minutes at Mesa, before cutting out early... Nice place...