Dinners with Trisha and Shawn

   As you all know by now, I have 2 friends in town, Trisha and Shawn. Luckily they came in last Friday so I have the weekend to hang out with them before I had to go back to work. So Monday rolled around and they got to go exploring while I headed off to the office. I tried hard to reserve some energy so that we could  do things together in the evening and since the 3 of all like to eat we ended up going out for dinners. This also meant that I got home too late to be able to share with you all daily some of the good restaurants we got to visit.

Monday:

   I took Trisha and Shawn out for what I remembered as the "best ribs ever"...a chef special at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I had gone here about 4 months ago with some Columbia PDXers that were in town and told myself to remember it for when I had friends in town. The food was as good as I originally remembered it and I think that T&S really liked it too. I even got 2 more lunches out of it!

The famous pork ribs covered in cumin seeds!
I wish Donald was with us  so he could try them.

Left, Mapo Tofu (Shawn said this is the best tofu he's ever eaten). Looks like I need to

share my recipe with him so he can make it PDX. Right, Garlic Shoots with Bacon.

Spicy duck. T&S's first experience with meat and bones server together...
It's always a challenge with chop sticks.

I hope I look like I'm enjoying my meal.

I think we did a good job of eating these dishes. There was only duck

and tofu left for me to take home for lunches.

Tuesday:

   After a long day of touring Shanghai, Trisha and Shawn ventured out to meet me at the Metro stop near my work so I could take them our for my favorite noodles. This is a noodle place owned by Hui People...the ethnic group that understands how to make a damn good noodle! I think that all the broth that the 3 of us slurped all overselves is a telltale sign that the meal was awesome. We got 3 big bowls of noodles and a plate of sour/spicy potatoes for 28RMB ($4.42USD)...can't beat that price! The noodle maker was really amused with Shawn's iphone and seeing himself in a video that Shawn had taken of him. On the way out I even practiced saying "Happy New Year, I wish you lots of wealth in the future!" (this is how you say it: Shing Nien How. Gong she  fats eye). I have now practiced enough that I would consider myself proficient (ok, maybe not proficient but getting there). 

I love unflattering pictures. Sorry Shawn! I'm sure he was
talking about how tired he was when he was making this face.

He's making our noodles:

Left, our delicious noodles. Right, our delicious spicy/sour potatoes. 

Wednesday:

Dinner at the apartment. HUGE salads and quesadillas. I needed some time to recover from an already long workweek.

Thursday:
   I suckered T&S into some good ol' western food. We went to a place called New York Burger and Steak. You guessed it, we all ordered burgers and they were deliscious, although I'm finding that I can't eat like I used to...only got through 1/2 a burger.

   After dinner we wandered into a DVD store, totally selling legal DVDs (if you know what I mean). I may or may not have picked up Glee: Season 3...I need entertainment for the next month. There was one more pit-stop to make before we headed back to the apartment. Trisha and Shawn totally needed to see my Tesco supermarket, which was, by the way, decked out for the new year. It was close to their closing time and there were many workers restocking the selves and plenty of others just standing around. One of the workers that seemed to lack anything to do took it upon himself to open all sorts of treats and feed it to the 3 of us. When he wasn't feeding us he was feeding himself. We tried all sorts of new stuff because of him. We walked away with candy, snacks for our trip and a giant bag of new Chinese beers for Shawn to drink.

Friday:
   We headed out for all you can eat sushi and Teppanyaki. It was one exciting dinner and warrants having its own blog post. More to come later...