The dark side of Jiangnan cuisine
Jiangnan Cuisine, a compact little restaurant near the outskirts of the Richmond District specializes in — surprise — Jiangnan food. Jiangnan is the region of China that includes Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Suzhou and other cities that lie south of the Yangtze River. (“Jiang” is the Chinese word for the Yangtze River; “nan” means south.)
So what is Jiangnan food? Jiangnan food is Shanghainese food, more or less. I’m not trying to be coy. But the idea of Shanghainese food tends to be a trigger for a certain set of people, and I want to give fair warning to anybody in that camp. To wit: A friend recently texted
me asking for a restaurant recommendation in Shanghai. When I suggested a place called Ji Shi Restaurant, several minutes passed while I assume he did some Internet sleuthing. Finally he responded:
“I hate Shanghainese food.” He said he was going to go to Da Dong instead.
“You know what they say,” I chided him. “When in Shanghai, go to a chain Peking duck restaurant from Beijing.”
Like I said, anti-Shanghainese sentiment is rife among certain persnickety diners. My uncle, a man of Cantonese origin and steadfast Cantonese tastes, hates Shanghainese food. “All the food is black colored,” he moans whenever the family drags him to a Jiangnan restaurant.
He’s not wrong. Shanghainese food features a lot of inky sauces and glazes made with soy sauce or black vinegar. When my friend texted me later to apologize and tell me that, in fact, he’d taken me up on my recommendation and loved the restaurant, he included several photos of dark, sticky braises that I couldn’t discern from one another.
Anyway, I like Shanghainese food, so I was perfectly happy to visit Jiangnan Cuisine, the second true Jiangnan restaurant in San Francisco. (Taste of Jiangnan, the other restaurant, is located about 2 miles east; I haven’t been yet.) The chef of Jiangnan Cuisine, Zhan Shao, worked there before opening Jiangnan Cuisine with his wife, Jean Hua, a few months ago. It’s busy, but not so bad that I couldn’t walk in and get a table on both Saturday afternoon and Tuesday evening.
On my first visit, I went with my parents. My dad speaks Shanghainese, one of a couple of dialects he can use when he doesn’t want me to understand what he’s saying. As a kid, I found it mildly frustrating, but in this case, it was exceedingly useful. Shanghainese is very close to the Wuxi dialect, and Dad took the reins in ordering enough food for 12 people — for the four of us — stopping only when Hua said with a laugh, “That’s enough. Next time you come, you’ll try other things.”
If there’s one Shanghainese dish you’re familiar with, it’s probably lion’s head. (I realize lion’s head isn’t technically/ historically from Shanghai, but hey, hot dogs aren’t really American and I don’t hear anybody saying, “Let’s have some German food” at the ballpark.) If you’re unfamiliar, lion’s head are pork meatballs, so named because they’re big — you know, like a lion’s head. At Jiangnan Cuisine, they’re sold by the piece; one is enough for four people to get a good taste. The best lion’s heads are made of hand-chopped, very fatty pork. This one is made from ground pork, but texturally it’s still pretty special — tender enough to slice through with chopsticks, but with chewy bits that keep things interesting. It’s braised in soy sauce and sugar; the sauce has body but isn’t overly gloopy as these things can sometimes become.
One other thing about the lion’s head: It will arrive quickly — like, within seconds of your ordering it. You might be tempted to order a second one while you wait for the rest of your food. Don’t go crazy; you have more work to do.
First, let’s talk about the black stuff. The big showstopper is the duck. Nearly every table seems to order it, and we were no exception. If, like me, you find it hard to order a half portion when a whole portion is available, be advised that half a duck was enough to cover a large platter and that much of ours is still in my fridge.
The menu lists the dish as “stewed duck in soy sauce,” but that’s a little misleading. What we’ve got here is a roast duck like you’d find at any Chinatown barbecue joint that’s been sliced and then absolutely housed in a pitchblack sweet soy glaze. Looking at it, I couldn’t help but recall a bird caught in an oil spill. It tastes much better than that, of course, but I’m stuck with the visual so I feel like you should be, too.
Less black but still fairly dark is a dish of salmon head and soft tofu in gumbo-colored gravy. (This is one of several items listed as “preorder” on the menu, but none of these dishes were unavailable when I asked for them.) I suppose if you’re ordering something called “spicy salmon head in brown sauce” you don’t need me to tell you that this dish is not for the fastidious. It is an unsortable boneyard of chopped-up fish parts with no other way to approach but to dig straight in. The reward for all the dirty fingers, sticky lips, spit-out bones and crumpled napkins is scattered on this dish in particular; its sweet, piney scent hovered over the dish, brightening and freshening things.
For a group of three or four, I’d recommend picking only one of these large-format dishes. And if you’re really interested in exploring the dark-Shanghainese oeuvre, add a plate of Sweet and Sour Spare Ribs. This is not your standard steam-table sweet and sour. For starters, it’s actually sour — nose-stingingly so from black vinegar. The ribs are slow-cooked to tenderness, dry fried and then tarred like Revolutionary War-era traitors in lacquer. I mention that you shouldn’t overdo it on the black stuff, because the strongest dishes on the menu are the ones that come out of the wok. The fried rice is some of the finest I’ve had in the city, particularly the salt pork and vegetable version. When it lands on the table, stick your nose right in there and inhale deeply. Smell that? That’s wok hay: the inimitable essence of food that’s been in close contact with ferociously hot cast iron. It’s the whole point of cooking in a wok and the secret to quality fried rice. When you let rice cook languidly in a not-hot-enough pan, it becomes flabby and heavy. A blistering hot wok keeps the rice airy and light and the vegetables crisp. Good fried rice demands urgency.
Wok hay also plays a key role in a dish of seared cauliflower with pork. I’m hard morsels of gelatinous cartilage and the occasional piece of meat.
My favorite dish from the dark side of the menu came by accident. I tried ordering Traditional Sauteed Chicken with Shredded Potato (in Chinese, it reads “home-style chicken”), but what arrived was a big square plate heaped high with boneless chicken and chunks of potatoes in a superbly balanced gold-brown braise redolent of warm spices and vinegar. (It brings to mind the classic Uyghur-Chinese dish, big-tray chicken, if that rings a bell.) Cilantro is a ubiquitous garnish, but it works especially well at this restaurant and pressed to think of a flavor or smell I like more than caramelized cauliflower florets. Hard-cooked in a wok, the cauliflower at Jiangnan Cuisine is toasty and sweet, scented with ginger, garlic, dried chiles and fresh cilantro. The thin shavings of heavily rendered pork belly are almost an afterthought — in fact, I pushed them aside with my chopsticks to improve my access to the cauliflower.
People who love MSG will be drawn to a dish of stir-fried shrimp in Maggi sauce. I regretted not ordering it on my first trip, but after returning to check it out, I’m cool with skipping it. They’re fine — garlicky and salty and fresh enough — but there are more interesting things to be had.
I’m looking forward to returning to Jiangnan Cuisine in the winter for a bowl of Yang Chun noodle soup. The menu warns that they’re “just noodles,” and that’s not far from the truth. It is a spartan bowl of chicken broth, wheat noodles, and a few blades of baby bok choy. The noodles are almost too soft, the broth delicate and unembellished. Truth be told, it’s not something you want to eat in the middle of a meal full of strong flavors. You need to order it by itself, forsaking all other dishes, if you really want to appreciate it.
But that’s OK. Next time you come, you’ll try other things.