Stinky tofu and Chinese chitlins with Larry Stein

SteveTimko

Steve Timko
A foodie friend fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese arranged for a dinner with me at Sunny Shanghai in San Bruno. Larry Stein was nice enough to join us.

 

 
sunnyshainghai.jpg


The food was very good. It included, from left to right starting at the top: Deep fried pork intestines, stinky tofu, Shanghai duck, soup dumplings (xlb), chicken in fish sauce and A choi.
The chitlins were awesome. Soft and flavorful. The stinky tofu was aptly named. It wasn't fragrant enough to waft across the room, but when you got it near your nose you got a good dose of it. It's the kind of food you have to eat one and then the rest are okay. I liked the Shanghai duck a lot more than Larry.

The wines were pretty nice, too. It included a 1993 Muscadet I originally intended for an offline for Jay Miller in Reno. It turned out to be a pretty good bottle of wine. I like rounded Muscadet quite a bit. I guess the question is, how long must Muscadet age before it loses that jagged acidity?

1993 Domaine de la Louvetrie (Landron & Fils) Muscadet de Svre-et-Maine Sur Lie Le Fief du Breil - France, Loire Valley, Pays Nantais, Muscadet de Svre-et-Maine (3/11/2010)
This was nice and quite a bit different than other Muscadets I've had. Its age is betrayed by the honey color of the wine. There's still a tanginess to the wine, but it is quite rounded, which Larry notes is to be expected with a 17-year-old wine. On the nose, I get lemon drops and some other candy. On the palate I get some minerality but more lime than lemon. Good finish but no as long as the Franken Silvaner that accompanied it. Aged Muscadet rocks.
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2007 Brgerspital zum hl. Geist Wrzburger Abtsleite Silvaner trocken - Germany, Franken (3/1/2010)
Ah yes, this is the stuff. After several misfires chasing after another good Franken Silvaner, I finally found one with this wine. All the good adjectives apply here. Crisp. Pure. Focused. Minerally. Balanced. The flavors are yellow apple and some spices I can't quite pin down. Maybe a flourish of honey on the finish. Good finish. The wine is both rich and lean. I like this a lot.
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The Burgerspital was excellent and held up quite well against the variety of flavors from the food. It seemed like several years of aging will be to its benefit, but I have no experience aging Franken Sylvaner

Those older vintages of Louvetrie that K&L brought in have been quite nice and this bottle was no exception.

Two outstanding dishes not mentioned were a sliced pork kidney appetizer and sister-in-law soup. The latter is basically hot-and-sour soup, without the hot and sour components, and with a fish-based stock, not meat. Very Shanghainese. Our host (yimster on Chowhound) said Sunny Shanghai does the pork kidney and fried pork intestines (awesome) better than anywhere in the Bay Area.

Forgot to add that stinky tofu is no stinkier than a ripe piece of Epoisse or similar cheese. Yimster asked if Steve and I were up to trying it. The smell didn't phase me, but I wouldn't necessarily go out of my way to order it.

Steve, thanks for bringing the wines!
 
The sister in law soup was great. I couldn't get enough of that.
Here's what we had:
Chilled Pork Kidney Flowers
Chilled Salted Water Duck
Sister in law Soup (a soup made from yellow fish from the Shanghai area)
Green Onion Pancake
A Choy Sauteed with Garlic
Chicken with Fish Sauce
Stinky Tofu
Dry Braised Pork Intestine
Soup Dumpling (Xlb)
Dry Cooked Soup Buns

By the way, the bill was $20 each, including a generous tip.
 
In the photos above, the buns are the Dry Cooked Soup Buns, not the XLB. We were also served red bean paste in puff pastry for dessert.

Eating the pork intestines more than once a month is a heart attack waiting to happen.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
The sister in law soup was great. I couldn't get enough of that.

What qualifies a soup to be called 'sister in law soup'?

I'll ask. Mapo tofu is a common Chinese dish (pork with tofu). Mapo means old woman with pockmarked face, meaning the tofu should be soft and look like a woman with a pock-marked face.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
The sister in law soup was great. I couldn't get enough of that.

What qualifies a soup to be called 'sister in law soup'?

I'll ask. Mapo tofu is a common Chinese dish (pork with tofu). Mapo means old woman with pockmarked face, meaning the tofu should be soft and look like a woman with a pock-marked face.

Sister in law soup is mapo tofu soup?
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
originally posted by Rahsaan:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
The sister in law soup was great. I couldn't get enough of that.

What qualifies a soup to be called 'sister in law soup'?

I'll ask. Mapo tofu is a common Chinese dish (pork with tofu). Mapo means old woman with pockmarked face, meaning the tofu should be soft and look like a woman with a pock-marked face.

Sister in law soup is mapo tofu soup?

Sorry. I was offering that up as an example of how odd the food names can be.
I emailed the guy who arranged the dinner to get his explanation.
 
The explanation is that it was originally called sister in law Sue's soup after a woman named Sue but her name got dropped and it became sister in law soup.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
I have a friend who is always threatening to make mother-in-law soup.

Kay, there were many times I wanted to that with my ex's m-i-l. It wouldn't have been very palatable (bitter, acrid, and tasting 100% negative).
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:


The wines were pretty nice, too. It included a 1993 Muscadet I originally intended for an offline for Jay Miller in Reno. It turned out to be a pretty good bottle of wine. I like rounded Muscadet quite a bit. I guess the question is, how long must Muscadet age before it loses that jagged acidity?
Lousy rassafrassim snow....
 
originally posted by Larry Stein:
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
I have a friend who is always threatening to make mother-in-law soup.

Kay, there were many times I wanted to that with my ex's m-i-l..

This is either funny or evidence of a failed Oedipal complex. (Or, if the ex in question had more than 1 M-i-L, evidence of the very complicated family structures we have in the post-modern era.)
 
Scott:
Larry was talking about getting a bunch of cork dorks together, like about a dozen, and getting a special meal that includes crab XLB. Are you interested?
 
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