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Good restaurants have their own specialities, comfortable environment, heartfelt service and well-made dishes.
If about 90 percent of diners return to a restaurant after once trying its fare, should we believe that it is a good one?
Laotan Restaurant is of this kind, providing special food of the Miao Nationality (a minority in Southwest China's Guizhou Province).
The most popular dish there is "Sour Soup with Wujiang Fish". The soup is savory and appetizing, while the wild fish is tender and delicious.
Most sour soup in Chinese cuisines is made with vinegar or preserved vegetables, but this one is directly brewed from rice for several months. The process is akin to that of making wine, and I saw a huge vat of sour soup in the kitchen.
The original soup is made with tomato, fresh and preserved pepper and chili in a certain ratio and the sap drawn from trees. The sap is so unique that just one or two drops can make a pot of soup very fragrant.
"This traditional soup is only produced in Miaolin, a mountain town in Guizhou Province," explained chef Long Zhengyun who comes from the town. "Residents there are very fond of this homely dish."
The sour soup dish seems available in most local restaurants, but Laotan's excels with its fresh fish. The fish comes from the Wujiang River and is transported to Shanghai by air every week.
The fish was sold out the first time I went to the restaurant, so the following day I called ahead to ensure that the fish was available.
Another highly recommended dish is hot pot spicy chicken. The chicken is cooked with special seasoning which is stewed with mashed ginger, garlic, chili and sesame oil.
After the soup is cooked dry, the taste of the chicken is fully absorbed into an underlayer of radish slices. So, I ate most of the radish and left the chicken to my partner.
"Most of the ingredients are produced in Guizhou to ensure their authentic flavour. For example, more than 10 kinds of chilli are used but few are available in Shanghai," said the boss, Yang Heping.
Ordinary potato is skillfully prepared into a flat pancake in the restaurant. The golden outer layer is quite crisp and the inside is soft and delicious. The most interesting thing is that the cook makes the slices stick together.
"This simple dish is very time-consuming and requires good control of the oil temperature," said chef Long.
Other representative Guizhou cold dishes are rice curd and zheyugen, the root of a herb which helps to reduce inflammation but has quite a strange smell.
In addition, cured meat and noodles with chili are also good choices.
Maybe because the management pays such attention to the dishes it has ignored the decor. However, the simple and unadorned style has a homely taste. Sitting on a homemade bamboo chair, I felt as if I were enjoying the sunshine in front of a house in a mountain village.
The only shortcoming of the restaurant is that it's a little bit noisy in the hall.
The average cost is about 50-70 yuan per person.
Laotan Restaurant
42 Xingfu Lu
near Fahuazhen Lu
Tel: 6283-5947, 6283-7843
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