The Restaurants I Frequent

Shanghai is an amazing city with hundreds if not thousands of great restaurants. Eating out is the norm in Shanghai and I’ve adopted to this custom with full fervor. I eat out nearly every day, which means I have an amazing opportunity to sample all that Shanghai has to offer. The reality is much different.

My apartment is located right in the center of downtown Shanghai. Busses, metros, and taxis are plentiful and yet most nights I eat within a ten minute walk of the place I sleep. I visit two particular restaurants two to three times a week while half a dozen others few times a month. I’ve been living in the same place for over three years and visiting the same few restaurants. The wait staff recognize me and know the dishes I like. The food won’t win awards, but it is good wholesome fare.

Is this a bad thing, definitely not. It’s nice to be known and it’s nice to be in familiar places and around familiar faces. But sometimes I do think maybe I’ve become too much a creature of habit. I should eat more adventurously, the selection is innumerable, there are hidden gems all around the city to be discovered yet I rarely try to seek them out anymore, instead I covet the gems I’ve discovered.

When I was first finding my legs in Shanghai, everyday was an adventure of one sort or another. If I want an adventure now I need to seek it out. I’m going to try taking up the call to action and rediscover parts of the city I’ve lost and along the way I’ll be eating and I’m excited of the discoveries I’ll be making.