A Taste of Old Shanghai -- Dexingguan Restaurant (德興館)

Shanghai is a mad place these days, with soaring skyscrapers and the stock market soaring higher still. Likewise the restaurant scene is jolted with hyperkinetics—there isn’t anything you want to eat that money cannot buy. But I find Shanghai’s trendiest places, like many self-described “educated” Shanghaiers, generally lacking in substance. The most delightful aspects of Shanghai cuisine, meanwhile, remain in the province of traditional restaurants held over from the pre-communist era.

On the final evening of this China trip, I took a taxi through chaotic rush hour traffic, whizzing through narrow streets that I didn’t know could accommodate both cars and people on bikes and feet, and arrived in a 1930s neighborhood of low-rise wooden homes and shops. I stepped out into a busy corner, and in front of me stood a three story restaurant bathed in lights, shining like a towering beacon. The place was called De▪xing▪guan (德興館), one of the most celebrated Shanghai-style (上海幫; shang▪hai▪bang) restaurants in town.

Dexingguan’s claim to fame is a dish called Black Sea Cucumber in Shrimp Roe Sauce (蝦子烏蔘; xia▪zi▪wu▪sen). These are not small, pickle sized sea cucumbers that you can buy in Chinese shops stateside, but rather a huge rascal of a thing, about ten inches long, and weighing over a pound. It is not cheap either. At a price of RMB 25 per 50 grams, a single black sea cucumber sets you back RMB 200 (about US$25).

Sea cucumber is flavorless, so the quality of the sauce is paramount to the quality of the dish. Shanghai cuisine tends to be on heavy side—sugary with lots of oil, and this dish was no exception. The sauce, constructed from oil, sweet bean paste, and the roe of local river shrimp, could hardly be described as low calorie, low cholesterol, and low fat. Slathered liberally onto the black sea cucumber, which was steamed into firm and wriggly perfection, the dish was presented on the table like a steaming lump of gelatin.

I never understood the role of the shrimp roe, which look like little green grains of sand. You could hardly make them out from the brownish sauce, and since it doesn’t have much flavor either, I could only conclude that they were added to give the dish a fancier name. I must admit, however, that the shrimp roe do add some grittiness to the texture to the sauce, which seems like the “right” contrast to the slipperiness of the sea cucumber. Maybe that was the role shrimp roe.

I also ordered several other local specialties. For appetizer, I had Drunken Chicken (醉雞; zui▪ji) and two types of pickles. Drunken Chicken is always a personal favorite of mine. This one was delicious, but not so different from the authentic versions I have eaten at various Shanghai-style restaurants in America.

I also ordered a fish head casserole, one of Dexingguan’s prided but less famous specialties. The fish head was of a carp, fed on grass, with a flavor not too unlike eating fresh-cut grass straight up. It was something to get used to, but I loved the soft texture of the fish and the rich aroma of the broth.

There are many branch locations of Dexingguan throughout Shanghai proper. The original location is at 29 Dong▪men Road, in the southern fringe of downtown.
德興館 --上海市南外灘東門路 29號