Over the weekend, while biking to Shanghai's Silk Market, Jacob and I got lost in a maze of side streets. This was a side of Shanghai visitors seldom see. We rode past a few "free-range" chickens (with feet leashed to a pole, to prevent straying) pecking on some dirty lettuce. On the other side of the road was a scene that would never pass American health inspection, but which made my heart skip a beat.

Open air duck roasting! Now, I think Peking duck is a neat art form, but the elaborateness of the preparation, ordering, and eating gets tiring after the 20th time. Some days you just want a crispy, juicy duck without the fuss. For example, one you can pick up while whizzing by on a bike.

So what does the inside of the metal inferno look like?

Inside the drum, nude-colored ducks were neatly hung around a circle of flaming charcoal. 

The skin of the pre-roasted ducks appeared to have been lightly boiled, if only to remove the feathers. Some scallions and garlic cloves are stuck into the cavities. According to the duck stand vendor, the roasting takes only an hour. Then, he hangs the just-roasted ducks in his little wooden stand, behind a Plexiglass case, and sells them for only 12 rmb a jin (about 1 pound).

Now, America isn't the only country that adores fried Chinese food. In Japan, diners go wild for karaage, Chinese-style fried chicken. According to Maki from Just Hungry, "the word kara refers to China, meaning that this method of preparing chicken originated in Chinese cooking (age means deep-fried)". Like the Chinese, the Japanese also marinate their chicken with ginger "to get rid of any gaminess". (Check out Maki's recipe.)

If biting into the crispy shell of General Tso's chicken releases pent-up sugar, biting into karaage will unleash a dark and brooding mix of soy sauce and sake. Dark meat, skin on, is best. And this is a dish that begs to be washed down with cold sake or beer.

Travelers to Shanghai sometimes expect to find a vibrant street food scene that's on par with that of Bangkok, Singapore, Chengdu, and other tropical or subtropical Asian cities. But because of a northern-ish climate (despite the Beijing tendency to think of Shanghai as "the south") and a culture that prefers indoor eating, good street food is hard to find. Zhongshan Lu has a few lamb skewer vendors, but is mainly a tourist trap for shopping and glitzy lights. Yuyuan Bazaar, home of the over-hyped Nanxiang soup dumplings, is just a tourist trap, period.

One place is Shanghai that locals actually frequent is the Muslim market in northern Jing'an, held only on Fridays after prayer service at the Huxi mosque. Starting around 11am, vendors set up their stands of cooked lamb, nan, dried nuts and fruit, and Arabic DVDs. Not to disparage Han ethnic culture, but sometimes it's nice to plant myself in a spot where the locals don't look or speak like the 1.3 billion majority.

I first fell in love with mochi in college. At Trader Joe's, a 10 minute drive away, there was an addictive mochi ice cream that brought me back week after week. I loved the mind-tingling coldness of each bite. I loved the sweet glutinous rice that stuck to my teeth and forced me to run for floss afterward. I even sucked up the cost of $3.99 for a box of 4 tiny pieces, which put a dent in which my minimum wage earnings as a library circ assistant. When I told my Hawaiian friend Elaine about my new obsession, she immediately said, "I'll teach you how to make real mochi."

Hawaiian butter mochi, most likely adapted from Filipino bibingka, is the sinful cousin of the dryer, perfectly-shaped Japanese mochi. The following Saturday, Elaine brought over with a box of mochiko, sweet rice flour. (That she hauled boxes of special mochi flour from Hawaii to Boston for school didn't seem strange at the time.) We spent the day making batch upon batch of the most decadent mochi I had ever tasted. It had a sheen that screamed heart attack, but a taste that dared you to stop after one piece. 

I haven't found butter mochi in Shanghai yet, but the Japanese-owned Mochi Sweets has outlets all around town. They're sold cold, and the salesgirls recommend you leave them at room temperature for 15 minutes before eating. So far, the green tea, peach, and dark chocolate are my favoritess, but the shops also have some interesting picks: sakura cherry blossom, pumpkin, and blueberry. And the pumpkin flavor always seems to be discounted for 3 rmb.

It is almost perverse how much I crave a good xiaolongbao. There are few moments more highly anticipated than seeing my order slowing coming from the kitchen to my table, in a stack of steaming baskets. The dumplings are all beautifully pleated at first, enticing but prim. But when picked up by chopsticks, they become so bulging with savory broth, held back by so thin of a wrapper, that they are begging for you to unleash their juicy insides.

That said, there are few things more frustrating than xiaolongbao that don't satisfy.

If I were in Taipei there is no question that I would make a beeline to is the flagship Din Tai Fung, hailed by many afficionados as the xiaolongbao mecca. But since I'm in Shanghai, I decided to try out the Din Tai Fung at Xintiandi, expecting it to be at least as good as Beijing's Shin Kong Place branch. This is, after all, the city that claims xiaolongbao as a native dish.

I have eaten Hong Kong-style French toast many times before, but not this variation.

In Hong Kong, French toast can range in thickness from regular sliced bread to John Grisham paperback. Usually it's topped with butter, peanut butter or sweetened condensed milk, or all three. And sometimes pork floss. And every once in a while, you come across bread on steroids, like the one I ordered yesterday at Lisboa, a Macanese restaurant in Shanghai.

It was a block about half the size of your average loaf, overloaded with black sesame and with specks of bacon. The top was buttered, slit in Tic-Tac-Toe fashion, and browned to the crispness that I liked. And it came with a trio of dipping sauces: honey, sweetened condensed milk, and melty vanilla ice cream. 

Xiaolongbao, those glorious steamed dumplings with a meat and soup filling, have migrated far beyond Shanghai and gained a cult following. Meanwhile, another obsession-worthy Shanghainese specialty has remained a local secret.

Shengjian bao, they call it here. Think of it as a fried version of xiaolongbao. Well, a bun, really. A soup bun that is pan-fried until the bottoms are just crisp and the sesame seeds and chives on top meld into the crunchy casing.

When I come to Shanghai I get my shengjian bao from two places. One is in the French Concession, a 3-minute walk from where i usually stay. The baozi aren't spectacular, but they're great for a cheap lunch or hunger fix. The other is the venerable and endearingly misspelled Yang's Fry-Dumpling, just north of People's Square and right across the street from another cheap-eats institution. If you eat shengjian bao only once in Shanghai (or twice, or thrice), do so at Yang's.

Chowing down on shengjian bao is trickier than on xiaolongbao. First,the thick crunchy casing is such a good insulator that the soup is still piping hot 10 minutes after you sit down. Burnt tongues are common, but worth dealing with.

Over the weekend, Jacob and I stayed at a friend's lane house in Shanghai's French Concession. It's a live-work space that is occupied by a web company, and all the techies is get their caffeine and sugar fixes from Paul, a French bakery that opened in the city last year. (I'm sure in Paris Paul is considered average, but in Shanghai a Western bakery can't be found on every corner.) Every morning we were in Shanghai one of us would make a Paul run, and come back with croissants, rolls, etc.

On Saturday, just as I was about to step out to meet my cousin for a soup dumpling lunch, J came through the door with two enormous bags. One was from Paul and was filled with Danishes, doughnuts, olive rolls, and a ham sandwich on baguette. The other was from Mr. Donut; it had a selection of large and mini doughnuts, and a little cardboard caddy of macarons.

"I didn't know Mister Donut made macarons," I said.

J shrugged. "They were 7 kuai. It's worth a try."

I just got back from a long weekend in Shanghai, where I fit in as much good eating as I could in 4 days. One place that had been on my must-visit list for a looooong time was Jia Jia Tang Bao, reportedly one of the best places for xiaolongbao (soup dumplings) in Shanghai. And since Shanghai claims xiaolongbao as a native food (others would argue that it orginated from surrounded towns), some afficionados think Jia Jia Tang Bao has some of the best in the world.

The ideal xiaolongbao, for the uninitiated, should have very thin, almost translucent skin, and equal parts soup and filling inside. I dream about these dumplings, and have tried so many poor versions that I want to cry every time. Often the skin is too think, sometimes there's not enough soup. When you are eating a perfect xiaolongbao, you should be worried about your clothes getting soup stains from a squirty dumpling.