[Eat It]: Frog & Chips
By Christopher St Cavish, Sep 15th, 2009 | In Dining
We're wiping out frogs. So say the alarmist scientists in this Guardian article.
Hell, I wiped out a couple myself last night, and then a couple more for lunch today. I've got three buckets of the things sitting on my desk right now, their delicate little legs mixed up in a fiery Sichuan sauce with some vegetables.
Thanks, San Gu Bullfrog Restaurant. I'm glad to be a part of this.
When I'm in the mood to push my share of bullfrogs out of this world, and do my part to send the entire, many-specied frog family to the brink of collapse, it's where I go. San Gu. Say it fast enough, and, I like to think, it even sounds a bit like "Thank You."
My San Gu is this one, a few steps, and a whole world, away from the K. Wah Element Fresh. It's done up in premier grandmother style, with flower-patterned wallpaper and cutesy touches like frog statuettes and waitresses in green shirts with massive thighs and webbed feet. I think I spotted two of them snacking on a bag of flies during a lull in service.
It's a Sichuan restaurant, sort of. There's not a ton on the menu, but the notable dish, their signature dry-pot frog dish (ganguo niuwa) is dressed in Sichuan flavors: chili sauce, plenty of garlic and ginger, funky preserved soy beans.
I don't dip into the rest of the menu that much. It's not necessary. The frog dish is massive. This is it, below. You could fit your head, and a friend's head, inside the baby-blue ceramic dish, and have a private conversation. Yesterday, with a plate of stir-fried amaranth, a small dish of garlicky cucumbers, and a lovely side of vegetarian duck (su ya), it fed four people. Full up.
For people who aren't so comfortable with the frog, San Gu is a great place to start. There's a lot of non-amphibian things going on in that dish - plentiful sliced lotus root, beams of lettuce stem, leeks - and a great equalizer, something everyone can get into: potato chips. Oversized, crispy, home-made potato chips. There's enough in the dish to make a meal out of, if you must. With the bold, fiery flavors of the rest of the dish, and the elegant, understated frog, they form a crucial third leg of crunch to keep the whole thing balanced. It's great. And cheap. Six beers, the signature frog, and a couple of sides last night -- dinner for four -- ran 152rmb, or less than 40rmb each.
And both of those factors -- good, cheap -- draw a fun, mixed crowd that could be the table of middle-class dudes next to us, getting blind drunk and extinguishing half-smoked cigarettes in the mess of leftovers on the table, or the table next to them, the young cool kids with dreamy haircuts and dudes wearing oversized gold hoop earrings.
San Gu has three shops - one late-night store, slinging frog til 3am, and two more conservative ones, that close the doors around ten. See them all here. Get 'em while you can. You know, before they're all extinct.
San Gu Bullfrog, 3 Fenyang Lu, near Huaihai Zhong Lu. Map and stuff here.
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flyswatter, Sep 15th, 2009
I like this place, though the carpets and the photos on the walls always make me feel like I've walked into someone's loungeDer, Sep 15th, 2009
Ha, I was wondering when a review for this restaurant would come, its right down the street from my apartment. It looks like a hotel restaurant.ericst29, Sep 28th, 2009
It's one of my favourite dishes in Shanghai; all is in there, some nice side dishes available as well, together with Tsing dao bottles makes this always a great evening.ps: as a laowai be sure you do not have a long distance flight the next day....:)
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