There’s a new restaurant in town that says it’s doing traditional Yunnan street food, just like its owners (Niu Yun from Yunnan and Lei Yu from Guizhou) used to have as kids. It’s the kind of place that food bloggers and people who equate eating food outside of their comfort zones with "adventure" go ape shit for.
It’s called Slurp!, and it’s taken up the space where Fat Mama used to be, right around the Changping Lu metro station.
The menu is pretty sparse: four types of mains, six sides, two desserts and a longer selection of soft drinks, coffee, wine and cocktails.
The focus is on noodles, so for a first visit to Slurp, sticking with the traditional Yunnan rice noodles, or mixian, would probably be the best bet. The process of making mixian is a bit tricky, and requires fermentation of its base—made out of rice—to make properly. When done right, the noodles come out chewy yet firm—something akin to al dente—and have a really nice and distinctive fragrance to them.
Slurp also does er si, which is a thicker cut rice noodle, so you can choose which noodle you want to use for your soup base.
Here, they serve Kunming-style xiao guo mixian (36rmb), a classic noodle dish from Yunnan’s capital city. The broth is flavored with a heavy dose of chili peppers, garlic and preserved vegetables. Slurp! does a really satisfying version of it—much spicier than other bowls I’ve had at other Yunnan restaurants around town, plus a nice kick of sourness from those preserved vegetables. Even then, it is a bit salty for my liking, though apparently Yunnan natives like their food on the saltier side. Understandable, since preserved meats and vegetables play a big role in home-cooked food in that region.
For those who want noodles without the heat, the slow-cooked herbal chicken soup (36rmb) is a good alternative. With this one, Slurp’s toned down the in-your-face flavors and salt, making a really simple, rich chicken broth that has just a hint of fragrant herbs.
They’re also doing a douhua mixian (29rmb), a non-soupy dish topped with soft tofu, sprouts, leeks and a meat sauce, and stir-fried rice with Yunnan ham, potatoes and peas (36rmb).
The side dishes are solid, too. The Yunnan street fries (15rmb), chunks of deep-fried potatoes topped with a mixture of Guizhou chili powder, chopped celery, cilantro and crushed peanuts, is definitely one to try. The pan-fried goat cheese topped with Yunnan rose jam (25rmb) is also great, though for something that’s really special, the shao er kuai (15rmb), a grilled rice cake stuffed with preserved vegetables, blanched carrots and bean sprouts, is a dish that I haven’t seen in any other Yunnan place in Shanghai.
And if you really want to make it a full-on Yunnan meal, then Slurp’s got Dali beer (19rmb), tamarind juice (15rmb) and mugua shui (15rmb), a drink made out of papaya seed, brown sugar and rose jam. Apparently most of the ingredients that are used in Slurp’s recipes are brought over directly from Yunnan, even the brown sugar.
Anyway, there’s a handful of the city’s Yunnan restaurants—Southern Barbarian, Lotus Eatery, Mia’s Yunan Kitchen, or, Lost Heaven if you’re fancy—that get a lot of play. They’re sort of the default options when it comes time to impress out-of-towners or recent transplants. Slurp’s got that trendy factor down too, but since it’s got a more focused menu and smaller digs, it's probably better for something a bit more intimate.
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