When I asked the owner of 发财粉 what inspired him to pair pungent, Guangxi-style rice noodles with champagne by the glass, he just smiled and said, "Because Shanghai." Right on.
You can smell this place from across the street – and on your clothes for the rest of the night after you eat there. Fa Cai Fen, aka "Get Rich Fen", aka "Faat Choi Fan & Champagne", is a tiny, trending spot near the corner of Panyu Lu and Fahuazhen Lu, right next to Hidden Thai Bistro. The funk has proven popular – it took me three visits to finally get a seat at the counter (though it's less busy now).
The menu is refreshingly simple: bowls of fen, add-on plates of offal, meat, and seafood, and Champagne by the glass. Toppings range from pig blood, brisket, and premium beef cuts to pig diaphragm, pig aorta, pig palate, and seafood they say is flown in from Japan. Four Champagnes are available by the glass (58–98rmb), alongside a rosé. If that's not your thing, there are little cartons of mung bean soup for 5rmb. The space is spartan: a counter for eight, two small tables tucked into the corner, and a Bluetooth speaker spinning Canto classics.
This is definitely some advanced Chinese eating. They lean into lesser-known cuts and unusual textures, mixing chewy pig aorta, crunchy pork, silky blood curd, tender diaphragm, and even Hokkaido sea worms into the same bowl and topping it with fragrant perilla leaves. Surprisingly, despite all the offal, it never really tastes livery or overly "organ-y." It's all about texture.
The broth is still funky though. This is laoyoufen, the Nanning cousin of Liuzhou's famously loud luosifen. Laoyoufen has that same fermented bamboo aroma, but the broth is based on aromatics rather than river snails. Still, it's bold, assertive, and probably not for everyone, kind of like durian. There's gotta be at least twenty ingredients in each bowl, and they make almost everything in-house. It does lean salty; a bowl of rice would have been great, but that's not on the menu. If all that sounds like a bit much, there are more approachable bowls topped with brisket or tiger prawns, and they can do a vegetarian version for 38rmb.
Somehow it all makes sense, pairing some challenging street food with a symbol of luxury, mixing east and west, playing with contrast, and pulling influences from all over and remixing them freely - maybe that's what he meant by "Because Shanghai."
