St. Cuthbert With Prince Far I

There’s a familiar view outside.  People walking around.  Lots of those rent-em-if-you-need-em’ yellow bikes.  I came in this place on the corner of Huang He Road and Feng Yang Road.   It’s the next door down from the one I was at just the other night.  They have Shanghainese food and a large fish tank with two or three hundred palm sized Red Devil cichlids swimming about.  I seem to be drawn like a moth to this chow. It’s sweet and its filling and it isn’t particularly healthy.   But it’s what eating out in Shanghai feels like, or maybe once did. 

There is a brand spanking new place opened next to the apartment I’m staying at.  They have branded this “Holy High.”  They seem to work the “high” side of the bargain in their marketing, rather than the holy bit.  One can think of the many, many ways that this might have failed or led to incarceration or worse, in say Salt Lake City or, say, Isfahan.  But here, combining devotion, expletives, bong hits and altitude is merely nifty English marketing. 

Holy High serve up soup with sea salt, and quesadillas, sandwiches with things like black truffle paste as well as an extensive create your own salad bar.  Things change fast, here in town.  Just a few months back this very location was a place that featured bad local wine in an overdone, posh setting with heavy drapes.  Were they too early for the market?  Too late?  One wonders for a moment or two and then grows bored.  It certainly didn’t feel like a store front that anyone but their heart and soul nor even their elbow or shoulder very much into.

Holy High in contrast seems like it’s out to win. The confluence of curiosity, which weaves St. Cuthbert with Prince Far I has me, and I go me in to look around and see if it was where I wanted to eat this evening.  People were sitting in small groups in high chairs within the tight little space and I wasn’t sure it suited me.  The menu items were interesting and certainly spot- on for a lunch time meal.  But at dinner, it all felt a bit too quick and stainless.  I also didn’t want to sit a counter and make small talk with the fella who’d invariably be knocking my knees on the other side.  I’d already made up my mind to have another filling meal of Shanghainese food.  But ‘holy-high’ this just might do for my next lunch time excursion.

Wednesday, 6/07/17