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The Mobile Age: Part 3
Azul Tapas Lounge & Viva New World Cuisine is down in the French Concession on Dongping Lu. And while I’ve only been in the city 24 groggy hours, Shanghai delivers a moment of insight here. The mix of people contributes to the effect. Our host, Peruvian-Canadian Eduardo Vargas, has invited a dozen of us this evening to taste-test new Azul Viva dishes, and the Condé Nast Shanghai Restaurateur of the Year in 2006 is quizzing us after each bite: frogs’ legs with chili mayo, thinly sliced beef filet with horseradish and crisp onion, focaccia with dipping oils, another beef dish with chimichurri. Cameron Bertalli is pouring a pinot noir from Penbro Estate, his family’s vineyard in the Yea Valley, north of Melbourne. You wouldn’t necessarily think such a rootsy vintage would fit the bill – Bertalli’s great-great-grandfather, Guiseppe, first planted vines in Australia in 1860 after emigrating from Italy – but somehow it meshes with the flavours perfectly. Table volume rises as the dishes and the wine go around. Yvonne, a Shanghainese, is talking about her English boyfriend to the American chef of a diner-style restaurant over in Xintiandi. (Pork roast, meatloaf, family-size platters.) An ad guy at the end of the table is on the phone. “The smartest local brands are building a base here first before going international,” he’s telling someone. “How’re sales?” I ask Bertalli, who has just returned from Changzhou, where he was filling an order for the Iranian owners of a pizza chain. Not bad, he says, although there are challenges selling their kind of product here. Penbro is handmade on an eco-sustainable 1,500-acre farm that irrigates with rainwater. Most of their new Chinese customers have only used wine previously as a shooter after wedding toasts. Sprite and chardonnay. Coke and cabernet. “There’s some education involved.” His comment throws light on the gathering. I had first thought of us sitting down to dine here together – with our intensely varied backgrounds, interests and plans – merely as a pinnacle expression of internationalism, that blending of the home and away experience that we referred to as globalism in our last essay in this series (see October’s enRoute). But as the flavours and ideas and accents wing in from all corners of the globe at once, it occurs to me that an entirely new experience of mobility is being illuminated here in the low and groovy light. Azul Viva is not global. A place of expat and local mingling, a hugely popular retreat from the insane bustle of booming Shanghai but neither of the city nor of any single place outside it. Azul Viva is post-global. We head out into the fragrant Shanghai night – cooking oil, exhaust and the layers of human scent – up around the corner past the U.S. consulate onto Fuxing Xi Lu to Lounge Tara 57, which is more like Vegas 1990. Pink gauzy curtains and curved red couches pulled into plush enclaves. Tequila sunrises and whiskey sours. The bartender pours the American chef absinthe, which glints green evil in the squat glass. Vargas gets a White Sand, silky and white in a martini glass. “Lychee,” he announces, swallowing a large mouthful, then leaning over to speak. “I’m very famous in Peru, but…” I sip my Scotch and listen, which is what you do with men like Vargas. Big guys, generous with their wisdom. He has 700 contacts in his PDA. Wine guys with cellars in old bomb shelters. Designers, architects and chefs. All the people converging here and turning this town into the new thing that it is becoming. All the people he wants me to meet. Which I appreciate. Although at that moment – cigarette smoke spindling up into the slate light, the music pulsing, that endless house of night – I am also able to appreciate Vargas and the whole scene around us as something rippling outward. A new experience of mobility, yes. But one that is steadily changing us all, wherever we live. “… if I were to do a Peruvian restaurant in Shanghai?” he continues, returning to a question I’d asked much earlier in the evening. “I’d do it only 5 percent Latino. Not just ceviche but a raw bar. Serve lots of vodka. Peruvian, but more. Peruvian food for the masses. And everyone would come.” |
