
Art School Restaurant: Fine (in both senses of the word) Dining in Liverpool
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Shanghai, China: Amazing Vegan Food, Plus My Favorite Buffet Ever
Oh, and if you came here from the previous post just to find out what toon bags are, that’s at the last section, but why would you want to skip all this food before that? Do you SEE how delicious it is? I mean you can’t see deliciousness but just look how good. Dammit I love Shanghai’s food!
Speaking of, before we get to the food:
Because they were takeout containered, the pictures are even less appetizing than my usual ones, and I cannot in good faith share what they looked like outside the restaurant’s preferred plating ideals. You don’t want to see what the beige quinoa fritters looked like in their beige container in the beige-ifying light of our hotel room the next day. Nor do you want to see the salad stuffed into a container that was just too small for its grand size. Both were very good though, and I would love to eat at P&W and try other things. They had a great sounding menu, and I really enjoyed the things I got. They also sent a packet of pita bread in my to-go bag! I guess it came with the patties or the salad, which is awesome. Yippee for bread (so rare in China! I haven’t had bread in so long because most of the bread here is eggy or milky)!
Okay, onto the more important stuff, our two spectacular dinners. First, we went to a fancy (we didn’t know it would be fancy!) vegetarian restaurant with wonderful reviews called Vegetarian Life Style. I like that the front says life style as two different words because I like to think they mean vegetarian life AND vegetarian style, because we are so stylish. I mean just check out the style section of this blog which I literally have not updated in four years lolol. Maybe I will do that soon and write about my extraordinarily unfashionable travel clothes. ANYWAY, the restaurant. It was PACKED and in a very swanky neighborhood, JiangNing, so that was great to see. We weren’t as hungry as we usually are so we didn’t order as much as we usually do, which is a DAMN DIRTY SHAME.
Well, maybe my second stop.
I was not prepared for how beautiful everything about this place was. It was so fancy (we were, again, not dressed appropriately for our tastes but a) no one cared and b) we don’t have nice clothes on us). And the buffet went on FOR MILES. I have never seen such an enormous, gorgeous buffet. Everything was clearly marked with what had egg and what had milk (most of the desserts, which I expected, but not much of the actual food!). I have never eaten so much in my life but still wanted more. Everything was at least good, most things were great, and some was spectacular. Because it’s a ginormous buffet with literally 540030 different dishes, I have no idea what I ate and what’s in these pictures I’m about to send your way, but know that it was wonderful and I can’t wait to go back.

New Orleans Travel Guide: Who Dat?
This is not Disney World! I’ve never been there.
My boyfriend I mean my fiance I mean my husband! and I finally made it to New Orleans! As some of you know, we were supposed to go to the Big Easy Apple Patch in January, but that ridiculously crazy ice storm back in January 2014 that destroyed Atlanta and Mississippi also closed all roads leading into NOLA. Here’s a really scary picture we took as we “drove” (slowly glided) through the streets of ice in Brookhaven, Mississippi as we tried to find shelter. Petrifying.
Anyway! We had scoured TripAdvisor for the past few months to make sure that our hotel choice, the Bourbon Orleans right in the heart of the French Quarter, was a good one. It seemed like a good fit: perfect location, had a pool (that we didn’t use), room looked swanky. And, the most important, it had water and unsweetened tea dispensers in the lobby all day and night!
Our wraparound balcony could have hosted a party for the entire town! We didn’t spend much time out there, unfortunately, because hot air rises. August in New Orleans is hella hot! The locals we talked to were like, yeah we take 4 showers a day. Ahh!
After just a few hours in the city, we realized the ubiquity of ‘Who Dat’. I mean, I knew maybe that it was a thing they said about the New Orleans Saints, but apparently it’s more than that. People just say Who Dat about everything. Like this sign: |
We strolled a bit so I could regain consciousness, but strolling around aimlessly is the best thing to do in a new city anyway! You get a feel for it – and you learn how to get to your hotel. Once I recovered, we went to CVS for some supplies and saw this hilarious lineup of goods:
After that, we checked out the inside of the St. Louis Cathedral instead of just looking at it from our sick balcony. It was a lovely church but the view from the outside, with its fantastic green space in front, is better. I mean once you’ve seen the Vatican you are kind of ruined for regular churches.
We also walked through Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme (not just a tv show), which apparently you aren’t supposed to visit at night, or alone. This park is the home of Congo Square, the place where slaves would congregate on Sundays, their day off, and play music and dance.
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The saxophone player was the most impressive I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve ever really paid attention to the instrument before, no matter how hard Duke Silver tries to sway me. Every bit he played felt like a spotlight solo. Just a fantastic performance that made me forget how late I was up. This was the musical highlight of my week, and the cover was only $5! If you are ever in NOLA, I am pretty sure that Glen and his band play at d.b.a. every Monday.
“Do you see how cool this is!”
Sonofagun, we’ll have big fun on the bayou
ANYWAY, there were some bright spots on the tour, including the fact that the stories of Bre’r Rabbit came from this plantation, from the slaves who created the stories to entertain and teach the children. They also had these SUPER ridiculous books in the gift shop. I still can’t get over them:
Down the road from Laura is the plantation used to film “12 Years A Slave”! How crazy! It wasn’t open for visitation before the movie, but now it is. We drove by and took a picture.