To generate interest with local tastemakers, FoodDigger has hosted several wine dinners around L.A. County. On December 10, I attended a FoodDigger dinner at Shibucho with three of the site’s founders – Marshal, Brian and Will. On Wednesday night, several bloggers were invited to Giang Nan, one of the better Shanghai-style restaurants in the Shanghai-glutted San Gabriel Valley, where Fooddigger paired Spanish wines with Shanghainese classics. We experienced nine wines and 16 dishes during a memorable meal.

The roundtable featured several FoodDigger representatives, plus Javier of Teenage Glutster, Kevin of KevinEats, H.C. of L.A. and O.C. Foodventures, Andrea Hoffman (The Foodie Traveler) and Mike of Right Way to Eat!

We started with a bottle of rich Lustau Solera Reserva Fine Sherry Wine.

Our first bites: firm slices of cold pork designed for dipping in dishes of vinegar and ginger.

Cross sections of grass carp, bone and all, were soaked in a sweet marinade that created the impression of “smoke.” The cool fish was pretty good when I wasn’t dodging bones, though some sections were soggy.

Crisp stalks of celery were simple but fresh and satisfying.

Kevin brought a bottle of Heredad Brut Reserva Cava, saying, “I always like to start with bubbles.” I already drank the Sherry, but was happy to hit reboot for a Cava so crisp.

We shared baskets of fried yellow croaker. The fish wasn’t greasy at all, and came coated with thin, crisp batter flecked with seaweed. This was vastly superior to mushy fish & chips especially when dipped in salt.

We devoured a mound of minced snow cabbage, edamame and bean curd sheets. The dish was clumpy compared with the revelatory version I ate at Jai Yunin San Francisco and wasn’t a highlight.

We learned that Vinos Finos doesn’t release their wine until its at least 10 years old. We received pours from a bottle of 1996 Vinos Finos de Rioja – Viña Gravonia.

Tea smoked shrimp amounted to shrimp sautéed with tea leaves, and there weren’t many leaves at that, but it was still a pretty good dish, mainly because the shrimp were plump.

We received a plate of greens similar to ong choy, but with flat shoots. They were delicious. Simply sautéed Chinese vegetables can be excellent, especially knowing we’d see richer dishes toward the back-end of the meal.

Whole tilapia was blanketed in a brown sauce combining vinegar, sugar and soy. The flavor was simultaneously sweet, salty and sour. Unfortunately, the texture of the fish was too mushy.

We shared bottles of 1999 Vinos Finos de Rioja - Viña Bosconia - plus 2006 Don Olegario Albariño Rias Bavcas. The Albariño was probably my favorite wine of the night, a fairly sweet wine similar to Riesling, but dry enough to deliver balance.

One of the night’s most popular dishes involved oversized pork meatballs with salted duck egg yolk cores. The yolk was intensely salty and gritty, but worked pretty well with the juicy pork and spinach.

Cuts of young luffa (green sponge) with crab roe were firm and meaty like a squash. Apparently older luffa becomes more bitter.

Several people at the table were mocking the “inauthentic” BBQ pork spare ribs, but that didn’t stop them from devouring the sweet, bony nubs. I personally found the meat too fatty and one-note.

The bottle of 2001 Rioja Viña Saturna had pretty good balance and a nice mineral tang that played well against the night’s showcase dish: the pork pump.

The piece de resistance, the pork pump, was speared with a knife and served in brown sauce with spinach. This was probably the driest pump I’ve eaten, but even dry pork shank is still fairly satisfying.

The shank is normally shrouded in at least an inch of hog fat, which keeps the meat moist. Not in this case. The sauce formed a nice crust on the outside, but the interior was dry.

More hardcore wine aficionados at the table were raving about the bottle of 1995 Vega Sicilia Unico. It was clearly a good wine, with a tiny bit of spice that heightened the flavor of the pork, and vice versa.

Xiao Long Bao - Shanghai-style steamed pork dumplings - were served with a dish of vinegar and ginger, which is designed to cut the richness of the pork meat and juice. The skins were too thick, but the pure pork flavor was good.

It was a simple dish, but I really enjoyed the sautéed bamboo shoots with celery.

Rice cakes with pork and minced greens were clean-tasting, and the cakes had good bite to them, but I prefer other versions in the SGV that stir-fry their cakes with soy sauce, which adds a smoky flavor and some caramelization.

Balls of rice cake filled with gritty sesame arrived swimming in rice wine with strands of egg, rice, and jujubes (date’s red cousin). The massive bowl was showered with osmanthus, which added a floral aroma and flavor. Several people at the table were already familiar with this dish, and I’m glad they introduced it to me.

At this point, I was pretty well satisfied, but the FoodDigger founders decided to uncork one last wine. Not only didn’t the 2002 Volnay Burgundy fit with the Spanish theme, it left a bad taste in my mouth due to the extreme tannins.

To conclude the meal, one of the FoodDigger organizers said their site is dedicated to building a network of passionate foodies, and “We’re really about connecting people with similar tastes.” On this night, not every dish was great, but Giang Nan left an overall good impression, and it was fun to share dinner (and wines) with other people who take food so seriously.

Related Posts

1. Yi Mei Chinese Pastries – Monterey Park, CA – April 28, 2009
2. Noodle House – Monterey Park, CA – Wednesday, July 16, 2008
3. Cook’s Tortas - Monterey Park, CA - May 9, 2008
4. Lu’s Garden – San Gabriel, CA – February 5 & 26, 2010
5. On Dal 2 – Los Angeles, CA – February 7, 2009

1. Pingback: park » Blog Archive » Food GPS » Blog Archive » Giang Nan (FoodDigger Dinner) – Monterey … on February 15, 2009

2 Comments

1. foodmarathon, February 16, 2009:

   When do I get invited to one of these FoodDigger meals?

2. Joshua Lurie, February 16, 2009:

   You should definitely be in their rotation. Different bloggers are invited to each meal.

This entry is filed under California, Chinese, Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley, Southern California.