Joke: A blonde and a brunette fall off a cliff. Who hits the ground first?
Answer: The brunette, the blonde got lost on the way.

So while Queen Cheesie from Cheeserland.com was in Shanghai, we decided to visit Shanghai zoo. In solidarity with the lions and giraffes, she also decided to go blonde. That had its advantages - (she looked great, we (she) got asked for our (her) autograph(s)) and its disadvantages - she instantly became terrible at both remembering directions and basic decision making.

This is a vulture. It’s about as big as me, but can fly. That makes me feel a bit inadequate, but then I just taunted him with the fact that he lives in a cage and I don’t.

This is a red panda. They’re small, like 6 year old kid size. Or 4 year old kid. And if you put a cape over its eyes and cut eye holes, you’ve got an EWOK!

The DA XIONG MAO aka GIANT PANDA! They were pretty uninspiring (lazy, stupid animals that they are), but I was quite interested in the sign next to the enclosure: ‘No Flaping Glass’. Nearest action that I think you shouldn’t be doing near the glass is fapping, but i’m pretty sure nobody would put their piece near these fatboys unless they wanted it chewed off (come to think of it…).

TIGER UPPERCUT!

Niu Nai was well up for striding over and starting a fight, until he realised that his stride is about 3cm and he’d never be able to get out again.

What’s more happierer than a pig in shit? Two pigs in shiiiiiiiiiiiiit!

I heard this is a Malaysian bear! Lazy thing! Stop playing dead! Get up!

PLEASE DO NOT SKIN LEOPARD (I can feel like I’m going to regret mentioning that)…

Joke: How do you make a cat go WOOF?
Answer: Put it in a fire.

WOOF! WOOF! Say WOOF you dumb dog.

It’s a zebra, it looks like a painted horse. Actually, it’s China…it could be a painted horse.

Hey look it’s pedo-giraffe! STOP KISSING YOUR DAUGHTER WEIRDO!

I am officially taller than a giraffe. Make of that what you will.

Fat, dirty, trunk like BLAMMO…Elephants rule.

LUNCHTIME! What better to have when surrounded by animals but…animals! On sticks! Yummy here’s a duck! Looks great!

Ok actually it looks rough as hell.

Ringo didn’t seem to fancy it right away…but she soon tucked in YOU MARK MY WORDS

In the wild, animals have to survive by the code of the jungle. Kill or be killed. With that in mind, we fed a chicken drumstick to this lamb.

The word for pig in Mandarin is ‘zhu’ (pronounced ‘Jew’). I can’t think of anything amusing about this.

Niu Nai’s favourite part of the trip…Rabbit world!

It looks just like the penguin enclosure in the (nearly) Oscar winning movie - Good Luck Chuck!

Jump in boys! The water’s hot! No seriously. Jump in or it’s the stick.

And finally…what trip to the zoo is complete without a wedding? Answer: most.

Which animal is YOUR favourite?! TELL ME OR I KILL A PUPPY!

I don’t like reviews. Wait, let me rephrase that…I don’t like other people’s reviews. As some (about 3) of you will know, I used to review ‘The O.C.’ when it was on TV. I would sit with my laptop on my knee and type out exactly what was happening in the show, as I watched it. I was really proud of the fact that I could type roughly 1500 words during the 45 minute programme, and I worked out that after having reviewed fifteen episodes of this historic drama, I had surpassed my literary output as a student of French with Italian at University.

Anyway, I digress. So we went to the Matsuri123 Food Stadium in Shanghai. You don’t believe that a place could have such a cool name? BELIEVE IT! It’s on the sign.

So the concept of this place is in the name: it’s a stadium of food. Usually, stadiums (screw you stadia disciples) have something going on in the middle, like a football match or maybe a rock concert…well this one just has food. All sorts of food.

To say that the food choice in the Matsuri123 stadium is comprehensive would be a lie, however, the selection is huge. Wait, I’m digressing again…let’s start at the beginning.

The place looks exactly what I think it would look like if I were kidnapped by Japanese Akira-bred aliens…weird shapes everywhere, a mixture of bright lights and colours and shapes. On the way in to the restaurant (you pay the 199rmb ‘all you can eat all you can drink’ fee before you enter…which just adds to the impression that you’re heading into Alton Towers on a sunny September day) is a ‘time tunnel’-esque chamber, surrounded by TVs showing a Japanese man sitting playing Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’ on accoustic guitar. The Alien-style sliding door then opens to reveal…a Japanese man sitting playing Eric Clapton’s ‘Layla’ on accoustic guitar, inside the restaurant. Ok, you’ve got my attention.

So now, find a table.

There are booths dotted seemingly at random around the stadium (it still feels funny to write ’stadium’ when describing this place, but then maybe it felt strange when people first wrote ‘heterosexual’ near Tom Cruise’s name after seeing Top Gun, so I’ll try to let it go…), and exist either as private dining rooms or out in the open. We chose the latter as we wanted to stare drunkenly at any hot girls we saw, in the vain hope that they would misinterpret our evil intentions as a ‘look of honesty’, come over and offer us their phone numbers. They didn’t.

So, table chosen, time to get in the game. There were around 20 different ‘booths’ in the stadium, each offering a different type of food. Here is what I remember off-hand:

Dry noodles
Soup noodles
Stir fried food

Teppenyaki style grilled meat
Ice cream

Fruit

Alcohol (I swear I just typed ‘Alcogol’…)

Sushi (conveyor belt)

Sashimi

Cutlets (Is that the right word? Basically breadcrumbed meat)

Little cakes
Shellfish
English stuff (Roast beef and spuds anyone?!)

Pizza
Pasta
Ricey things

Ok I can’t remember any more, but you get the impression: If you like food, then they’ve got you covered.

So now’s the time - walk around and take whatever you want. Just take it. It’s all included in the 199rmb price tag. I actually felt like a child who’s been given an amazingly large amount of money (when I was young that amounts to around £20) and been introduced to the biggest and best grotto (that means Greens toyshop in Gainsborough) and let loose to pick up as he wanted.

I made a bee-line to the teppenyaki griller! FILLET STEAK PLEASE! FILLET STEAK PLEASE! No problem. Over to the sashimi…TUNA PLEASE! TUNA PLEASE! Here you go Sir.

Crap…too much choice. I love pork cutlet. I love chicken cutlet. Do I order one? Both? What if I fill up on cutlet and have no room for more steak? Do I like steak more than cutlet? I think I do…but have I ever really ranked the foods I like in order of preference? Shoudn’t I try something new? Wait…NO! Of course not! I should have what I want! But I have what I want every day…branch out! Grab the crab legs! The cra…WTF?! Ok they do look pretty sweet…wait a second who are you? I’m inside you.

I’m your mind. Have I gone schizophrenic?! No of course not! Don’t worry mate! Oh gawd….

### Blackout ###

When I came round, I was back at my table, with a really nice selection of food:

Just as I was about to tuck in, the waitress arrived. The food looked and smelled great, but how were they going to handle us with the booze? Perfectly, that’s how!

Waitress: ‘Cocktail menu Sir?’
Me: ‘Oh hellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll yeah’

Gin, tonic and orange. I don’t know what its name is in the cocktail world, but I’m going to name it the ‘MASTABLASTA’(tm Falco).

Crisp, strong, free (well, included in the price of entry) and a great compliment to the plum wine, beer and sake shots that we’d also started. This was a marathon, and I was Paula Radcliffe (without the pissing in the street).

After finishing Round 1, it was right back to the booths for more. The steak had been tender and delicious, the cutlet (I shared one of each with the rest of the table) was fantastic, the tempura prawns were a bit too batter-y (I added a hyphen (or is it a dash?) because I don’t think you can use the phrase ‘ too battery’ and make people understand that you mean ‘with excess batter’) and all of the other stuff was just great too.

I was drunk on food (and alcohol). I ordered another double serving of fillet steak, salmon, more sashimi, more cutlets(!), some sushi…and the frequent breaks between ‘courses’ meant that I was not prematurely filling up as I often do when eating out. I didn’t feel the ‘pressure’ of finishing my plates, which meant that I was finishing plate after plate after plate!

When I thought I had finished, my body would send me a message saying ‘what about that melon I saw over there?’ or ‘I could kill for a bit of ice-cream!’. So I obliged…I obeyed my master. I was a drone to eating…and I have seldom been happier during or after a meal. Or fatter.

Since only about 5 people will actually make it to the bottom here, I thought I’d put this awesome pic of masks on the wall inside Matsuri 123! GRTZ2UM8!

Bodean’s is my favourite restaurant in London. It offers every ingredient in my perfect meal mix…meat, cold beer and American sports. Seriously, what else could possibly improve on that? (Answer: Strippers)

So there have been some changes since last I visited: new menu items, new serving styles and I reckon they’ve opened a couple more restaurants across town. Business must be good!

I went for the KC Brisket Special, which is beef brisket (ok I admit that I thought ‘brisket’ was a reference to how it is cooked or something, but Wikipedia tells me that it’s actually a cut):

So they cook it really slowly in marinade or something…and it turns out great! So there’s a load of that, plus onion rings and cheese inside a big ass bun:

It was served in a basket as opposed to the big tray which I was expecting, and i’m not sure if I’m just resistant to change or I was genuinely disappointed to see it. It definitely didn’t feel like there was enough space to spread out the food (which I like to do there). Ok this is starting to sound a bit weird…CLOSE UP:

It was god damn amazing. One of the best bits of it was that it came ‘naked’ (without sauce), so I was able to put a bit of BBQ on it without drowning it (as they sometimes do).

J and Fiona had a full rack of ribs each (I think it’s a Deloitte thing). As I’m not a professional at eating ribs, I’ll hand over to J for his guide to ribbing:

Step 1 - Receive order

Step 2 - Preparation

Step 3 - Dexter-style OCD bone cleaning

Thankfully nobody started snapping the bones and eating the marrow, and being that I was with a Finn and a Hong-Kongolese, I think that was pretty fortunate…

Look, I’m not obsessed with breakfast…in fact I hardly ever have it…but I just couldn’t resist today. A traditional English breakfast:

Cheerios and tea…

..

..

and a Krispy Kreme muahhahaha

Many people ask me how to order McDonald’s delivery in Shanghai - and I’ve been taking advantage of this superb service for the last four months, but I keep losing the telephone number (well to be truthful, I keep losing my phone, which has the number in it…). With this in mind, I am putting simple steps here so that wherever I am I will be able to find my ordering instructions:

Step 1
Call 4008-517-517 from your home phone or mobile

Step 2
Press ‘2′ for English (or press ‘1′ for Chinese)

Step 3
If this is your first time calling, you need to register your address with them. So just tell them your address (they are speaking English after all). If it’s not your first time, they will tell you your phone number and address before proceeding to Step 4…

Step 4
Order your Big Mac, McChicken sandwich or whatever other delicious food that you want!

That’s it! They will deliver it in between 30-45mins and it’s (usually) warm-hot. Delivery charge is 7rmb. The service is 24 hours a day and follows the ‘breakfast menu / daytime menu’ times of the normal McDonald’s (I don’t know what they are as I don’t tend to wake up before ‘daytime menu’ begins :E ).

See also: How to order KFC delivery in Shanghai!