Exotic Chinese restaurant wins over the anime community -- and intrepid others

Those who lament the fact they never got a chance to visit Kowloon's Walled City should find satisfaction within the claustrophobic, windowless environs of Shanghai Xiaochi.

An eight-minute walk from Shinjuku Station's East exit, in a warren of back alleys off a side street in notorious Kabukicho, the cramped two-room interior of the Chinese restaurant is jammed with Chinese posters, trinkets and cheap plastic furniture. The exotic Chinese food is superb, but it's the tricky-to-find location and authentic ambience that has made Shanghai Xiaochi legendary with anime and manga artists, who have made the hole-in-the-wall eatery a see-and-be-seen stop for industry types.

The menu is a multi-page epic. All of the Chinese standards are here, from stir fries to dumplings to hot pots, with endless combinations of vegetable and meat dishes available. The culinary star is a steamed bread called 'mushi pan', which is ordered instead of rice and used to soak up the juices from Shanghai Xiaochi's soupy dishes. Think nikuman dumplings minus the niku filling.

In addition to the usual fare, Shanghai Xiaochi offers a wide variety of what are euphemistically referred to in Japan as 'stamina' foods -- frog meat, bull penis and a variety of insects and scorpion. The scorpion is nearly palatable, tasting like deep-fried shrimp with the shell on, though the bitter aftertaste of the innards is something only a truly adventurous eater would linger over twice.

Shanghai Xiaochi: Kabukicho 1-3-10, Shinjuku-ku, tel. 03 3232 5909, 6pm-5am weekdays, 6pm-2am Sundays and public holidays

Japanese language map to Shanghai Xiaochi: http://shanghai-xiaochi.com/i_access.html