Grandma's Kitchen 外婆家

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Grandma’s kitchen has such a good reputation that we’d actually heard about it before we even left England. (Thank you Jess, if you ever happen upon this blog!)
Unfortunately, the first time we planned to go was when I went down with laryngitis, so Tom went with a friend from work and they came back raving about it. There are branches all over the city, but the closest one to us is on Zhonge road at the junction with Tiyuchang, which is where we stopped for lunch today.
I have a problem at the moment – I can’t resist any kind of dumpling or xiao long bao - I seem to be addicted to dunking anything in vinegar. So of course the first thing on the list is the fried dumplings. Next I went for the pumpkin and lily root soup, and then Tom added spicy beef and vermicelli soup. Then on the spur of the moment I ordered green tea cakes (as you can probably tell from this unlikely combo we ordered in a bit of a rush!) Having said that it worked out surprisingly well – green tea cakes are now a new favourite. We have yet to identify the filling (probably some kind of red bean paste), but the outside is fried and crispy with a sesame seed rim. Yes it looks like something out of a discarded episode of star-trek, but honestly I ate four in a row without breaking for air.
Meanwhile Tom was trying to find a way of extracting the vermicelli from the soup, but was fighting a losing battle. If anyone has any good techniques, please share. They were so slippery and jelly-like, it seemed the only way was to drink the soup dry and then attack the rest with chopsticks.
Anyway, it definitely beat the pumpkin soup, which though looked awesome marbled with egg white, was just a little too bland for me.
Total bill including drinks was 59rmb.

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Photos

Pumpkin and lotus root soup
The white flecks are strands of cooked eggwhite

Kill the camera man
As you can see Tom favours the action shot