An example of Shanghai Street Food.

Away from my last Blog on the Ballandean Dump, and back to Shanghai, for a moment or two.
My son and daughter-in-law in Shanghai introduced me to street food, and 99% of the time, it is delicious.

Looking from the laneway out onto Nanchang Lu.

Walking along Nanchang Lu...which I do many many times each visit....I would pass a long queue of locals in the street.
My Shanghai-based daughter-in-law told me that the queue was always long because the people were waiting to buy scallion oil pancakes (or cong you bing ) from, reputedly, the best maker of them in Shanghai.

The address of the pancake maker.

One March day this year, when I walked past, the queue was almost non-existent. 
I had never seen such a short queue before.
There were only 5 people lined up at the doorway to the small room where the pancakes were cooked.
This was an opportunity not to be missed, so I queued as well.
I felt very lucky. Three years after first seeing the queues here, I looked as if I would be able to taste the pancakes at last.

Yes, there are 5 people in this queue.

I was optimistic...mistakenly so. Each of the people above had HUGE orders, so it was 45 minutes before I could order my lowly TWO pancakes.

But in that time I could watch the Chinese cook at work. And work he did. Never stopped.
My DIL (Daughter-in-law) told me that he starts work early  every morning, and works practically non-stop until late afternoon. Talk about a work ethic!

The cooking takes place on a steel plate which is placed over a 44 gallon drum. This is at the front of the alcove where he works.
Behind that is a small bench where he shapes the pancakes. Here he has a roll of unleavened dough, a bowl of sliced scallions/shallots, and a small bowl of oil.

This is the workbench.  Unleavened dough, bowls of oil, pancakes ready for next batch of cooking. (Cooked ones at front of photo) The shallots are in the green bowl....you can see just a bit of it in the background.

He takes a dollop of dough, glazes it with oil, adds the scallions, rolls it up ready for cooking.

A batch just placed on the hot plate.

...and flattened with hands.

and then with a metal hand-held press. (and another customer's shoulder is in the corner of this photo...oops!)

The pancakes have been flattened, and now brushed with oil.

Probably my favourite photo of the day...why?

What do you think about that? No WPHS rules here. Cigarette in hand, mind on job. And I did not notice any ash falling on the pancakes.
You can see that the two middle rows of pancakes are almost done, the outer rows waiting their turn.

Yes, after 45 minutes I left with two pancakes. I felt a little embarrassed ordering two only, especially after the large orders requested by my fellow buyers, but the cook didn't turn a hair. Just collected two pancakes, and placed them in a brown paper bag, and charged me my 6 yuan (about $1 Aust)  

So I was a happy person, strolling along Nanchang Lu, munching on my food. Crisp. A little salty. Fresh scallion/shallot taste.  Great street food, made all the more tasty because of my 3 year wait! (and my mouth is watering just writing about them.)
If ever you are in Shanghai, go to the Former French Concession, and stroll down Nanchang Lu, and queue. But have a heap of time to do it! It's worth it.