BenBang Cai - Shanghainese local food... sweet and sour

So my aunt Catherine - who has taken a youthful interest in China since visiting here just two months ago reminded me of what is called BenBang cai - or the shanghainese local food. It is typically a bit sweet, and usually not spicy. I've been to a few and I think, like everything in China (or everywhere) there is the authentic and the perverted version. One was a really dingy place with little to no seating. our friends booked a table for becca and i a week in advance and we ate up on the third floor. you had to climb up stairs that were more like a string of ladders and the ceiling, which was nearly touching our heads was covered in grime from stir-fry. the room we ate in had a large window looking down on the street, which was suprisingly quiet - except for two men that were fighting over the price of fruit. food was great - and we even found some decent veg dishes.
the other place i went to was called 'shanghai uncle', and it was much more upscale, very clean, and expensive. i thought the food was awful, and i'm willing to bet the first ingrediant in each dish was sugar. we had some pork ribs that were doused in what amounted to sweatened ketchup, and their specialty - a $10 plate of crunchy eal - tasted like cardboard covered in carmel. This is ironic because a running joke in china, especially among westerners, is that a lot of the low-cost eateries may try to pass off a mix of pork and cardboard as real food. This high-end restaurant, has a clientelle that is mostly western or high-income chinese, so reputation seems to be much more important than actual quality: I've never found the street food to be as disgusting as what we got at 'shangai uncle', and usually you can watch them prepare it.
I'll be posting more pictures from Becca's visit to picassa. We had a most wonderful time together.