I watch the Food Network for hours at a time.

My cooking “compulsion,” as a friend once described it, earned me the predicted title of “Iron Chef” in my high school yearbook’s “In the Future” section. It runs in the family. My older brother was well known around his office last fall for routinely supplying homemade baked goods. Together, we’ve even devised a bake-off to develop the perfect brownie recipe, complete with ballots for taste testers.

So when we began planning our East Asian summer vacation, it was no surprise that culinary aspects took center stage. We quickly established one guiding principle: our hotels could be low budget, but under no circumstances would we skimp on the food. No less than the best dishes China and Japan had to offer would suffice.

We ate phenomenal dim sum at famous Hong Kong eateries, traditional and painstakingly elaborate multi-course meals in Kyoto, and roast duck at a world-renowned restaurant in Beijing. The last one even gave us a numbered certificate with our meal, in case we doubted the fowl's authenticity.

But despite dining at these famous restaurants and splurging on pricy prix fixe dinners, our favorite meals were in the humble street stalls of Shanghai, worlds away from haute cuisine.

That shock to our taste buds came just a few days into the trip. The stretch of cramped stalls, many lacking stools for their customers, hardly seemed a serious challenge or even a promising venue for a sanitary meal. This was nowhere near a level playing field. After all, a $2 street-cart hot dog in the U.S. isn’t expected to compete with a meal cooked by Wolfgang Puck.

Yet enticed by glowing descriptions of the street-sold dumplings in a New York Times article, we browsed the vendors near the intersection cited in the review. The first hit was a scallion pancake that set the standard for all scallion pancakes to come. This gem was still hot, full of flavor, and perfectly textured. It didn’t matter that the plastic wrapping almost melted from the heat of the pancake; this was seriously good eating.

And the best was still to come. The sight, smell and sound of dumplings happily sizzling in one stall drew us in and a bit of pointing (neither of us speak Chinese) landed us with eight of the best dumplings either of us had ever tasted.

This was nothing short of culinary nirvana. “A revelation!” exclaimed my brother while trying not to spill any of the perfectly seasoned broth trapped inside the dumplings. I could hardly blame him—it seemed a waste to let even a single drop go unsavored.

These morsels shamed all the cartons of take-away potstickers at Chinese restaurants back home. And even the best dumpling houses in Shanghai couldn’t compare to these mom-and-pop delicacies.

After finishing our dumplings (it didn’t take long) we simply enjoyed the view—a city hurrying by us. It wasn’t ornate or posh; it was far better.

All too soon, it was time to move on. The stall was doing brisk business, and someone else wanted our stools, but we weren’t too upset. After all, lunch was only a few hours away.

Clifford M. Marks ’10 is a Crimson news editor in Pforzheimer House. He spent the first part of his summer pretending to be Frank Bruni.