On Wednesday night Volkskrant journalist Hans Moleman invited me for dinner at Barbarossa. This restaurant/lounge/bar is located in the park on People’s Square, and it’s a great place to relax and have some good food. Barbarossa serves North-African cuisine (among others lamb and couscous), one of the very few restaurants like this in Shanghai.
We had dinner on the terrace at the lake, and talked for hours about life in China, politics, multinationals and entrepreneurship, and about Africa (where Hans used to live). After dinner we had some very good old rum and a few coffees to accompany the rum at the rooftop bar. The evening ended memorable as well: Hans has a ChangJiang (I think) motorcycle with sidecar (a pre-world war 2 model), and he drove me back to my car with this vehicle.
-a note for all serious rum lovers in Shanghai: the rum we sipped -straight, no ice please- is Havanna Club, 7 years old.
Straight form the cane sugar plantations east of Havanna.
By the way: A nice place to enjoy the full force of Cuba’s finest achievement is the cute litte bar La Cubana on Hongmei Lu. A mojito paradise, and nice cuban snacks too.