la vie boheme

Five Fantastic French Concession Foods Spots:
For preemptive hangover cure: Charmant
For -Jesus- all-you-can-eat-teppanyaki: The Donghu Hotel
For form over function: The Youngfu Elite
For English pub slop: Oscar's
For chocolate-rum-banana-raspberry torte: Vienna Cafe

The tree-lined French Concession is my favorite district of Shanghai. The cafes are unassuming, sprawling, elegant; the stylish galleries, bars and restaurants (set in grand French former consulate mansions) have the added allure of being tucked on dark and quiet tributaries of the steroidal boulevard Huaihai Zhong Lu.
Late last night I wandered down through some of the choicest little blocks in the area, and finally settled in at lovely LaBella Cafe. Friday evenings feature a live jazz trio. I lounged around with vanilla cake and gin until near closing whereupon I found myself in the eclectic company of the Australian bassist and Austrian vocalist, two French photographers, a few assorted leisure writers and models, the cafe's charming owner, Isabella, and a tattooed mixologist. We moved out onto the terrace, and I spent the early morning listening to occasional jazz riffs, dragging from cigarettes, sipping a brand new smoky sweet cognac brew (courtesy of Mister Mixologist) and listening to this band of motley artists converse in prettily accented English peppered with French and German about art, life, freedom, New York City, Paris, California, Vienna, Tokyo. Pretension aside, I felt as though I'd zipped back to some bygone beatnik era. I thought of my friends in America - lifelong Americans who weren't chiefly concerned with expression or creating subcultures or paving the way for new generations of self-proclaimed 'artists'. They seemed to be universes away from this crowd on the terrace of LaBella.