Stremmel, 30, initially feared she'd be lucky to pry any recipes from chefs, a famously secretive breed－especially Chinese chefs, who don't promote themselves as much as Western chefs might.
She was pleasantly surprised.
"Some top chefs, especially Scott Melvin at The Commune Social, were excited about the project right away," she says, "and because they were on board, that opened a lot of doors". She believes many chefs share her sense that Shanghai is under-appreciated as a food city, which made them more eager to be part of the book.
The result is a visual feast of mouth-watering photographs, including Taiwan-style deep-fried duck legs from Jian Guo, wild boar ravioli from Table No 1, piquillo peppers stuffed with cod from Elefante, and Mount Ka-la grilled pork from Lost Heaven.
Then there are the mole tacos from Hai.
"I'm a huge fan of Brad Turley and his restaurants Hai and Goga," she says, noting that Turley is a California native like herself. ("Goga" is his shortening of Golden Gate, San Fransisco's famous bridge.) "He's a larger-than-life character who comes out and greets diners after every meal. The Goga kitchen is open and it's easy for customers to interact with the kitchen crew, and Brad's California fusion dishes also reminded me of home."
Stremmel says she loves Mexican food, having grown up in California, and Turley "let me go back and see how he makes the tacos, the special way he puts the cheese on the tortilla, etc. So that's a favorite in the book, too."
Aren't they all?
"I've always really loved food," says the slim author, who notes both that she eagerly tried sea cucumber in China and can't live without cheese anywhere.
"I think that came to a head in China, which for me was the most enjoyable place to love food. I had been living in London before, and LA before that. Those are big food cities, full of people talking about food and pawing through coffee-table books full of appetizing dishes."
In China there are plenty of blogs and magazines about food, she says, but there didn't seem to be the sort of book that lovingly embraced the food scene.
In the book's foreward, Baoism chef-owner Jenny Gao salutes the author for delivering not only "a masterfully crafted cookbook", almost evenly split between Chinese and Western chefs, but a celebration of a food city that they both love.
