And eat some moon cakes. I just realized I wrote something about mid autumn festival way back in year 2007. I believe I was in Shanghai when I wrote this, and it was after we had honeymoon in San’ya, Hainan, China.
Time flies. Now we have 2 kids, and I don’t see any special mid-autumn festival logos on Baidu or Google home pages. But I saw one at Google Vietnam page. I did see this (浓情迎中秋) at Baidu 热搜。
For me this year, I bought some 杏花楼广式月饼 and 稻香村苏式月饼 from 亚米网 (yamibuy.com). We bought moon cakes at Costco in the past: not a big fan of those。我们以前经常在百利买加州的生计月饼（Sheng Kee bakery，我记得去过一次她家的Milpitas 分店. As the name suggests, this is a Hong Kong/Cantonese style, and I visited their bakery at Milpitas CA once many years ago）。今年百利可能卖完了，好像没看到生计月饼。
Local Bakeries in the STL area
I think when I was new to the US and studied at Rolla. The fresh baked mooncakes at the WeiHong Bakery (味香饼家) was a treat. Now it seems there are other choices (not mooncake), such as The Foundry Bakery: and recently I added it to my Authentic Asian Food In The STL Area post. I just heard from an Indian friend that their Naisu Milk Bun 奶酥面包 is fantastic. Before pandemic I go to a Korean bakery near Olive and 141 once a while too. Last but not least, the La Boone Bouche at Olive and Tempo drive is so busy nowadays.
A meme on mooncake
Baidu Zhidao: 上海面包店有哪些牌子 Note many bakeries in Shanghai makes and sells mooncakes (a mostly seasonal item). Below are the list.
克莉丝汀 – I remember once I got 美式咖啡 from there, there are quite a lot Christen’s Bakeries in Shanghai. About 10 years ago, I found when I visit China, it’s hard to get black coffee (not instant coffee). I am a coffee drinker, and I found the places that I can always get good or decent American black coffee (pot coffee, basically we make them via grounded coffee at many American homes), is McDonald’s and Starbucks (not many small cities have McDonald’s and Starbucks). And add the Christen’s Bakery in Shanghai too.
静安面包房
85度C: this is a chain started in Taiwan. I recall visited their store in one of those places (Lan’xi or Quan’zhou). They are in California too.
苹果园
香特莉
季诺
可颂坊 (the link is their mobile website): I recall seen or being there before 1997. Baike 百度百科 link here.
元祖 (Wikipedia): another chain started in Taiwan. I went there once, and it surprised me that their products are quite expensive.
牛奶棚
瑞莱新侨
面包新语
马哥孛罗
迷迭香咖啡面包
红宝石
喜来公社
宜芝多
星巴克(Starbucks) 也有月饼: no need to say more 🙂
Traditional Brands
以前印象中有杏花楼 （上海杏花樓酒家- 維基百科，自由的百科全書 ）和新雅（粤式餐厅 – 新雅粤菜馆新雅粵菜館- 維基百科，自由的百科全書 ）月饼 – 月饼为其核心产品，其中“新雅广式月饼”为“上海市著名商标”[6]
Last but not least, a bit explanation on the Mid Autumn Festival on Wikipedia. Since I left home for college, I rarely had opportunity to be back to my parents home on those holidays, though. Again 2007 was probably one of the years that I was in China for the holiday. For that matter, it’s the only year since 1998 that I spent significant amount of time in Shanghai (and China), and I wrote quite a bit on my observations on my blog. This is just one example.
PS: my 13 year old liked the 杏花楼的玫瑰豆沙月饼。