13 entries · Dishes & how to order
Eating in Shanghai
Shanghai cooking is sweeter, darker and milder than most visitors expect. This section covers the dishes worth knowing, the ones that surprise people, and the mechanics of getting fed without speaking Chinese.
Dishes
What to eat
Xiaolongbao: the soup dumpling, done properly
Everyone teaches you the spoon-and-bite technique. Almost nobody explains why some dumplings have soup and most do not.
Shengjianbao: the one you actually want for breakfast
Pan-fried, sesame-topped, bottom-crisp buns with broth inside. The best breakfast in Shanghai, and the least known outside it.
Hongshao rou: red-braised pork, the dish Shanghai argues about
Every Shanghai household has a version and every one of them is correct. It is also the dish most often ruined for foreign visitors.
Cong you ban mian: scallion oil noodles, the quiet masterpiece
Noodles, scallion oil, soy, nothing else. The most underrated dish in Shanghai and the cheapest meal you can feel good about.
Paigu niangao: pork ribs and rice cake
The most Shanghai of Shanghai dishes and the hardest to explain to anyone who has not eaten it. Chewy, savoury, faintly sweet.
White-cut chicken: the dish to order if you hate sweet food
Cold poached chicken, scallion-ginger oil, nothing else. The antidote to Shanghainese braising, and a quiet regional classic.
Sweet and sour spare ribs, Shanghai style
Not the fluorescent red thing you have had abroad. Dark, sticky, and based on vinegar rather than ketchup.
Guides
How to eat
Ordering food in Shanghai when you speak no Chinese
The practical mechanics of getting fed: menus, pointing, payment, and the three apps that make it easy.
Breakfast in Shanghai: what people actually eat
The best meal of the day here, served between 6:30 and 10am, mostly standing up, and almost never listed on hotel buffets.
Vegetarian and vegan in Shanghai
Easier than you expect in a cuisine famous for clever meat-free cooking — and harder than you expect because of one word: oil.
What Benbang cuisine actually is
An explanation of Shanghai cooking you will not get from a menu, and the reason so much of it is sweet.
Where to actually eat: streets, not restaurants
How to find good food in a city of 60,000 restaurants without relying on a list somebody else wrote.
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