Eat in Shanghai

Three meals a day of Shanghai people

Breakfast: Paofan (soak cooked rice in soup or water) and the "Four Guardians": Dabing (a kind of large, thick and flat bread); Youtiao (deep-fried dough or Fried bread stick); Zifangao (rice balls or lumps fried with oil. It's a kind a of goluptious, saltish and economical food) and soybean milk.

Lunch: in dining hall or order bento, simplicity and convenience are most of people's choices.

Supper: in the three meals a day of Shanghai people, only supper is a formal meal. In the dinner time, various exquisite delicacies are on the tables. Shanghai people like light diet, usually, the staple food and snacks for shanghai people are made from wheat.

Shanghai Dishes

Shanghai dishes usually called shanghai local dishes in the locality. The dishes derived from the home cooking dishes, their ingredients and cooking methods are simple and economical, and excel at stewing and braising. The Shanghai local dishes like using sugar as their seasonging and are partial to sauce. The characteristic representatives are: fried minced pork balls, chicken bone simmered in brow sauce, spiced (five flavor) chicken leg, braised pork in Dongpo style, fried shrimps, sautéed alfalfa, braised bamboo shoots with oil, boiled pork slice etc. with many unique flavors.

If you would like to taste Shanghai dishes, please go to the traditional restaurants, such as the Maylinge Restaurant, the Zun Pin Shao Cai Gong Fang Restaurant (near Jing An Temple) and the Paul Restaurant etc, where the tasteful recommended dishes are: Braised Yellow Croaker with Potherb Mustard, Pork Chop with Sour Plum and Puree of Lima-beans. In these places you can savor the racy flavor of Shanghai local dishes.

Snack Foods

Shanghai snack foods have made a national name in China, and very differ from the foods in the other parts of China. They lay more emphasis upon the materials choosing, condiments using, making, cooking and eating skills, and so to degustate the goloptious snack foods of Shanghai is requisite for any traveler to Shanghai.

Nanxiang Xiaolongbao

Nanxiang Xiaolongbao (small steamed meat bun): It is a traditional snack food in a suburban town, Nanxiang of Shanghai. There are two famous Xiaolongbao shops in the city. One is Nanxiang Mantou (in YU Garden Shopping Street; mantou means steamed bun), the other one is Guqiyuan Snack (near Yan’an crossing of Tibet Road). The great characteristics of Nanxiang xiaolongbao are thin--wrapped and pulpy, the fillings are unsalted. If you nibble at it, the toothsome fillings will bring you a mouthful aroma and give you a special feel. When eating this kind of bun you'd better dip the buns into the shredded ginger sauce with the seasoned vinegar (this sauce is characteristic of areas south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River), a good aftertaste will always persisting in your mouth.

Tangtuan (also called Tangyuan)

 Tangtuan (dumplings made of sweet rice, rolled into balls and stuffed with either sweet or spicy fillings) is a traditional Shanghai food. The fillings made from many kinds of materials, such as bean paste, benniseed and peanut, besides these, there are salty fresh meat and the crab roe fillings. In Shanghai, there are many old stores for Tangtuan. For example, the Wang Jia She Confectionery Store (in West Nangjing Road of Jing'an District) is one of the famous representatives. Around the Spring Festival, queues formed at the front of the store for the Tangtuan with crab roe fillings. The dumplings with soup in the bowl, when you spoon out one and nibble at the sticky rice wrapper, the yellowy crab oil will ooze out, the oil and the savory meat mingle together, and a pleasant flavor will linger in your mouth. It is really an appetizing food! Besides the Wang Jia She Confectionery Store, there is another well-known Tangtuan store in the Town God's Temple (area). In this old-timely store, bowls of steaming hot dumplings are mostly laid before the customers, and the dumplings with benniseed fillings are high recommended here. The sweet-scented osmanthus flowers, the mellow benniseed and the oleaginous lard are absolutely optimal mix. If you would like to show off your skills in making dumplings in your family you can buy the take-out fillings to make the same flavor dumplings selling in the stores with your household.

Crawfishes

Crawfishes usually come into their season in summer. In Shanghai, the spicy crawfishes enjoy a high favor among people. A plate of crawfishes and a bottle of   beer are absolutely the best choice for your night snack in a summer night.
Fumao Crawfishes is a classic brand in Shanghai, which have many chain stores in the city. The crawfishes of these stores are handpicked smalt crawfishes from Tai hu Lake (a big lake by Wuxi City, in south part of Jiangsu province), before the crawfishes are cooked they are removed heads. When you enjoy the Crawfishes, it is not only easy to husk but also amply dainty to eat. The taste is unsalted, tasty and spicy.  There are a great variety of fancy cooking crawfishes, such as the multi-flavor crawfishes and the crawfishes boiled with vermicelli and so forth.

Shengjian and Guotie

Shengjian (the fried steamed bread and steamed buns with stuffing) and Guotie (fried dumpling; pot sticker) look like two brothers because they often sick in the frypan. The two snacks are common foods in the breakfast table of Shanghai people they have a history of more than one hundred years. To the appearances, Shengjian looks something like Xiaolongbao (small steamed meat bun),Guotie looks like Jiaozi(dumpling), In fact they are just in the likeness of appearances. The crisp flour wrappers stuff with the fresh and tender meat fillings, if you take one of the snacks and bite into it, the delicious potage will permeate your mouth. They will wet your appetite whenever you see them. The two famous princes of Shengjian in Shanghai are Fengyu Shengjian and Xiaoyang Shengjian(yang: one of surnames in China ). The Shengjian are so palatable and unforgettable in the two stores that often you can see the long waiting lines in fronts of them.

New Year cake with pork chops

The New Year cake is made of rice, it is glutinous and the pork chops in it are crisp, fresh and tender, the potage is flavorful and vivid. It is one of favorite snacks for Shanghai people. In Shanghai, the famous New Year cakes with pork chops are in Xiaochangzhou Confectionery Branch Store and Xiandelai Confectionery Branch Store (addresses: Fuzhou Crossing of Middle Sichuan Road).