What to eat in Shanghai: a first-timer's guide to the food and how to order it

Shanghai food is gentle: a little sweet, soy-dark, built on dumplings, noodles, river fish and slow-braised pork. It is easy for first-time visitors to love and easy to miss entirely if you eat in the hotel. This guide covers what to order, where the good versions are, how ordering works now that menus live on your phone, and how to eat well with allergies or children.

The dishes to try

Xiaolongbao, the soup dumpling, is the city’s signature. A thin, pleated skin around a pork filling and a spoonful of hot broth. The technique: lift one onto your spoon, bite a small hole in the side, sip the soup, then eat the dumpling with a dip of black vinegar and a thread of ginger. Do not bite one whole; the soup is hot. The old Nanxiang shop at Yu Garden is the tourist version with a queue; locals point you to Jia Jia Tang Bao near People’s Square, or to Din Tai Fung, which is Taiwanese and consistently excellent.

Shengjianbao is the fried cousin: thicker dough, crisp golden base, sesame and spring onion on top, and the same hot soup inside. Yang’s Fried Dumplings is the chain everyone knows; eat them standing at the counter for breakfast with a bowl of curry beef soup.

Scallion oil noodles (congyou banmian) are cold wheat noodles tossed in a dark sauce of soy and oil in which spring onions have been fried slowly until almost black. Simple, addictive, a few dollars, and the dish Shanghainese abroad miss most.

Hongshao rou, red-braised pork belly, is sweet, sticky and glossy, the dish Shanghai grandmothers are judged by. Order it with plain rice and a plate of stir-fried greens.

Hairy crab is the autumn event, from mid-October to December. Steamed whole, eaten slowly with a small set of tools, dipped in vinegar and ginger, followed by ginger tea to balance it. Worth doing once at a restaurant that specialises in it; a good guide knows which. Expect it to be the most expensive thing you eat in Shanghai.

Breakfast is eaten on the street from 6 am: jianbing (a savoury crepe cooked on a drum with egg, chilli, coriander and a crisp cracker folded inside), youtiao (fried dough sticks) dipped in sweet or savoury soy milk, cifantuan (a roll of sticky rice around a youtiao and pickles), and congyoubing, the flaky scallion pancake. A guide’s first morning usually starts here.

The classic dinner table also has smoked fish (actually fried and glazed, served cold), drunken chicken (poached, then marinated in rice wine), lion’s head meatballs in broth, eight-treasure rice for dessert, and in spring the salted pork and bamboo shoot soup (yan du xian) that every family makes.

Where to eat

• Yu Garden and the old town. Every visitor goes, and should, for the bazaar’s snack counters and the famous xiaolongbao once. Then leave the area for dinner; the sit-down restaurants around the garden are priced for people who will not come back.
• The former French Concession. The best spread in the city: old Shanghainese restaurants in lane houses (Fu 1039, Jesse and their relatives), Sichuan and Hunan places for heat, Japanese and Western options for a night off, and the coffee culture for afternoons.
• Jing’an and Nanjing West Road. Modern Chinese and the restaurant floors of the big malls, which are far better than they sound: picture menus, English, clean, and chains that Shanghainese actually eat at.
• Hongkou, Yangpu and the outer districts. Local neighbourhoods where a bowl of noodles costs what it should and nobody speaks English. Go with a guide or with confidence.

Shanghai also does the rest of China well. Proper Sichuan hotpot, Cantonese dim sum, Xinjiang lamb skewers and nan, Yunnan mushrooms, Beijing duck: all here, and a guide knows which places are genuine and which are theme restaurants.

How ordering works

Most restaurants now use a QR code on the table: scan it with Alipay or WeChat, the menu opens on your phone (usually with pictures, often with English), you tap what you want, and you pay from the phone at the end or up front. If you have not set up Alipay before you fly, your first dinner becomes an administration exercise; do it at home.

Where there is a paper menu, pictures are common. Where there is neither, pointing at the next table works and is normal. Dishes arrive as the kitchen finishes them, not in courses, and go in the middle of the table to share. Rice comes last unless you ask for it with the dishes. Tea or hot water arrives first and is free; cold water is not a default, ask for it.

There is no tipping in China. None, anywhere, and leaving money on the table causes confusion. Service charges appear only at hotel restaurants and are stated on the menu.

Allergies, dietary needs and children

Chinese kitchens use peanut oil, soy, wheat, shellfish, pork stock and MSG freely, so clear communication matters more than at home:

• Carry a card in Chinese stating what you cannot eat and how serious it is. We give our guests one; any hotel concierge can write one. Show it before ordering, not after.
• Vegetarian is easy in principle (tofu, greens, mushrooms, noodles) but ask about the stock; “no meat” and “no meat stock” are different sentences. Buddhist vegetarian restaurants near temples are reliable.
• Halal restaurants are common, marked with Arabic script or the characters 清真, and often run by Hui or Uyghur families; the lamb is excellent.
• Gluten-free is the hardest: soy sauce contains wheat, and dumplings and noodles are the city’s heart. Rice dishes, steamed fish, and plain stir-fries with a “no soy sauce” request are the safe territory. Bring your own tamari.
• Children eat well here: plain noodles, steamed buns, egg fried rice, sweet-and-sour anything, and the dumplings. Restaurants bring small bowls and chairs without being asked, and nobody minds a toddler.

Our FAQ covers how guides handle dietary needs on tour, which is mostly by talking to the kitchen in Chinese on your behalf.

Street food and water

Street food from a busy stall with high turnover is generally safe; the breakfast stalls are the safest food in the city because everything is cooked in front of you. Choose places where locals queue and avoid food that has been sitting. Drink bottled or boiled water, which every restaurant and hotel provides. Ice in city restaurants is from filtered water and fine.

Drinks

Tea first: a tea house in the French Concession or a canal-side one in Suzhou is an afternoon well spent, and a guide can explain the difference between a green, an oolong and a pu’er in one sitting. Local beer (Tsingtao, Snow) is light and cheap. Baijiu, the clear sorghum spirit, appears at business dinners in small glasses with toasts; one sip is polite, a glass is a decision, and nobody will mind if you switch to beer. Coffee is now excellent and everywhere; Shanghai has more coffee shops than any city on earth, which surprises Australians who expected to suffer.

Eating with a guide

Our day guide bookings include lunch stops the guide chooses with you: a noodle house in a lane, a dumpling counter, a hairy crab lunch in season, a breakfast walk through a wet market. For many guests the food turns out to be the thing they talk about afterwards, and the Shanghai essentials tour is built around a different neighbourhood meal each day.