What to Eat in Shanghai: 12 Dishes and Where to Find Them

Shanghainese cooking runs on soy sauce, rice wine and sugar, and it swings between very savoury and very sweet — often in the same dish. The good news for a visitor is that the food is plentiful, cheap and made for sharing, and the dishes that define the city are the ones sold from counters and carts rather than in the restaurants.

What are the most typical dishes to eat in Shanghai?

Xiaolongbao are the reason most people know the city at all: thin wrappers folded around minced pork and a piece of jelly that turns to broth as they steam. The way to eat them is to nibble the top off, let the soup cool, then take the rest in one go. Order them by the steamer, not from a menu.

Shengjianbao are their pan-fried cousins, and they are the breakfast item. Crispy on the bottom, soft on top, filled with juicy pork, and eaten from the paper bag with soy sauce and sometimes chilli oil.

Hongshao rou is the dish that says “Shanghai” on a menu. Pork belly cooked slowly until it is dark red and gives way under the chopsticks, in a sauce of soy, rock sugar and Shaoxing wine that turns glossy and thick.

Cong you ban mian are noodles tossed with spring onion oil and soy sauce. The scallions are fried slowly until they caramelise, which is where the sweetness and the fragrance come from. An ordinary bowl of noodles that shows how little the city needs.

Xiaolongxia, crayfish in a spicy broth of chilli and garlic, is a social dish rather than a single-ingredient one: it is served in a basin and picked at with everyone around the table. The season runs from May to July.

Cifantuan is a rice roll filled with pork and a little dried shrimp, rolled in a thin sheet and steamed. The rice is soft enough that it holds together on the chopsticks.

What sweets and tea should I try in Shanghai?

Tangyuan are glutinous rice balls filled with black sesame paste, served in a sweet soup. They are eaten at the Lantern Festival, in February, but they are on the menu year round.

White Rabbit candy is the one souvenir that actually tastes like one. It is milk candy wrapped in wax paper with a translucent rabbit on it, and the wrappers are collected by people who have no particular interest in sweets.

Longjing tea is the green tea this region is known for, grown around Hangzhou and drunk here. The leaves are flat and pressed by hand, and the flavour is soft and slightly nutty rather than grassy.

What do people eat for breakfast in Shanghai?

Breakfast is the meal where the city is most itself, and it happens on the street, standing up, in about ten minutes.

Shengjianbao are the order of the morning. The buns are fried on the bottom until they are crisp and golden while the top stays soft and steamed, and they are handed over in a paper bag with a small plastic bowl of soy sauce. Add chilli oil if you want the full version. You pick the piece off the top, let the steam out, and eat it in two or three bites before the bottom goes cold and flattens.

Congee — rice porridge, thicker than you expect and eaten with condiments rather than in — is the other staple. It comes with pickled vegetables and usually a savoury side: fried dough sticks, salted peanuts, or a piece of braised pork. It is the cheapest breakfast in the city and the most restorative after a long flight.

Both are sold from the same kind of small counter you find around People’s Square and in the Old Town, for a few yuan a portion. If the shop has a queue of people in office clothes at seven in the morning, that is the one to eat at.

Where should I eat in Shanghai?

The best food in Shanghai is on the street, and the neighbourhoods below each have their own character.

• Wukang Road and Anfu Road — the modern end of the city: coffee shops and bakeries with small counters selling traditional snacks and sweets alongside them.
• Tianzifang — a maze of traditional houses turned into shops and restaurants, with stalls selling shengjianbao, skewers and other street food.
• The Old Town around Yu Garden — the densest street food in the city, and the cheapest: tofu, tangyuan and roasted sweet potato in a historical setting.
• Around People’s Square — street stalls and small restaurants serving classic dishes at good prices, the easiest place to try several specialities one after another.
• The Jing’an Temple area — the broadest range, from high cooking to very informal.

How much does a meal cost in Shanghai?

A bowl of noodles runs ¥15 to ¥30, and a portion of xiaolongbao around ¥30 to ¥50. Small stalls and hole-in-the-wall restaurants serve full meals for ¥40 to ¥80, while the international restaurants around Xintiandi, the Bund and the French Concession start at around ¥150 a dish.

The same plate costs noticeably less a few streets back from the tourist frontage. The Bund restaurants are the most expensive food in the city, and the view is the reason.

What should I know before ordering food in Shanghai?

The menu is rarely in English outside the tourist strips. Photo menus and pointing work better than most tourists expect, and the dishes are visible in the display cases at the street stalls — which is the easiest way to decide.

Everything is written in characters, and the phonetic help is on the apps. Your phone’s translation works on the menu photo, and a map app will tell you what a dish is before you commit to it.

Lunch is the best value. Many of the small restaurants around People’s Square and the Old Town do set lunch dishes that are larger and cheaper than the same dish at dinner.

If you are matching a plan to a specific area, the Shanghai eSIM page shows which networks the city and country plans cover.

You need your phone working here. Menus are photographed, maps are on the phone, and the payment apps are all Chinese. Install the eSIM before you fly and activate it when you land, and the food streets are navigable from the moment you clear customs.