Beijing and Shanghai, as two of the world’s most famous cities with two distinct style attract the people throughout the world. In Beijing, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Hutong, Peking Opera, roast duck etc make you feel a strong cultural atmosphere here; but if you want to know China’s rapid development, the recent outcome of Shanghai’s science and technology, information technology, trade, financial will make you feel an international cultural exchange and integration in the bustling city.
Without a doubt, Shanghai is one of China's great gastronomical
centers. If you do not experience Shanghai's cuisine to the
fullest, then you are depriving yourself an essential part of
Shanghai life. Chinese people have always placed top priority
on food, and Shanghai is no exception. Shanghai has been developing
its own distinctive local cuisine for over one hundred years.
At the same time, this historical port city has tolerantly and
appreciatively welcomed the best international cuisine from
around the world. World famous international restaurants have
been gradually making their way into Shanghai to set up shop.
As a result, French, Japanese and Italian restaurants together
make up eighty percent of Shanghai's high-end cuisine, many
of which are on par with some of the best restaurants in the
world. Shanghai locals are proud of their city's fine eateries
and have come to see them as one of the definitive trademarks
of their home. Never tired of discussing the newest international
restaurant in town, Shanghai locals are willing to spend top-dollar-
sometimes huge chunks of their pay checks – for a new dining
experience. Chinese newspapers and lifestyle magazines do not
spare and ink reporting on the city's newly opened establishments.
Do not be surprised to see streams of upper class Chinese people
filing in and out of the ultra fancy restaurants in Three and
in Eighteen on the Bund. You would be challenged to find another
city in China that turns eating out into such an extravagant
display.
Expensive cuisine is fine for an occasional splurge, but for
the rest of the time takes comfort in knowing that Shanghai
abounds with mid-level working class eateries. Every flavor
and every price range is accounted for on the Shanghai streets,
and you can easily indulge in some fine cooking without doing
too much damage to your wallet. Choices here are not limited
to local Shanghai and regional Huaiyang cuisines. You can also
find Sichuan, Cantonese, Hunan, and Guizhou style restaurants.
Every once and a while you may even run across signs for restaurants
serving Peking Duck.
Just a few years ago, restaurant-lined food streets were extremely
popular in Shanghai. Huanghe Lu Food Street near the People's
Square, the Zhapu Lu Food Street near the Qipu Lu Wholesale
Clothing Market, and Yunnan Lu Food Street on Fuzhou Lu were
once veritable bee hives of small restaurants and swarming customers.
Aside, perhaps, from Huanghe Lu, most of these food streets
have since fallen back down to Earth, and are no longer the
bustling venues they once were. That being said, most of the
restaurants there still operate and beacon to customers with
advertisements bearing their signature dishes or a special style
of food preparation.
It is not hard to find a restaurant in Shanghai. Like most large
city in China, each of Shanghai's large avenues has an almost
limitless selection of eateries. Another fact about Shanghai
that international visitors may not be aware of is that most
department stores and shopping malls have food courts on their
top or basement floor. Usually packed with dozens of stands,
these food courts serve small portions of precooked items, and
there is usually so much variety that choosing what you want
to eat can be a real challenge. Most food courts require that
you first purchase an electronic card at the sales counter,
which you can then use to buy food. When you have finished your
meal, you can return your card to the sales counter and they
will refund the money left on your card. Most food courts offer
pretty reasonable prices. Expect to pay 40 to 50RMB per person
– not a bad price for a decent dinner. If you want to go even
cheaper, than stick to the traditional Shanghai snacks like
“xiaolongbao steamed” buns, which can fill you up for about
20 RMB. In contrast, a dinner in a swanky upscale restaurant
can set you back over 500 RMB.
If you want to avoid Chinese food, but still do not want to
pay high restaurant bills, McDonalds and KFC are absolutely
everywhere. Shanghai is one of China's most westernized cities,
and you can also fine some locally operated restaurant selling
simple western fare such as pizza, pasta, and hamburgers. Their
prices are cheap too, and you should be able to fill up for
about 20 – 30 RMB.
Local Shanghai Fare
Shanghaiese cuisine is often referred to
in Chinese as Shanghai's “ben bang cai” or “local dishes”.
Because this local cuisine really encapsulates both the
Shanghai temperament and regional characteristics, when
you come to Shanghai, sampling “ben bang cai” is a must.
Shanghai cuisine employs a variety of cooking and food
preparation methods including: braising with soy sauce,
frying and broiling, stir frying, steaming, cooking over
charcoal, and pickling. To most people, the main characteristics
of “ben bang cai” can be roughly boiled down to heavy
oils and red sauces. Shanghai cuisine indeed frequently
employs thick juices, heavy flavors, lots of oil and sugar,
and bright colors. It may more accurate to generalize
Shanghai cooking as a type of soy sauce braising. Still,
“ben bang cai” is not the be all end all of Shanghai cuisine.
Some people clearly differentiate “ben bang cai” and “hai
pai cai” – “the Shanghai school of cooking”. At the end
of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic,
there were a total of 16 different styles of cooking that
coexisted in Shanghai, called “shiliu bang” or “the sixteen
groups” of which the “ben bang” was considered the most
local. Today restaurants serve the most original and authentic
of Shanghai flavors. In reality, “ben bang cai” shows
significant culinary influences from SuZhou and Yuxi.
“Hai pai cai” is considered the new wave of Shanghai cuisine,
and has incorporated cooking methods from Cantonese, Sichuan,
Nanjing, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Yuxi, and even western styles
of cooking. “Hai pai cai” focuses on retaining the best
of traditional Shanghai cooking and improving it with
best aspects of other culinary schools.
Many of Shanghai cuisine' most famous dishes trace back
to humble peasant beginnings. Shredded pork and soybean
soup has direct links with the popular old dish “meat
and bean stew”. The fermented earthen bowl is a dish that
comes straight out of the suburban Shanghai faming houses.
A recipe that has been around in one form or another for
two hundred years, the fermented earthen bowl combines
pig innards, pig feet, fish soup, and fermented glutinous
rice and barley gravy into an earthen jar, which is then
steamed. The dish has a clear refreshing broth and carries
the fresh fragrance of spirits. Over the last one hundred
years, ingredients and cooking methods used in the earthen
bowl have continued to improve, and the earthen bowl has
been replaced with a ceramic one.
Fermented gravies and dishes marinated in fermented gravy
are unique to Shanghai cooking. Cold dishes included chicken,
pig's feet, bean pods, winter bamboo shoots and tripe
marinated in a gravy of fermented barley and rice. Hot
dishes also use marinated items such as deep fried mackerel
marinated in fermented sauce (tun zao qing yu) and shredded
pork and soy bean soup (rousi huangdou tang)
Traditional cooking methods aside, some famous contemporary
chefs have increased the scope of Shanghai cuisine with
some innovative new dishes such as mackerel liver (qaingyutufei),
small shrimp with sea cucumber (xiazi dawucan), crabs
cooked in butter (chaoxiehuangyou), and eight treasures
in hot sauce (babaolajiang).
Vegetarian Cuisine
There are a handful of vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai.
Temples such as the Jade Buddha Temple, Jing'an Si Temple, and
Long Hua Temple all have their own vegetarian restaurants and
Chengxiang Ge near the City God Temple has a vegetarian restaurant
called Songyue Lou. Aside from these temple affiliated establishments,
you can also find vegetarian food in other parts of town
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