Street Food, Shanghai

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you can buy drinks and refreshment and even eat streetfoods or a full meal at the food court. this food court cum street stall is just located across the street facing Oriental TV Tower and my suggestion is that you eat and buy drinks here first before embarking on a jaunt to Oriental TV Tower as the prices of the food and drinks here are cheaper than inside the tower. the selection of the street food are endless!

Favorite Dish: depends on what you like, they have assorted grilled animal innards (chinese loves animal innards), some grilled chiken, steamed buns, noodles, soups, dumplings, assorted fruit juices and softdrinks and assorted sweets and dessert. prices range form 10 RMB for a noodle order to 15 RMB for an grilled innard or 6 RMB for my favorite lemonade.

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Soup dumplings or locally called Long Xiao Bao is a dimsum that is served in many Shanghai restaurants. This is basically dumplings that are filled with delicious hot soup and meat so be careful when you bite the first time around. You normally dipm this in rice vinegar and is normally a side dish to a main course meal like noodle soup.

Favorite Dish: Soup Dumplings and Noodle soup

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Pan-fried dumplings with black sesame seeds on top is a Shanghai specialty. This place is very famous! While you're in line, some one would take your order. You find a table upstairs and a waiter would take a look at your order and bring you the food.

The dumplings are not bad. However, you'll find better ones in Taipei, New York or Hong Kong.

If this place does not appeal, Wujiang Street is chock-a-block with other restaurant/street food choices.

When ordering these meat sticks, remember that by default they are very spicy. You have to tell them not to put spice on it. Even without spice though there is still some kick to it. So, if you cannot tolerate any spiciness, do not try these. Otherwise, STUFF YOURSELF SILLY! As of 4/2006, they run about 2-3RMB each stick.

This is a barbecuesd bird on a stick. It actually tastes better than it looks although, being so small it is difficult to get much meat off of it. It is worth the 3RMB (20P) for the photo opportunity. This was bought in Yu Gardens, which is a MUST see.

We were just walking the streets of Shanghai near Nanjing Road. Everything around there seems to close at around 10 P.M. Even KFC, Pizza Hut and MCDonalds were closed, so we hit the smaller alleys in search of food. There we found this little 24 hr fast food joint. No tourists of course. We got us a couple of spring rolls and some meat skewers. And a couple of beers. Very cheap food, I think we paid around RMB 50 for the whole meal.

Favorite Dish: Skewers and spring rolls. Or spwwwwing Wohhs. Very tasty and cheap. Steaming hot so you needn't worry about stomach trouble.

Eating on the street - of course, I tried to be reasonably careful, but it's so much fun to taste all those snacks :-)

Favorite Dish: Dumplings - because they usually taste like one would expect them to, but may surprise sometimes

somewhere in the New Old Town of Shanghai we came across this huge place with dozens of food stalls, tables and chairs. It was not so easy to decide, what to take, but finally we made our choice!

Lots of fun in there!!! And if you don't find exactly this place, there are so many in that area!

This might be cheating, but my favorite restaurant was an Italian restaurant near the French concession. It must have been because we'd been in Beijing for two months and had made sure we ate nothing but what the locals ate, but we splurged at this Italian place - had wonderful pasta (real pasta, not the Chinese-made Italian food), several bottles of GOOD wine, dessert, the works. It was basically a big food orgy but I think we deserved it after having eaten snails and everything else we tried there. Best dinner ever!
Umm otherwise try the big food market and get the hairy crabs or snails (that's what I'm eating in this picture - wouldn't you rather be eating pasta in pesto sauce?)

New york has it's Hot dog and pretzel stands. Shanghai favorites seem to be corn on the cob, brown tofu, and you'd also see brown eggs very frequently. The eggs and tofu gave out distinctive odors that must be a welcoming treat for someone. Also high on the list for street food was meat kebabs with a spicy Indian type seasoning and octopus kebabs that each time I smelled them I could not understand what the attraction would be. Be I was definitely in the minority since all these treats were selling everywhere.