Shanghai, reputed as a "gourmets' paradise", combines a wide variety of over 20 local flavors, including Suzhou, Wuxi, Ningbo and Anhui cuisines. Shanghai cuisine mainly employs the cooking methods like braising and stewing and often uses sugar as a flavoring. Here, the warmest memories about food can be summoned up by familiar foods, such as pancake, fried dough stick and soy milk, or specialties like Pan-Fried Steamed Bun, Nanxiang Steamed Stuffed Bun and Wonton.
A single Steamed Stuffed Bun is quite enough to demonstrate the elegant and elaborate life of Shanghai people. Featuring thin wrap, tender meat and flavored soup, Shanghai Steamed Stuffed Buns are to be tasted carefully, or the hot soup inside may burn your mouth!
Fried Stuffed Bun, a unique Shanghai food, is famous for its thin wrap, crispy bottom, and delicious filling, and usually covered with sesame and chopped shallot. It is a popular food in Shanghai which smells delicious and contains rich liquid.
With a history of hundreds of years, Pan-Fried Steamed Bun is an indigenous snack of Shanghai and it features crispy bottom, thin wrap and flavored filling. Take a bite, the juice with meat, shallot, sesame and oil flavors will spurt out - just too good to resist!
In Shanghai, the Seafood Wonton is of meat stuffing. The hot soup is usually the mixture of egg shreds, dried shrimps and red lavers while the wonton features thin wrap and meat filling. Seafood Wonton is appetizing and refreshing.
Shanghai people are used to eating dried food with soup. Fried Bean Curd & Vermicelli Soup is somewhat watery and tasteless yet perfectly matched with fried and greasy snacks like Steamed Stuffed Buns. The soup is clear and flavored enough with fried bean curd, vermicelli and Chinese little greens. If double served, it can amaze you with the taste!
Boiled scallion oil and dried shrimp meat served with noodles - quite yummy! This food features pliable and tough noodles, tasty shrimp meat and flavored scallion oil. When served with side dishes of good taste, it can give you keen enjoyment of life!
Shanghai has countless cakes and pastries, among which Red Bean Rice Cake, Pepper Mint Patty and Sweet Sticky Rice Roll are the favorites of Shanghai people. Pepper Mint Patty is a refreshing and sweet snack for summer as it can relieve internal heat. Red Bean Rice Cake is a soft snack which looks like pudding and has moderate sweetness. Begonia-shaped Rice Cake, a traditional Shanghai snack, derives its name from the begonia shape. It's brown and covered with malt sugar and tastes fragrant and sweet.
It is a pastry made of oil-mixed dough and looks like the shell of a cooked crab. In brown and yellow, the finished pastry is covered with sesame and tastes crisp and fragrant.
Chop Rice Cake, with a history of over 50 years, is an affordable and special snack in Shanghai. It is covered with five-spice powder and combines the appetizing ribs with the glutinous rice cake, which is very delicious.
This snack takes the big and fleshy field snails in Tunxi, Anhui as the principal. Generally, the field snails are raised with clear water for two days to spit out the mud and sand. Then, add the field snails to a wok and braise with fennel, cinnamon and other flavorings. At last, add aged wine to it. In brown grey, the dish features tender meat and mellow sauce and tastes delicious.