Shanghai

Liquid Refreshments: Shanghai's Top 5 (Late) Summer Drinks

Shanghai is famous for its swampy weather in August – it’s hot and humid in the lead up to Indian summer. Staying hydrated against the rising mercury is crucial if you’re out hunting a meal of street food, so here are the best sips to keep your yin and yang balanced this season. Mia’s Green Apple Mint Juice This neighborhood Yunnan specialty restaurant takes bold flavors from southwest China and elevates them in simple combinations. In many of their noodle and main dishes, mint features prominently - there is even a salad composed entirely of mint leaves that will leave you wondering why anyone is even bothering with iceberg lettuce.

Shanghai

Auspicious Eating: Ringing in the Year of the Monkey

As the moon starts to wane each January, people throughout China frantically snatch up train and bus tickets, eager to start the return journey to their hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year (春节, chūnjié) with their family. This year, revelers will make an estimated 2.5 billion journeys on the train system alone, up 100 million from last year; at least another billion bus, plane and car trips add to the travel chaos. One of the major draws for migrant workers heading home is the chance to eat traditional, home-cooked meals with relatives. You won’t get through a conversation about Spring Festival, as the holiday is also known (“Spring Festival” is the literal translation of chūnjié), without a local waxing poetic about the holiday’s dishes, which vary region to region but have one very important thing in common: delicious symbolism. These festive meals pull double duty, using allegorical shapes and homophones to add prophetic wordplay to family dinners.

Shanghai

Best Bites 2015: Shanghai

Editor’s note: To cap off the year, we’re taking a look back at all the best eating experiences we had in 2015, and in Shanghai, that means everything from fried pork buns to shakshuka made with local ingredients. Yang Yang’s Dumplings The chengguan were out in full force shutting down our favorite street food hot spots this year, including one of Shanghai’s most popular night markets on Fangbang Lu and the soon-to-be-closed Tangjiawan market. We’re reminded that it’s ever more important to support those vendors who take pride in their craft and hand-make everything from start to finish.

Shanghai

Liquid Refreshment: Shanghai's Top 5 (Late) Summer Drinks

Shanghai is famous for its swampy summer weather, and although this August was the coolest in 14 years, it’s still hot and humid out there as we head into Indian summer. Staying hydrated against the rising mercury is crucial if you’re out hunting a meal of street food, so here are the best sips to keep your yin and yang balanced this season. Mia’s Green Apple Mint Juice This neighborhood Yunnan specialty restaurant takes bold flavors from southwest China and elevates them in simple combinations. In many of their noodle and main dishes, mint features prominently - there is even a salad composed entirely of mint leaves that will leave you wondering why anyone is even bothering with iceberg lettuce. By supercharging fresh apple juice with a fistful of pressed mint leaves, Mia’s makes the idea of a juice cleanse just a teensy bit more appealing.

Shanghai

Ask CB: Food Safety in China?

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve heard some horror stories about food safety scandals in China. How does an adventurous eater explore Shanghai without having any culinary misadventures? There’s no hiding the fact that recent years have seen the highly publicized exposure of some unsavory information on China’s food safety record. While the headlines may not be any worse than those seen recently in other countries (whether unlabeled horse meat or fecal matter in ground turkey), the Chinese lately have reached appalling levels of creativity in their food scandals, from thousands of diseased pigs washing up in the Huangpu River, to rat, fox and mink meat being pawned off as lamb at hotpot restaurants.

Shanghai

Best Bites 2013: Shanghai

Editor’s note: This post is the first installment of “Best Bites of 2013,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Stay tuned for “Best Bites” from all of the cities Culinary Backstreets covers. Deng Ji Chuan Cai Culinary bucket lists are some of the best ways to discover our friends’ hidden gems: expat foodies are only willing to give up their proprietary favorites when they’re heading home.

Shanghai

Shanghai’s Top 5 Late-Night Dining Spots

The vast country of China has just one time zone, so Shanghai’s East Coast location means darkness comes early and most residents usually eat by nightfall, with restaurants often closing their kitchens around 9 p.m. But for those who keep late hours, nighttime brings out a chorus of pushcart woks and mini grill stands to street corners around the city. Despite often aggressive government crackdowns on these tasty, yet mostly unlicensed, food stands, the migrants who run them are determined to make a living and feed the masses while they’re at it. Our top five list goes beyond these roving vendors to feature a mix of restaurants that stay open late and small family-run gems that cater exclusively to the night-owl crowd.