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Shanghai Dining: Recent Restaurant Experiences in Puxi

Puxi, the west side of Shangai, is my favorite place to dine (and to live). Incredible variety and typically more convenient than the new city of Pudong. Here are some recent restaurant recommendations and suggestions from dining experiences on the west side.

Top Chef Jacky: A leading Italian restaurant in Shanghai with the best pizza I’ve tasted here, plus the best mushroom soup. Their seafood risotto was excellent (though nothing will beat the seafood risotto I had in Florence, Italy earlier this year!). Top Chef is at 169 Mengzi Road, about 2 blocks south of LuJiaBang / XuJiaHui Road. I get there by taking line 9 to the MaDang Road Station, and then from Exit 3 (Mengzi Road) walking south 2 blocks. Mengzi Road begins where MaDang ends (a name change, it appears) at LuJiaBang Road. Service is excellent. Top Chef has opened an additional location just around the corner from the main site on Mengzi, so if they are full at the latter, they will walk you around the corner to their “secret” additional place. We’ve tried both and both are outstanding.

Sawadeeka Thai: A great new Thai place at the West Nanjing Road subway station. They also have a restaurant on the 4th floor of the SML Center, 618 XuJiaHui Road. This is on the walking street on the south side of East Nanjing Road, just across the road from Sephora’s. It’s at the very end of the building hosting three floors of restaurants, on the ground level. Very good curries. Not too busy yet but they will grow once the word gets out, I think. Just opened in April 2014. ElegantÂ setting, very pleasant, with reasonable prices.

Memory Restaurant:Â This is a popular chain. I’ve tried a couple of their locations and both were great and very inexpensive. MyÂ favorite place is on Shandong Road between East Nanjing Road and Fuzhou Road, a little south of Hankou Road. Shandong Road is a fun street loaded with little restaurants. One of the best is Memory Restaurant which opened there in March. One of my favorites for value and fun. The setting is similar to that of YunSe Restaurant on Fangxie Road (another of my favorites), with fun knick-knacks and lots of wood. It’s busy but efficient. Seems very clean. The menu has no pictures but is in both Chinese and English, with some fun Chinglish for some items. The paper menu is a great souvenir for visiting Westerners. I took a group of six there and ate a lot of food for 300 RMB total, and that included some fruit juice drinks, soups, and lots of main dishes. Great prices!

DaiFuKuya Japanese in the XinTianDi Style Mall, northwest end of the building, also on Ma Dang Road: Fast, fun Japanese place with a good mix of grilled and noodle dishes. We had some good Japanese dumplings and grilled items there. Fast and pleasant with good service. Less expensive than typical XinTianDi restaurants.

TMSK in XinTianDi: One of our favorites for the setting, food, and service. Only had a few minutes in our last visit but they were able to get food to us quickly and it was inspiring. A delicious variation on soup and salad, Asia style. Nice mix of Asian, Western, and fusion items on the menu.

By Jeffrey Lindsay|2014-04-24T08:22:50-07:00April 24th, 2014|Categories: Food, Restaurants, Shanghai|Tags: dining, food, Italian, restaurants, Thai|Comments Off

Qibao: A Shanghai Attraction You Must Not Miss

A fun attraction in Shanghai that many foreigners overlook is the ancient water town of Qibao, a 5-minute stroll from the Qibao subway station on Line 9. It’s over 30 minutes away from downtown Shanghai, but is definitely worth the trip. As a water town, it’s views aren’t nearly as scenic as those in the famous water towns like Wuzhen or Zhouzhuang, and lacks the many attractions of Suzhou, but it has plenty of excitement for a half-day visit and can be a fun place to shop and try unusual foods. There are some good photo ops there, but what I like best are the many vendors on the pedestrian street. There are also 8 museums you can visit with one 30 RMB ticket, but they are small and not all that interesting for the most part, though it’s cool to say you’ve been to the Cricket Museum (featuring some calligraphy about cricket fights and a table display with real crickets in real formaldehyde), and there are some interesting items in the memorial hall for Qibao’s famous sculptor, Zhang Chongren and some fascinating Â miniatures in the Miniatures Museum.

Here are some photos from recent visits to Qibao:

: Gate to the Pedestrian Street Area of Qibao

When you visit Qibao, go to Exit 2 of the Qibao Station on Line 9, then go left to the corner and turn left again. No need to cross any streets. You go may 200 meters and then you will see a big gate for the Qibao area. Go down that street another 200 meters roughly and on your right you will see a big fountain area made from rocks and a small pagoda. Turn right there and follow the stream of people down toward the narrow street close to the rocky fountain that is the beginning of Qibao’s interesting pedestrian street. Follow it to a bridge over the canal. This is a good place for photos. You can wander over to the right to get a good photo of this main bridge, then do on the bridge and take photos, then cross and go over to the left for another good spot for photography. Then continue down the pedestrian street to see the throng of vendors and other attractions.

At any of the little museums that are easy to miss, you can buy tickets for all 8 attractions or just pay the 5 or 10 RMB for individual museums you want to see. Or skip them and focus on food and photography.

One food tip: At #21 on the main pedestrian street, there is quite good gelato or ice cream for just 10 RMB a scoop. I tried the chocolate and found it as good as any chocolate gelato I’ve had in Shanghai, and less than half the typical price. Not bad!

Backside of the Gate to the Pedestrian Street Area of Qibao

By Jeffrey Lindsay|2016-10-24T05:58:00-07:00March 15th, 2014|Categories: China, Photography, Shanghai|Tags: food, museums, pedestrian street, Qibao, water town|Comments Off

Beyond the Clouds: Exposing One of Shanghai’s Fine Culinary Secrets

One of Shanghai’s hidden culinary gems is overlooked by thousands of tourists everyday in one of Shanghai’s most popular spots, the beginning of the East Nanjing pedestrian street close to the Bund where East Nanjing intersects Henan Road. There, hidden away on the 5th floor of the building that houses the bustling Forever 21 store, is a delightful Yunnan restaurant that most people don’t even know is there. And that’s a good thing, because lines would be way too long if they knew about Beyond the Clouds. Â I’ve been there twice and didn’t have to wait to be seated, which is how I like it. Beyond the Clouds has pleasant, somewhat mysterious decor with excellent food at surprisingly low prices. Definitely worth a visit for some of the most interesting flavors in China.

The best deal are their set meals for lunch. Just two choices: Set Meal A feeds two people for 88 RMB, and Set Meal B feeds 4 people for 138 RMB. I took a CEO there recently for lunch and we had Set Meal A, which had more food than we could eat and was quite good. The yellow curry was perfect. The hongshao pork and bean curd skins were excellent. The greens were good and the pickled radishes were very pleasant. Soup was OK. I enjoyed the meal, but was surprised to hear my friend describe it as the best Chinese food he’s had in his time in China (total of a couple of months or so, I think). Well, the food is decent and prices are great.

The set meals are only available during weekdays. I went there today with my wife and we loved the stuffed pineapple rice dish, with a nice mix of sweet black rice and pineapple in a pineapple shell. Digging out the cooked pineapple was fun. We also had an interesting crepe wrapped around mushrooms and other ingredients that was spicy and strongly flavored. I loved it, though the flavors were a bit strong for my wife. Service was good. Definitely a place I’ll be back to for larger meals to further explore the unusual cuisine of Yunnan province.

Many say this is an imitation of Lost Heaven, and that may be fair. But it’s an imitation that may taste better and be more affordable than the original. Keep those improved imitations coming!

You can get to the restaurant by entering Forever 21 and going up the elevators tot he 5th floor. There are also little alleys behind and to the side of that building that take you to a mysterious elevator to ascend to the 5th floor. Give it Â try!