Essential Shanghai Street Food: 2 Must-Eat Dishes

With a population of more than 24 million, Shanghai isn't just the biggest city in China, it's also the nation's street food epicenter. In part that's thanks to the area's compelling food culture—the city sits in the Yangtze River Delta where it meets the Yellow Sea, and the often sweet, oily cuisine is especially well known for its use of freshwater fish, eels, and crustaceans, seafood, and water plants like lotus root. But mostly it's because the city is a magnificent, pulsing magnet for migrants from all over China who come to Shanghai seeking work. When they can't find the jobs they dreamed of, many start street food businesses, bringing the food culture of their home province and some of the best foods from all over China right into the heart of Shanghai.

      Xiao Long Bao (Soup Dumplings)

Xiao long bao are all about the filling: ground pork seasoned with a little ginger and Shaoxing wine mixed with a gelatinized pork stock that melts on cooking, transforming into a rich, sticky soup. The addition of crab meat and crab roe from the famous Shanghai hairy crab makes for a bold but equally traditional xiao long bao in the late autumn months.

In either case, that soupy stock is the dumpling's essential element: a flavored pork aspic typically made with pork skin, chicken bones, ginger, scallions and Shaoxing wine, simmered for hours until the collagen-heavy ingredients have turned to gelatin, and then cooled until it sets. Every kitchen has its own secret recipe—my local xiao long bao joint uses cow eyeballs because they make great gelatin. Not so secret now, and surprisingly tasty.

                 Sheng Jian Bao

When Shanghai chefs are asked what they like to eat after a long night in the kitchen, it's not fried chicken, it's these pan-fried dumplings, crackling-crisp on the base and pillowy soft on top. Sheng jian bao are literally dumplings (bao) born (sheng) of being shallow-fried (jian). Born of the oil, so to speak.