Restaurants in Shanghai
IF YOU KNOW | JUNE 1, 2020
Annie Shi
WHO
Restaurants
WHAT
Shanghai
WHERE
About
Annie Shi is a partner and GM/beverage director of King, where she can be found on the floor looking after guests or sometimes at the bar on her nights off. After a lifetime in New York, Annie moved to London where she met co-head chefs, Clare De Boer and Jess Shadbolt, and the three were inspired to open King back in Annie's native New York.
King received a two-stars critic's pick review by Pete Wells after they opened in late 2016 and was number four of Pete Well's Top Ten Best New Restaurants of 2017 list.
If you ask my dad, who is an old-school Shanghainese native, he will insist that Kong Yi Ji Restaurant is Shaoxing cuisine, but proximity to Shanghai also means that it checks all the boxes for traditional Shanghainese food too. The staff here doesn’t speak English, but everything is so delicious here that if you’re open to the tried and true point-and-order, you will not go wrong. This is the place to order all of the classics - red braised pork, Shanghainese meatballs, and if you’re in luck, hairy crab in all its forms during the fall. The owners ferment their own huang jiu, or yellow wine, a specialty of Shaoxing. I highly recommend getting a flight to pair with your meal - the flight starts with five year old yellow wine and goes all the way to thirty.
If you want to understand what the Shanghainese food scene looks like these days, head to Bird, a beautiful little restaurant with a killer wine list and a lot of caning (restaurant after my own heart!). The menu draws inspiration from around the world but you’ll never forget that you’re in Shanghai. On my most recent visit, we were able to sit upstairs on their roof terrace and enjoyed a terrific bottle of Alain Graillot’s Croze Hermitage. If you have time, check out Bitter next door. It's by the same talented owner-operator, Camden Hauge, and is the perfect nightcap.
Guys, this is one of my last-meals-on-earth spots - if I could eat this every single morning, I would. This is your classic Shanghainese breakfast/lunch canteens and they specialize in soup dumplings and little wontons in broth. They also have one of my other favorites, fried tofu and vermicelli soup, which is the perfect palette cleanser. Pro-tip: order it after you finish your dumplings/wontons so that it’s nice and hot, but make sure there isn’t a huge queue of people waiting for a table after you!
This is the kind of restaurant that really excites me. The food here is Guizhou, one I’ve never had before, in a small-plates, wine bar format, which is how I would prefer most of my meals to be eaten. The wine list veers natural with some great picks, like Alessandro Viola’s Note de Bianco, all available by the glass, carafe or bottle. And the dining room is minimal, but beautiful with thoughtful, warm touches. I was their first guest in the door at 5:30 PM and was able to enjoy a glass of wine on my own before two friends joined for a fuller meal, and that progression felt perfect.
I love Lotus Eatery for its rambunctious, raucous vibes - it’s your ideal group restaurant that also serves delicious food from the Yunnan region. Sharing family style is at the heart of Chinese cuisine, and this dining table embodies that. If you’re a large enough group, you get to book one of their private rooms with a gigantic round table that everyone can sit around at. The fried goat cheese is so good you will likely need at least two orders (or four, as our group did). The mint salad with peanuts should not be missed, nor the stir-fried lotus root or wild mushrooms (a particular specialty of the region). Best pairing here is to just keep the beer flowing.
This wine bar and wine shop by local distributor Summergate, had just been renovated when we visited. It’s in the former French Concession and makes an excellent end-of-day stop for a glass of wine, particularly outside on their new terrace. There’s no wine list, but plenty of friendly staff who are eager to chat wine with you. This is a great spot to try some Chinese wine, or to pick up a bottle to bring home since Chinese wine is still relatively novel even here in New York. I recommend the Kanaan Winery Pretty Pony.
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