[Where To Eat:] Two Authentic Shanghai Benbang Cuisine Restaurants

Shanghai cuisine, also known as Benbang cuisine or Hu cuisine, is one of China's traditional regional cuisines, predominantly popular in Shanghai and its surrounding areas. This cuisine is renowned for its distinctive sweetness, lightness, and delicacy, emphasizing the freshness and seasonality of ingredients. It features a variety of cooking methods, including braising, steaming, and sweet and sour techniques.

Benbang cuisine offers a rich array of signature dishes such as braised pork, steamed bass, crab meat tofu, and fried shrimp. Braised pork is a staple on the dining tables of Shanghai households, known for its fatty but not greasy texture, with a sweet yet salty flavor. Steamed bass highlights the freshness and tenderness of the fish, often seasoned simply to preserve its natural flavors.

Shanghai cuisine demonstrates the delicacy and elegance of the Jiangnan culinary style through its unique cooking techniques and meticulous handling of ingredients. In Shanghai, whether in upscale restaurants or street food stalls, you can find traces of Benbang cuisine, allowing you to savor the city's gustatory culture.Below, please browse and enjoy some of the top picks from Hills Shanghai:

1、Renhe Hal

Business Hours: 17:30 - 03:00 (next day)
Address: 407 Zhaojiabang Road
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Renhe Hall is one of the most authentic Benbang cuisine restaurants in Shanghai, known for its fresh ingredients, meticulous cooking, and delicious flavors, making it a favorite among the elderly. The nostalgic Shanghai-style decor, coupled with the staff dressed in Republic of China attire and the evening stage performances, imbue the entire restaurant with an atmosphere of old Shanghai.

Braised Pork: Renhe Hall's braised pork is exquisitely cooked, served as a single piece with half a marinated egg and a bok choy, neatly arranged in a bone china bowl. The meat, selected from top-quality pork belly, features distinct layers of fat and lean, slow-cooked until the fat permeates the lean, creating an irresistibly fragrant dish. The skin is soft and glutinous, and the meat is tender and flaky.

Ricefield Eel with Wild Rice Stems: This dish was a favorite of old Shanghai mobsters Huang Jinrong and Du Yuesheng. At Renhe Hall, it's said to be fried three times, resulting in plump and tender eel strips and crisp wild rice stems, offering a unique flavor distinct from the typical "hot oil eel strips." The wild rice stems from Liantang are seasonal in the summer, crisp and sweet, perfect for eating. Sprinkled with green onions and drizzled with hot oil, the aroma is vividly released, and the eel is rich and sticky, great with a bowl of rice.

2、Lao Ji Shi Restaurant

Business Hours: 11:30 - 14:30, 17:00 - 22:00
Address: 41 Tianping Road
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Lao Ji Shi specializes in home-style dishes with a refreshing taste, choosing clean and simple ingredients, avoiding the greasy stereotype typically associated with Shanghai cuisine. The owner loves to innovate classic dishes, but no matter how much innovation takes place, the secret to Lao Ji Shi's 20 years of success still lies in their meticulous care.

Salty Chicken: As an appetizer and a showpiece for Shanghainese, it must be few and refined to set expectations for the following courses. The taste should be light; if it's too salty, people lose interest after just one bite. Interestingly, Lao Ji Shi's salty chicken has recently been switched to a boneless version, purportedly to keep up with the times. Returnees and tourists, accustomed to not chewing on bones, find it more elegant.

Dried Vegetable and Shrimp Exploded in Hot Oil: Someone brought a pack of dried vegetables, originally intended for making braised pork belly. However, during cooking, the chef accidentally dropped some dried vegetables into the hot oil, and upon frying, they became loose and crispy, like seaweed, pairing perfectly with the crispy texture of the exploded shrimp. This dish itself is also dry and fresh, unlike the traditionally greasy flavors, marking an adaptation to modern tastes.