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Shanghai Classic Restaurant Ltd – Calgary, AB

While I was making some dumplings at home, I really wanted to eat some Chinese food for lunch. We did some searching and found Shanghai Classic Restaurant which we were confused as it’s name says it’s both Shanghai and Peking style Chinese food. It didn’t matter though, we still went in for food!

We went at an off lunch (late) time, and we were surprised with the amount of customers they had inside! It was very exciting that they were pretty much packed!

We sat down and ordered all the things I love. We started with Pan fried dumplings which was really nicely done. The flavours weren’t the best, but we have had worse! So, we were still really happy. The skin was a bit thick but the filling was really good.

Then, we had an order of Shanghai Noodles which has been one of my favourites for a long time, and I still liked it here. It was too greasy for my liking, but it was well flavoured and tasted good regardless. At the end, we just picked out the noodles, pork and mushrooms, and left the grease with everything else.

Finally, I like anything with condensed sweetened milk, and I ordered some Steamed Mantou with the condensed milk. My favourite is when we fry it, but it was a greasy enough meal. The bun was supposed to be a “silver thread bun”, but as you can see, it didn’t have too much “thread”, so I’m calling it a mantou. They were quite stingy on the condensed milk too, which was disappointing as that’s usually my highlight!

Overall, it was a decent meal. We enjoyed it, we were happy and full. However, it isn’t worth my trip there as it is at the other side of the city.

Shanghai Classic Restaurant Ltd on Urbanspoon

Shanghai Classic Restaurant Ltd

8282 Centre St N
Calgary, AB
(403) 295-1323

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Jiajia Steamed Tang Bao 佳家汤包 – Shanghai, China

We found this amazing tang bao location at Huang He Lu which is directly north of People’s Square, which is an amazing place recommended to us by our hotel concierege! It’s apparently very famous for not only their tang baos, but ji ya xue tang as well.

We of course started out with their regular Xian Rou Xiao Long which is their fresh pork buns which we think are made to order and then steamed to perfection! These were our favourite xiao long bao on the entire trip! They won first place in our books! The skin was super thin and delicate with lots of amazing stuffing and soup inside!

There were also 2 other flavours of these tang bao that we tried. One of them was their Hai Fen Xian Rou Xiao Long which translates to crab meat and fresh pork buns! These were amazing! When you bite into it, you definitely know there’s some crab/seafood in there – yet it’s not fishy or over powering! It was a great combination and something to drool over!

The last flavour of the tang bao we tried was their Dan Huang Xian Rou Xiao Long which this one translates to egg yolk with the pork bun! These were really good as well, yet not our absolute favorite, we still ate another 2 orders of this! 🙂 So, not our absolute favourite yet eating about 30 of them tells you something about this place! WE LOVE IT!

Lastly, here’s something that is special to this place and area. It’s Duck and Chicken Blood Soup which is also known here as Ji Ya Xue Tang. The chicken and duck blood was so soft and jello like, it was really good! The flavour of the broth was fragrant too! It’s not as gross as it sounds as I have some co-workers who think I’m nasty… but, they don’t know! 🙂

Now, with this blog post posted – this is our absolutely favourite place that we discovered on the trip! We highly recommend this place, and be aware it gets busy really fast!! So, be patient, you’ll love it!!

Jiajia Steamed Tang Bao 佳家汤包

90 Huanghe Lu, by Fengyang Lu

Shanghai, China

+82 21 6327 6878

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Bellagio Cafe 鹿港小镇 – Shanghai, China

We ventured to the Super Brand Mall in Shanghai and found a great place for dinner called Bellagio Cafe and it’s located on the 8th Floor of the mall and relatively easy to find! It’s closer to the IMAX, if it helps! 🙂

We ordered a bunch of dishes and shared it, Asian style! We first started with their Black Pepper Beef on Iron Plate which smelled and tasted absolutely amazing! The amount of pepper used was the perfect amount on beautifully tender pieces of beef!

We also tried Steamed Shrimp with Garlic and I know it doesn’t sound too appetizing, but it was absolutely amazing! The shrimp was really fresh and steamed to perfection. Tons of garlic on top of the shrimp – so luckily we all had at least one piece!

From there, with us being so Asian, we ordered some rice, Taiwanese Fried Rice, and it’s quite different from the fried rice that I’m use to! It is very similar, but different! Usually the main difference between Chinese fried rice and Taiwanese fried rice will be in the egg cooking format. Chinese will basically make scrambled eggs or an omelette first, while the Taiwanese will crack the raw egg into the fried rice and then mix it up.

A very traditional and popular Taiwanese dish is the Three cup chicken (三杯鸡) which is made with 1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup rice wine and 1 cup sesame oil. This recipe will make TONS of chicken, so it’s nice to modify it and Bellagio Cafe definitely modifies it and adds other ingredients such as ginger and basil into the dish to make it extra special!

My husband actually has Hakka ancestors so it was neat to him to find a dish done in this style. When he saw Hakka Stir Fry Dried Squid an Celery he ordered it! It is exactly as it sounds! Most of Taiwanese cooking is derived from 3 simple ingredients, and this dish shows the simplicity of their cooking with rice wine, soy sauce and some sugar! This dish was so simple yet so delicious!

We actually ordered a dessert or 2 for this meal, and the most memorable dessert was their Mango Pancake which was a mango crepe that was really thin around some light cream with some mango inside. It was light and airy and actually kind of refreshing! We really enjoyed this and I ate up my husbands half of the dessert! 🙂

Overall, we loved this place and it’s a place we would recommend for Taiwanese food! It’s neat to see Shanghai has different types of Asian cuisine and it’s actually done properly! The food, service and atmosphere ranks top notch for sure!

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Yong He 永和大王 – Shanghai, China

During our stay in Shanghai, we switched hotels to be in a different location. We ended up staying near the Shanghai Railway Station, and near there is Yong He Da Huang for breakfast and loved the location of our new hotel as it’s close to public transportation, other hotels and lots of good eats!

Once you enter this store front, you’re in the main ordering area where they take your order and you can either go into the back and pick up your order for take out, or sit down and wait for dine in. We did the dine in as we weren’t on a schedule so we can relax. We ordered their Red Beef Noodle Soup 紅燒牛肉麵 with of course some Xiao Long Bao, and I was quite impressed with the bowl of noodles! It had tons of flavour and it wasn’t as greasy as it looks! The beef was tender, and the noodles were excellent! The xiao long bao was in the top ranking too! The skin was thicker than some of the other ones we had on this journey, but it was delicious!

The other items we ordered were some Dou Jiang (豆漿) as it’s “the” thing to drink for us – and for those who don’t know what it is, it’s soy bean drink! The other item that looks pretty funny in the picture is actually Chinese fried dough or You Tiao 油条 wrapped in a thin omelette, with some sauce. It was a greasy and interesting.

We really liked this place! It was pretty local yet in a touristy area, and the food was cheap and delicious! It was fun and convenient as it was a 24 Hour shop!

Hong He 永和大王

梅园店
中亚饭店一层，太平洋火车站店对面
021-63179503

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NanXiang Steamed Bun Bread Shop 南翔饅頭店 – Shanghai, China

We were thinking about delicious xiao long bao and asked our hotel concierge about a great place for them, and they suggested to us to visit Cheng Huang Temple by Yu Garden. From there, we walked around a bit and found a super long line and looked up at the sign… there, it said NanXiang Steamed Bun, so we got in line and waited about 40 minutes before we got to order.

The menu wasn’t extensive at the street level, but there is an eatery upstairs full of food and other options. Of course, we just stayed in line and ordered their famous xiao long bao Steamed Bun with Pork Stuffing was their English translation. The skin was quite thin and delicate and the soup inside the dumpling was phenomenal! It was one of the best we’ve ever had!

Another item that we saw a ton of people order (but not nearly as much as their dumplings was their Steamed Bun with Crab Roe and apparently the locals eat it by sucking the soup out of the bun first, then then eat the bun. Good thing we watched them!

Overall, this was a fantastic place for us to visit! We really appreciated the recommendation and the neat thing is, it’s kind of famous here!! It was so good and the location was great for both locals and tourist. The shopping area around this place is apparently known to be a bit cheaper than the rest of the places. So, it’s a win-win for us for sure!