In the morning if you walk down streets with food vendors/breakfast shops, you might see people crowding around big bamboo steamers full of white buns. These buns, or "bao zi" are stuffed with meat, veggies, or sweat bean paste. Another variation is called "mantou," which has no stuffing in it, but may have sesame or chopped scalions sprinkled on them. Each costs only $.40-.85RMB, and I always thought that if I ever run out of money, I can still afford these baozi... A soy milk drink complements it well. "Babi" is a quite popular chain around Shanghai, and they have a slogan "have you Babied today?' Good baozi should be soft and full of stuffing. Eat them while hot!
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Tags: breakfast,
chinese
You can see these on streets near residential areas everywhere in Shanghai. These dinky (sometime dirty-looking) noodle shops are usually owned by Muslims from Lanzhou, the capital city of the western province Gansu, but could be owned by other out-of-towners from the northern regions also. Because they're very cheap compared to other types of food, many laborers like to eat in these shops. For $4-10RMB, you can get a big bowl of freshly made noodles with some meat topping. Most have photos of the different noodles so you can just point to the one you want. You can try the "dao xiao mian", which is noodles that's shaved off from a big dough by a sharp, curvy blade. The only thing is that the soup tends to be pretty oily so you might not want to drink it. Check to see if the shop is decently clean. A good sign is if the workers are wearing the Muslim caps and the floor is not full of oily noodles (this is just my guess 
.
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I found this surprising authentic and atmospheric muslim restaurant after taking my visitors to shop for the fake stuff at the Tech Museum subway underground shopping street. It's tucked in amidst a row of fastfood eats. We ordered some lamb over rice and noodle dishes (standard Xinjiang fares) and also some yogurt dip with our doner kabop. Everything was so tasty that even my ABC cousins who've had food trouble ever since they got to China had a smile on their faces. We also got a free Uyghur guitar singing session from the waiter, who had just arrived in Shanghai from Xinjiang a week before. I will definitely recommend this place to anyone who takes the trouble to go all the way out there to shop. In Kurdish, Gulistan means the "Land of Roses" --- I had to look that one up...
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I found out about this little cake shop on SH 2 weeks ago, and since then me and my friends have already gone back twice. They share the first floor of a pretty renovated old building on XiangYang Rd near FuXing Rd with Frangipani Nails. I wouldn't say it beat out my all-time favorite fresh whip cream choco cake from HongYe in Taipei, but it's up there. It only sells 3 kinds of 6" chocolate cakes --- pure chocolate, chocolate banana, and chocolate rum cherry. The cakes are not on display so there's not much to look at in the shop. They will also have a few ice cream products coming soon. This is a Singapore chain that also has opened a shop in Beijing. I asked about the delivery service and they said it will be available very soon. That's a very sinful service they'll be offering... They should also sell their cakes into cafes around Shanghai to expand their footprint. Sure don't want them to close shop like they did in Taipei...
For those who can't to buy a whole pie every week, you can get a mini satisfaction at Whisk Cafe, where they serve nice volcano chocolate cupcakes, which go perfectly w/ their mocha topped with chocolate syrup.
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