Shanghai's other cuisines: Sichuan, Cantonese, northern wheat and halal food, not just benbang

The flavour Shanghai is remembered for is benbang: soy and sugar, braises, river fish. That cooking is the city’s own, but only one of its tastes. Shanghai has been a migrant city since it opened as a treaty port: people came from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Shandong, Anhui and Hubei, settled among their own, and brought their kitchens. The Sichuan, Cantonese, northern, north-western, Hunan, Yunnan, Jiangnan and Japanese and Korean food here exists because they eat it daily. Eat only benbang and you miss most of the city’s population.

Why these cuisines cook well here

A shop selling only xiaomian, or only roast meat, survives on a steady crowd from home: the Sichuaners, Cantonese and Hunanese who come daily and stop coming if the taste is wrong. Supply is the second reason, with Sichuan pepper, bean paste, cured pork, wild mushrooms and Japanese and Korean ingredients all arriving reliably. Competition is the third: several shops of a kind on one street push price and skill into place.

The hot line: Sichuan and Chongqing, Hunan, Yunnan

Sichuan and Chongqing. The frame is ma la: chilli for heat, Sichuan pepper for numbness, Pixian bean paste for salt and colour. Shanghai’s advantage is completeness: hotpot, skewers, the rougher restaurant repertoire, small noodle shops and cold dishes each have specialists, and both Chongqing beef-fat and Chengdu clear-oil hotpot bases exist. Decades of migration left a clientele that eats chilli daily, so the kitchen need not dilute for visitors.

Hunan. Hunan’s heat is different: fragrant, dry, sour, from chopped salted chilli, pickled chilli, cured pork and smoke, without Sichuan pepper. Stir-fries and steamed dishes are the core: chopped chilli fish head, farmhouse stir-fried pork, steamed cured meats. Shanghai does the stir-fry and the chain well, fast and cheap; cured meat is the weak point, its smoke flattened by central supply.

Yunnan. Sour heat, herbs and fermentation: rice noodles, chicken steamed in a clay pot, wild mushrooms, the lemongrass and lime of Dai cooking. These depend on air freight: summer is mushroom season and a mushroom hotpot is worth waiting for; rice noodles run all year, with broth that varies greatly.

The rest: Cantonese, northern wheat, halal, Jiangnan neighbours, Japan and Korea

Cantonese. Steaming, poaching, roast meats, long-simmered soup, dim sum: light heat, clean flavour. Shanghai has always had the business-dining clientele this cooking serves: the high end is careful (steamed fish, roast goose, old-fire soup), the everyday level is the cha chaan teng and the roast-meat counter, and the gap is wide.

Northern wheat. Here the noodle is the point, hand-rolled, knife-shaved or hand-pulled, with dumplings and steamed buns eaten for chew and wheat flavour. Shanghai noodles are about the topping; northern ones about the noodle, its braise and broth. This is usually the cheapest and most everyday category, carried by workers and students from Shandong, the north-east and the north-west.

North-western halal. Xinjiang lamb skewers, big-plate chicken, naan, pilaf and laghman; Lanzhou beef noodles; Xi’an paomo and roujiamo. The characters qingzhen are the operator’s own declaration, and the food concentrates around the historic mosques and the Xinjiang restaurants; is there halal food in Shanghai takes that further. Big-plate chicken is one pot for several people, naan the staple.

Jiangnan neighbours. Ningbo’s salt-forward cured food, Shaoxing’s dried greens and rice wine, Yangzhou’s shredded bean curd and lion’s head meatballs, Anhui’s fermented mandarin fish and hairy tofu. These share soy, sugar, curing and river fish with benbang, so the difference is the smallest here.

Japan and Korea. Izakaya, ramen, sushi, yakiniku; Korean barbecue, fried chicken, cold noodles and soup rice. Shanghai has a large population of Japanese and Korean corporate families, and supermarkets and supply chains moved with them, so the restaurants serve that community first and visitors second. Menus run in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and English, and service goes late.

Localisation: less numbing, less salt, more sugar

Three changes affect almost every cuisine. Less numbing: Sichuan pepper is cut back or replaced with pepper oil, so numbness becomes a thread of fragrance rather than a numb tongue: a relief to anyone who never liked it, a loss to anyone who came for it. Less salt: Hunan cured meat, north-western lamb and broth, Sichuan bean paste are pulled back, and salt returns to a Jiangnan register. More sugar: a spoon of sugar rounds off heat and salt, the muscle memory of a benbang kitchen; fish-fragrant and kung pao already contain sugar, and Shanghai versions are sweeter.

Add less heat and you have the city’s version. The honest part: someone who has eaten the original will say it is not the same dish, someone who has not will say they did not know it could be this good, and both are right: they are not eating the same dish. The change is not uniform: mall chains change most, neighbourhood shops run by people from the region change least, high-end Sichuan and Cantonese kitchens come closest to the original. Nor is change decline: a city’s cuisines always move, and Sichuan food in Guangzhou and Cantonese food in Chengdu move too.

How to build a table: Sichuan, Cantonese, and dishes that share a name

A Sichuan table: one or two cold dishes (sliced beef in chilli oil, chicken in chilli sauce); one or two ma la mains (fish in chilli broth, blood curd stew, twice-cooked pork); one dish with no ma la to reset the palate; one vegetable, dry-fried green beans or stir-fried cabbage; rice. Ma la takes two dishes; the rest bring the tongue back. Hotpot is another meal: a split pot, a sesame-oil and garlic dip, tripe and duck intestine for ten or fifteen seconds, meat before vegetables.

A Cantonese table: soup first; one steamed or poached dish (steamed fish, poached prawns, poached chicken); one roast meat; one stir-fry; one green vegetable with garlic; rice or congee. Morning tea is separate: a pot of tea, then three or four dim sum (prawn dumplings, rice-sheet rolls, char siu buns).

Same names cause the most confusion. Fish-fragrant pork slivers in Sichuan are pickled chilli, ginger, garlic, sugar and vinegar, with no fish; the Shanghai version is sweeter and has more vegetables. Twice-cooked pork uses belly or hind leg with garlic shoots and bean paste, and outside Sichuan often becomes green pepper and onion. Hunan stir-fried pork uses long green chilli and belly for dry fragrance; Sichuan’s salt-fried pork is another dish. Sweet-and-sour ribs in benbang cooking are soy and sugar reduced to a glaze, while Cantonese sweet-and-sour pork is battered and fried with pineapple. Asking which region’s method a dish follows beats reading its name.

Three practical points: dishes are shared and ordered for the table, not per person, as how to order in a Shanghai restaurant sets out; at the same quality, Sichuan, Hunan and northern wheat cooking costs less than benbang, for ingredients and clientele rather than standard; and the menu may have no English, with pictures and QR codes in chains and a phone camera in a neighbourhood shop.

Heat, neighbourhoods, and a few honest words

In a Shanghai Sichuan restaurant, medium is roughly Chengdu’s mild to medium; in a chain, mild often means a little red oil; in a Chongqing hotpot place, mild is already hot. Medium is a house habit, not a standard, so ask how hot their mild is before ordering.

How you ask matters more than what you ask. State your own limit rather than judging the food: you cannot eat much chilli, please make it mild. To be precise: less chilli, keep the Sichuan pepper, which keeps the fragrance and drops the heat. Asking for no Sichuan pepper dismantles the dish; choose another. Asking for no heat at all in a kitchen built on ma la gets a dish with no centre, and if you eat no chilli at all, Cantonese food is easier.

Where to look, by kind of area: office and business districts at midday, for Sichuan and Hunan rice plates, Cantonese roast meat and Japanese set meals; university neighbourhoods, for Lanzhou beef noodles, Xinjiang food and rice noodles; the western and south-western districts where Japanese and Korean families live; old residential areas and market streets, for skewers, braised meats and noodle shops; mall restaurant floors, for chains with picture menus; the streets around the historic mosques, for halal food. Good kitchens are rarely in the tourist centre, and the busiest blocks are built for itineraries.

Who it suits: anyone in Shanghai for more than three days, anyone who dislikes sweet food, groups since dishes are shared, vegetarians since Sichuan and Yunnan kitchens hold the most vegetable dishes (is vegetarian food easy in Shanghai explains how to ask), and anyone on a budget. Who can skip it: someone with one evening who wants to taste Shanghai itself, someone who eats no chilli, someone who needs an English menu and a quiet room.

If you try one, try Sichuan first: the most widespread, the most clearly structured, running from hotpot to a bowl of noodles, and the plainest place to watch the localisation at work. The hardest to eat well here is Yunnan: mushrooms have a season, and lemongrass, lime and cured ham do not travel, so most restaurants serve a sweet-sour Dai version. For comfort, go Cantonese; to see how the population is laid out, go Sichuan. Benbang is the other road, and how to order a benbang meal covers it.