Shanghai Flavor

Very nice lunch place with great service! Authentic food. Will definitely come back :)

A little awkward while waiting to be seated, we were standing at the doorway between two tables with people eating at them. We were seated pretty quickly and they set our table and gave us tea. The tea pot only had one tea bag in it which made very watery tea. I didn’t think much of this at first but then they came by and grabbed our chopstick papers and put them in a drawer to reuse I assume, which leads me to think they they purposefully gave us one tea bag to save money.
Besides that slightly uncomfortable part the food was great and we will most likely eat there again.

Not bad Chinese restaurant comparing to the others within the neighborhood. Nothing special about their food or this particular restaurant but good quality food and fast service. The price isn’t too bad either.

Shanghai Flavor is my new favorite restaurant in the area! The food is great and so is the service — what more could you ask for?
I’ve come here a few times with my parents ever since moving back home to the area and we usually the classics like xiao long bao (soup dumplings), green onion pancakes and then a few other dishes that my parents pick out. However, my absolute favorite dish to eat here is the pan fried yellow croakers. They are basically small fish that are completely fried with all parts intact — head, tail, everything. I know it might not look very appealing but let me tell you, they are soo good! My second favorite dish here is the stir fried sticky rice cakes (nian gao). They can be a little on the flavorful end in terms of salty/​sweetness so just beware if you’re not a big fan of heavy flavor. The xiao long bao’s here are pretty good but sometimes when they’re busy, they tend to overcook them which causes all the soup inside to leak out. a little disappointing since the soup is arguably the best part.
Honestly, I would choose to eat here every week if I could! It’s a little restaurant and I love how the ladies always come and check up on you and chat with you for a bit. Just keep in mind that they do get fairly busy during dinner on the weekends and lunch during the weekdays so there will be a wait if you come at those times.

I would say this is my favorite Shanghai restaurant in the bay. Food is very fresh and well-​made. Service is excellent — you look at the way the owner lady handles costumers and you see why people keep coming back.
Dishes I recommend:
— sweet and sour ribs (糖醋排骨)
— stir fry vegetable with garlic （蒜炒鸡毛菜）
— pork kidney (酱爆腰花)

4.5 for the Shanghai style chow mien — This was solid and I was a huge fan
2.5 for the soup dumplings (xiaolong bao) — They weren’t bad but they definitely weren’t great. It was kind of a hit or miss. One dumpling had zero soup in it, one had soup and tasted good, and one was somewhere in between those first two.
I’d come back for the noodles because they were exactly what I wanted but I’d skip the soup dumplings. The rest of the menu looks pretty good though.

2.5−3÷5 stars
Booo, I came back b/​c i remembered how awesome the food was, but was a bit disappointed this time around.
Ordered:
1) XLB: 2.5÷5 why is it so hard to find good XLB in the bay area!!! There is only a SMALLLLL handful of restaurants nearby that have consistently good XLB with JUICE inside. The meat inside was not SUPER fresh either.
2) Green onion pancakes: ³⁄₅ – i have had better
3) Shredded pork in garlic sauce dry noodle: 3.5/5 – still my favorite
4) Beef noodle soup: ³⁄₅ good, but nothing special.
Eh, if I am in the area, I will give this place another try. Sad that my first memory of this place does not live up to this recent experience.

The Mandarin name of this place is pretty punny, with «noodles» (麵) to finish the pun that they have everything! And… I don’t even know how to carry on this joke.
I came here on a Sunday evening around 6:30 PM with a party of 6 others. The place was partially filled but we were quickly seated at the large family table.
We were quite hungry, so we quickly ordered:
–1 order of Shanghai meatballs (comes with 3 huge pieces) /​/​This is meant to be sweet, so don’t be shocked! It was juicy, soft and yummy! One big ball is enough for two to try.
–1 shredded pork green veggie noodle /​/​Generous portion, and we were able to give everyone a small bowl of this soup. It was «sour» just the way I like it! Noodles were yummy too!
–1 Shanghai style veggie and salted pork rice /​/​Came in a sizzling pot, and it was yummy! Not too oily and complemented well with whatever you choose to eat.
–1 order of salt and pepper pork /​/​SUPER SALTY. Either tell them to put less salt, or don’t order this at all.
–1 order of sweet and sour fried fish /​/​I like the fried fish! Legit fish inside, and I like that they put the sauce in a separate bowl from the fish. (But it also makes me question if they reuse the sauce by heating it up… see my «cons».)
–1 order of vegetables /​/​UM. Not sure what it is called, but I would say it’s a variety of vegetables, cooked, in a clay pot? It was coated with corn starch sauce (very typical), and it tasted fine to me. But not really a Shanghainese dish?
Pros:
–Food came out super quick! We waited about 15 minutes before our first bowl of soup came out. After that, everything came out at lightening speed!
–Super flavorful without sacrificing health! Maybe that should be worded a different way. «Healthy (for outside eating) without sacrificing taste!»
Cons:
–Some items are hit or miss, being too salty or just too pricey.
–Mediocre service. The middle aged lady was super nice but the older ladies were so rude! One left a bunch of plates and bowls on our table (because not all 8 seats were filled) and I assumed it was for us so I started laying them out. Who knew she came and blew up on me?
–This might gross some people out… but you know those chopstick holders that you leave on the table? Um, yeah. The old lady isn’t being nice and helping you throw it out. She actually collects them and reuses them! So… RIP THOSE THINGS INTO SHREDS. (Or at least rip them in half!)
Tips/​Observations:
–You can call in for togo if you choose to do so! Lots of people were doing that.
–Parking is spacious! The plaza is in the same as Marina Bay YongHe (not sure if that is the right name) and two doors down from Sweet Coco. Park as you please!
–Rip your chopstick paper holders… PLEASE.
Overall, would come here again with family, but not alone. The noodles though was a side dish (or it could be a main), but it was the perfect bounciness and made me coming back for more! I don’t know how «Shanghainese» these dishes are but to satisfy my inner Chinese, this will make do!

The entrees were pretty legit! The noodle soup had too much noodle, but other than that, they were pretty delicious — plain and simple.
As for the appetizers… the scallion/​green onion pancake was too fried, and didn’t have enough salt or scallions, making it rather bland. The Shanghai dumplings (xiao long bao or XLB) had too thick of a skin and not enough soup. I also think it may have been a bit oversteamed. Far from the best I’ve had or even some of the ones in San Francisco.
The waitresses are super friendly and welcoming though. Loved the complimentary boiled tea eggs as a pre-​appetizer! I’d come back to try some of their other dishes, but just not the pancake or XLB.

Food itself was 3.5 stars.
Big plus for service and friendliness. They gave us a free lu Dan (salted egg) per person for appetizer.
Shao long bao — good flavor with soup inside, but skin was pasty.
Green onion pancake — flaky and crispy, slightly bland
Sweet and sour spareribs — pretty good for lunch special price, came with hot and sour soup

So this place gets PACKED on the weekends. It is a neighborhood favorite so make sure you call ahead to see if they are busy and if they are, order take out! It’s still just as delicious and no wait :) I live really close by so I walk here to pick up my orders but each time, the waitresses are really nice to me and the kitchen is extremely quick with getting my order to me right away. I appreciate it and love the food.
My favorites:
Shanghai Style Sweet & Sour Pork Ribs
Black Pepper Beef
Kung Pao Chicken
Spicy Pork w/​Soy Bean Noodle

I came here on a whim to try some authentic Shanghainese dishes, and left pretty content with what I tried!
My favorite dish from that day was definitely the shrimp with vinegar. So simple, yet so tasteful! The cabbage soup with fish wasn’t too bad neither.
I hope to come back and try some more dishes… but maybe with one of my Chinese-​speaking friends. The language barrier here is a little too high to overcome, but in any case, it won’t stop me from trying good food!

Cheap eats and pretty good Shanghainese food! This restaurant is on the smaller side, so come early to avoid a potential wait. We got there a little after they opened, and were greeted and sat right away. We tried:
–Complimentary Roasted & Salted Peanuts: Delicious– one of the best complimentary roasted/​salted peanuts I’ve had in a long time.
–Bean Curd w/​Vegetables ($ 4.95,
): Good, and it’s more food than it looks like.
–Shanghai Steamed Juice Pork Buns/​Xiao Long Bao ($ 6.95,
): Pretty good– not the best XLB’s I’ve had but decent.
–Shanghai Green Onion Pancake ($ 2.95,
): Yum, a little on the greasy side, but had a good crisp and flavor.
–Noodles w/​Special Sesame Sauce ($ 5.95,
): A must order! I loved the sesame sauce and the crispy green onions in this dish.
–Braised Pork Upper Leg in Brown Sauce ($ 15.95,
): Also delicious, and a must order for any pork lover. The meat was super tender, and the skin was nice and gelatinous. This was also a large portion, so you really get your money’s worth.
Service was surprisingly decent, and the servers stopped by to check in on you. For a party of 4, we had a good amount of leftovers, so this is a good place to go for a cheap but tasty meal. I will definitely be back in the future for more Noodles with Sesame Sauce & Braised Pork! Parking can start getting difficult during the lunch rush, and it was already getting hard to find around 11am.

First off, the XLB was just ok. There was almost no soup inside. The skin is nice and tender, but minus the soup, it’s just regular dumpling.
I kind of dug the menu in its simplicity. It’s basically pick a topping to go on top of some clear broth noodle soup. It would be nice if they explained that though. However, I ended up picking the rice cake and thought it was pretty good. A few pieces of cake were cut way to thick though so they didn’t cook through. Otherwise, I thought the flavor profile was decent.
A nice bonus is the complementary tea egg at the beginning of the meal.

I’m not full Shanghainese nor do I consider even a part, but my grandparents are and I’ve had quite authentic dishes throughout my life. It was family day, and we drove from SF to the Livermore Outlets. We wanted yummy Shanghainese food and so I Unilocaled and this came out to be the highest rating. Four stars is pretty hard to obtain, so it must be good.
It was close to 7pm and we were the 2^nd party inside. Starving tummies, we ordered the usual and common dishes. (1) Rice cake noodles (2) Lion head (3) Shrimp, bean, tofu sauce (4) Plain noodle (5) Xiao long bao
*** Sorry for the inaccuracy names of my dish items
Rice cake noodle: Average dish. Some weren’t cooked all the way though…
Lion head: Probably the best dish out of the 5. Moist and light. It could have been even lighter though …
Shrimp, bean, tofu sauce: Very salty, below average.
Plain noodle: Noodles looked and tasted weird. Not the same texture as you would find in an authentic restaurant. Soup tasted like wonton msg. Didn’t even bother on drinking the soup.
Xiao long bao: Worse of all. I’m not sure why I saw quite a lot of high praise for it, but it’s probably on my list of worse xiao long baos. Sorry, I really tried to have an open mind, but it was terrible. Barely and soup, meat was too hard, tasted like a meatball. Vinegar could not salvage it. Honestly, I think the frozen ones I buy from the supermarket taste better than these.
Portions are small and the bill makes you cry :3
Such disappointment. One of the few times Unilocal’s rating did not meet expectations.

Shanghai Flavor has a lunch special menu (6.25) but they wouldn’t honor it today (½/​15) cuz it was a «holiday», (translated: owner is greedy). noticed waitress was from a milpitas shanghai eatery i used to frequent.
eats:
–xiao lung bao (8/6.95)
not much soup, meat flavorful
msg aftertaste, ginger slivers, vinegar nice
below average
–green onion pancake (2.75)
sliced into 8 slices
greasy, chewy, crispy, thin
4 stars for value, other places $ 5, thick dough.
–flavor average or slightly above.
leftovers:
–noodle bowls looked large. (almost $ 8)
–menu pricey cuz of location.
–wouldn’t return, msg a factor.
–eatery almost empty noon time, 4 tables?

Followed the Unilocal reviews on a rainy night to Shanghai Flavor. It was after 8 pm and there were only two other tables besides us the whole night. We ordered some distinctive Shanghainese dishes :
Sauteed Shrimp 4 stars
Sauteed Eel 4 stars
Drunken Chicken 2 stars over cooked and was marinating for a long time.
Sauteed Liver and Kidney 4 stars.
All the portions of the dishes were small. The prices are not cheap for the small portions. The service was good. There is plenty of parking and the place is clean.

The holy grail search for authentic & delicious Chinese food in the Bay Area continues. Unfortunately there was no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.
***小笼包 [XIAOLONGBAO]
You can’t always tell from looking at Xiaolongbao if it’ll be good, but you can tell if it’ll be disappointing. These sloppy & sad sacks lacked the attention & detail that makes this item such a high value & artsy commodity. The exterior was too doughy. The interior wasn’t as disappointing as I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t going to win any awards – the meat stuffing wasn’t ground sufficiently, and although there was enough soup, the aspic that produced it was lacking that buttery essence that makes you sell your grandma for the stuff. Not awful, but not worth ordering.
***油面筋塞肉 [FRIED GLUTEN WRAPPERS STUFFED WITH GROUND PORK AND STEWED]
The gluten was quite proper, nice and velvety. The stew was pleasantly flavored, though not overly impressive. The main problem was that the ground pork was 1) again not ground sufficiently, too firm, and 2) lacking the flavor of all the savorous goodies like ginger, green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, and egg, etc. It just tasted like a sloppily ground hunk of plain meat. Served with slightly tough bok choy.
***糟溜鱼片 [FISH SLICES IN FERMENTED RICE SAUCE]
The fermented rice sauce wasn’t strong enough, tasted like they were catering toward the non-​Shanghainese crowd. The fish itself wasn’t the least bit fishy, which was nice, but with only flavorless wood ear to accompany it (and a weak sauce), there was really nothing to grab onto here.
***茭白炒青椒肉丝 [STIR FRIED WILD RICE SHOOTS WITH GREEN PEPPER & PORK STRIPS]
The pork strips were nice and tender. The wild rice shoots were fresh, didn’t taste frozen as they do at many places. The main deficiency here was that they used an American green bell pepper rather than the proper mildly spicy Chinese green chili pepper – this detail a big difference to the overall flavor.
ALL IN ALL:
The food was certainly authentic – you could find food like this in Shanghai. However, if I was in Shanghai, you probably wouldn’t see me frequenting this restaurant.

I work really close to here. How I have not been here before? I think I just forget about Shanghainese food when I crave «Chinese». Well, I hope to not make that mistake anymore.
3 of us came here, and we were pretty hungry, so that probably got the better of us!
We ordered:
2 orders of xiao long bao
beef noodle soup thing
sesame noodles
fried rice
green onion pancakes
Surprisingly or rather sadly, we finished all the food. We could have skipped on one of the noodles and one order of the xiao long bao.
I really enjoyed the green onion pancakes. They are crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. The beef noodles and the fried rice are pretty standard fare. Not amazing, not something I would call poor. The xiao long bao was really good. I don’t think I’ve had dumplings this good in a while. I’ll be back for just this, especially come winter. :) The sesame noodles might be bit of an acquired taste. They are cold noodles with a sesame based sauce. You stir it up yourself, and enjoy. I liked it, but I can see how it might not be for everyone.
This place is tiny, and you have to expect «Chinese restaurant» service. The price was very reasonable. The three of us had a larger bill the previous week at a «boba’ place just snacking on things like popcorn chicken and tea.

Incredibly budget-​friendly and motherly restaurant within the Marina plaza, but unfortunately not the best Shanghainese food I’ve had. My dad frequently goes to Shanghai for business trips, and I’ve had the pleasure of journeying there myself for the wide variety of scrumptious cuisine, so I might be a harsher judge of Shanghainese food than some.
This is a rather small, casual restaurant located almost right next to the bustling T4, and I’d read good reviews about it. I came here with a group of old high school friends on a Friday evening, and perhaps half the tables were filled. The two older female waitresses were incredibly friendly and motherly (to the point I had to double check to make sure neither of them were my mom). Service was maybe a tiny bit slow, but with just the two of them, it was understandable.
Tea was served in a china teapot, and there were complimentary salted peanuts (
) set out on each table. These were incredibly fresh and delicious, some of the best I’ve ever had. The complimentary ticket was the cherry on top.
Green onion pancake:
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)
These were slightly crunchy and flaky on the outside, while still pretty soft on the inside. I think I still prefer Darda’s in Milpitas green onion pancake, but these weren’t bad. The portion was rather small though.
La jiang mian (spicy sauce noodles):
(
)
This restaurant doesn’t serve Zha Jiang Mian, much to the disappointment of my friend, but they did have this slightly spicy variation. I thought the noodles were boiled really well, and the sauce wasn’t bad. It wasn’t really similar to Zha Jiang Mian in my opinion, and it veered a tiny bit towards the salty side.
Vegetable and salted pork rice:
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)
This is a famous Shanghainese dish, and my other friend was obsessed with it. It came in a piping hot clay pot, rather like the dolsot bibimbap of Korean cuisine. I thought it was flavorful, but the pork was incredibly salty and the rice was little soggy. Perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to be, but I didn’t find myself loving this dish.
Xiao long bao:
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)
I’ve had some amazing xiao long baos in both Shanghai as well as Beijing, and I’ve yet to find somewhere on this side of the Pacific that compares. With that being said, this dish isn’t the best I’ve had in the states. The skins were chewy and elastic, which was nice, but the filling was rather bland and there wasn’t much soup from them. They did serve this with the traditional slivers of ginger drowned in black vinegar though, and I enjoyed that.
Lion head (meatballs):
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Shi zi tou. Possibly one of the most ridiculous names for a dish I’ve always thought. My friend agreed with me and repeated «they don’t look like lion heads at all» multiple times. These meatballs were gigantic and quite moist, but the sauce was way too sweet. I felt like I was eating oversweet unagi sauce, and unagi sauce is already pretty sweet on its own.
Mapo tofu:
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)
I’ve never been a fan of mapo tofu in general, but the tofu used here wasn’t the silky kind; it was a little firmer, but not as firm as medium. The sauce was also a little strange, and I didn’t really get that fragrant ground pork taste either. Overall, it was just a bit bland and unmemorable.
Fermented rice wine dessert with sesame balls:
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I’m so obsessed with osmanthus (how many times have I mentioned this by now?), and I was so happy that there were dried osmanthus flowers in this dessert. I feel like they just sprinkled them in towards the end though, so the flavor didn’t really come through. Some soaking beforehand might have helped. There were also sesame-​filled sticky balls in this dessert when usually it’s just plain sticky balls, and I was a fan of that.
The bill came out to be really reasonable for the variety of dishes we ordered, but the portions were rather petite. I’m glad I got to try this place out, but unless I were in desperate need of a Shanghainese fix and didn’t have a China trip planned any time in the foreseeable future, I might journey elsewhere.