Shanghai Ding Sheng Restaurant

One of the better shaighai cuisine restaurants in the area; I liked many of their dishes that were balanced with meat and vegetables; not too heavy in flavor but kind of pleasant and refreshing; service was just OK and parking is usually a challenge around noon time on weekend!

I love this place but today when I go there I sadly found that they have closed the business. I really hope they will open again.

We always order the same items: cumin lamb, kung pao chicken, spicy fish curry with rice and tea. And we love them all. I have no idea how the rest of the menu is. But these items are yummy. Sometimes we swap the kung pao chicken for fried chicken which is a little oily and fatty. We ordered the casserole once and we didn’t care for it much. Overall a nice place and we visit very regularly.

This one is terrible. Food is not fresh. Trust me. I’m Chinese and I know what is good.

Do ＮＯＴ order anything related to fish, it stinks.
I went there twice, first time fish soup, second time a fish dish. Both not fresh.
When we complained about it, they just gave us excuses and nearly did nothing about it.
Other dishes are fine, so two stars.

Food was average. One of our guests complained about the bland soup.
What I would really like readers to know is… Well. My ten year old son went to use the restroom. Locked the door. The guy behind the counter actually used his key, unlocked the door, and went in to wash his hands. All while my son was in there. The only good news is that his older cousin witnessed the whole thing and kept him safe.
How do you say creepy in Shanghainese? Ding Sheng!

Be careful! If you don’t speak or read Chinese it can be a problem! I called ahead and got hung up on because I spoke English! However the picture menu takes care of everything!
However, the food was incredible, we had the braised pork belly with several veggie dishes, and everything was flavorful, fresh, and cooked perfectly. With 2 people and 4 dishes, we had zero leftovers!

Not a busy place for lunch, so it was easy to get the waiter’s attention for anything. Compared to a lot of the other places in the area, this place was one of the cleaner ones.
Food came straight from the kitchen. The fried potato pancake was HOT! The dumplings were HOTTER! I’ve learned to never pop a dumpling in my mouth ever again.

Shanghaiese type of food in the ABC plaza next to milpitas square.
I would say the food was OK to good, none of the dishes really blew me away. I guess you could say its a no frills sorta restaurant.
Very clean restaurant, medium sized. It gets pretty busy during lunch as they have pretty cheap lunch specials. (and large portions)
So far i’ve tried the roasted pork, fresh water eel, sweet and sour ribs, onion pancake, and stir fried greens.
The roasted pork came out nice and warm, and the area’s where there was a lot of fat tasted good as expected. But the leaner parts of the piggy was somewhat dry.
The fresh water ell was served with bamboo shoots. if you love your japanese unagi you’ll enjoy this dish as well.
The ribs came in small pieces, tasted good, but quite salty which makes me believe they may use a lot of MSG.
Stir fried greens and the onion cake were pretty much your standard chinese dishes.
The staff are friendly and nice, but with several other restaurants serving similar type of dishes, it’ll probably be awhile before i visit again.

It was a cold and rainy Monday, so I was looking for some hearty carbs.
Cold Cucumbers Appetizers
It was crispy and peppy with sesame oil and vinegar.
Shanghai Thick Chow Mein
This was my favorite dish of the night. Well seasoned (many places tend to be timid with the flavoring), excellent chew, it was enriched with julienne of beef and lightened strips of with baby bok choy. I would have eaten the whole plate if I didn’t have 2 more dishes coming.
Shanghai Dumpling
They are a little larger than I am accustomed to, but they were tasty. It was very meaty and aromatic with green onions. The filling was tender without being mealy.
Xiao Lung Bao
This is what I imagine XLBs were like 30 years ago, before the modern mutants took over. Don’t get me wrong, I like the modern mutants, but I do miss the meat. Their dumplings were still juicy, just not the liquid centers that most places boasts these days. The broth was succulent and sincere (nectar from the meat of the dumpling, not a supplemental aspic that they mix into the filling). Flavors were balanced with just a hint of ginger. It was retro, but I find it nostalgic and refreshing.
Next time I’m here, I’m going to try the salted egg yolk encrusted crab.

eh. efficient and quick service. Business was not that crowded as one would expect during at Saturday night. The food was yummy though. The only draw back I had was this one female waitress. I believe she was middle eastern? Anyways, after the meal, my aunts and uncles were just conversing with each other and she kept giving me the «stink eye» like I was the culprit. Did not like her. There were also strange food combinations I’ve never heard of such as fried ribs. All of the sauces were the same color though. All this kind of soy sauce-​y brown color.

I was enticed by the new 3 items for $ 19.99 promotion for weekday lunch.
3 of us ordered a set of $ 20 (3 dishes), 3 appetizers and a shrimp dish, total came out to over $ 60 with tax and tip, and in my opinion, none of the dishes really hit the spot in taste, see details below.
Service is definitely above average for a Chinese restaurant, thus 4 stars for décor/​cleanness /​service… like the large aquarium tank in the front, the clean glass windows and the table clothes.
food:
– shrimp (simply stir-​fried) — $ 15 — a good amount of shrimp, but the taste is so-​so… plus no green stuff to make the dish «prettier»
– appetizers: 5 flavour beef — terrible, dry; wheat gluten — super sweet, and the whole dish is very glue-​y, not my style; smoked fish — a bit bland, but the best of the 3.
– 3 dishes for $ 20 — lion head meatballs: large, but unknown stuffing, taste alright; seafood tofu pot — terrible, over fried tofu and glue-​y seafood (too much corn starch); black woodear mushroom and fish fillet — this dish should be a bit sour w/​the black vinegar flavour, but just like the smoked fish, BLAND…
overall, $ 60+ for the amount of food is slightly above avg. Chinese restaurant in this plaza, but the important point is that the flavour is not there…
Oh, I can definitely feel the MSG since I was super thirsty afterwards…

Went here for lunch and was really disappointed. I hate writing bad reviews, but I don’t want other people to make the same mistake we did. Do NOT order their Honey Walnut Shrimp. I normally love this dish at other restaurants, but what we received was disgusting! It honestly looked and tasted like those thick-​battered fried shrimps you would get at a fast food place, that was just smothered in mayonaise. There was no honey flavor and even when I tried to wipe some of the batter and mayonaise off, the shrimp tasted sour. Needless to say, we did not eat much of this dish. I wanted to send it back, but I felt really bad so we just paid for it and let it go to waste.
Their xiao long bao was mediocre, the filling was okay but the skin was tough and most of the soup had already leaked out. Their seafood noodles were also okay, but kind of bland. I really wanted to like this place, but sadly we will not be coming back.

I’ve been coming here for almost a decade and not too much has changed, even the employees, which is not necessarily a bad thing. All the dishes are solid, slightly on the salty side and a tad greasy, but I love their salted egg tofu, which probably explains that.
The main reason I’m writing this is because I am on the hunt for the best XLB (xiao long bao) in the Bay. I am one of the biggest fans of Din Tai Fung, if not the biggest. I have placed their XLB on a pedestal from the first time I went in Hong Kong. There have been quite a few competitors in the area, but Ding Sheng is up and running and they don’t even know it. This makes it even better, so they don’t raise prices and I can place multiple orders at a time and still receive the care necessary for each little dumpling. The wrapper is slightly thick, but I think their meat mixture is very very good. For $ 6.85/ 8 dumplings, it will do well in curbing my cravings until I can get back down to so-​cal.
The service is as good as the food. The dishes are slightly more expensive for the area, but are also a slightly higher standard. I’m sensitive to MSG and I can tell they don’t hold back here, but because of their delicious XLB I’m giving it a 3. I will definitely return later this week for a fix.

This seems to be the most popular spot for our coworker meetings, mainly because my boss loves it…
According to my boss, they have pretty authentic Shanghai food. Their food is not bad for the price, taste ok with pretty big portion. Lunch specials are definitely worth the price!
If you expect something fancy, don’t go there~! If you want something fast yet good, and you like shanghai food, give it a try!

Mondays are my easy day at work. So I had time for a long dinner. So I jumped in the Work Whip and rolled to Shanghai Ding Sheng. I walked in and was Greeted and Seated. I was presented with a Pot of Tea and a Menu.
I ordered the Smoke Roasted Duck., Kung Pao Chicken and Steam Rice.
While I was waiting, I looked at the Décor of the Restaurant which was nice updated and they had an awesome Salt Water Fish Tank
setup.
My food was brought out 10 minutes later. Nice size Portions. I started out on the Duck first. It tasted like a Smoked Ham which was interesting and Sublime. The Duck was very Tasty, Lean and Meaty but not oily .
The Kung Pao Chicken was very Tasty also I ate half of it and took the rest to go.
My Waiter brought the Check and a Bowl of Desert Soup which was pretty Yummy.
Would also make a great Date Joint..

Very disappointed. On my most recent visit this place was much worse than I remembered. Perhaps my memory was failing me. I thought they serve half decent Shanghainese food.
Drunken Chicken — Dry chicken meat and uninteresting sauce.
Spicy Beef Combo — Nothing special about this. The sauce was spicy but lacks a lot of other flavors.
Xiao Long Bao — Very mushy and flimsy. Some already broke by the time they were served and the soup leaked. Taste was alright. though
Shanghai Style Spring Rolls — Not too bad but the spring roll were tough rather than crispy. Have to chew through the skin.
Spicy Pig Blood Stew (excuse me for not knowing the exact English name they used on the menu) — Relatively better than other dishes. It is a spicy stew with bean sprouts, fish and pork blood cubes. If you are into pork blood you will probably like this.
Deep fried pumpkin with red bean paste — I am a sucker for most things pumpkin so would I say this is not a bad dish. A bit oily and not crispy enough on the outside but I would still eat this again.
Will I eat here again out of my own free will? Probably not. Granted most people only come to this little Asian Plaza for cheap eats or late night meals, there are still quite a few better places to choose from.

BAH! I hate doing this to any restaurant that I said I enjoyed, but I have to bring these guys down a star.
My parents and I enjoyed our lunch so much last time we definitely to go there again for lunch.
This experience was a little different.
We ordered the white fish again, but the fish was not fresh at all. It had an incredibly fishy smell and taste to it. When we called the waiter and he smelled it, he apologized quickly and took the dish away. He offered to replace the dish with anything we wanted. That was nice of him.
The food definitely wasn’t as good the second time around. The bamboo with pork lacked taste and needed more pork. The sweet and sour shrimp was actually good, but lacked portion.
In the end, still recommend the place if you want to try some authentic Shanghai food, but try to skip the fish.

SHANGHAI DING SHENG
I’m always on the lookout for good Shanghai food, but they are rare and far between. Usually, the ones I find are too greasy for my taste buds. Shanghai Ding Sheng has a very colorful menu that tastes as good as it looks. They have a pretty decent lunch menu with an average of ~$ 6.95 per dish, but each time that I’ve come, we’ve opted for the «dinner» menu because the pictures tell the tale of what to expect. The dishes look that good!
We tried to minced fish in lettuce bowls (4 of them), Shanghai sweet & sour pork, minced crabmeat, and pork tendon. The fish was excellent! The sweet & sour pork was a bit salty and tastes nothing like the typical fare you would find at other restaurants, but it wasn’t too bad once you start chowing on it. Another thing: the color is brown/​black vs. the traditional red. The crabmeat was great over rice and the pork tendons weren’t too bad either.
Come early to get seats during lunch as this place gets packed. I’m going to have to try their dim sum and Shanghai dumplings next time to truly testify how Shanghai the restaurant is, but so far, the food is of high quality and certainly satisfies the pallete!

SALT
SALT
…and more salt.
they have a large selection of lunch specials. portion size is good. had the fish fillet in wine sauce and tofu claypot. wasn’t impressed cuz i don’t like salty food.