Where to eat in Shanghai during Masters week?

Five real picks, from a ¥20 basket to a single nightly table

Xiaolongbao is Shanghai's most famous dish, but real Shanghainese cooking is a much wider cuisine — braising, red-cooking, and a genuine sweetness in savoury dishes that surprises visitors expecting sharper Sichuan or Cantonese flavours. For soup dumplings, Nanxiang Mantou Dian trades on history inside the Yuyuan Bazaar, Jia Jia Tang Bao is the no-frills locals' favourite near People's Square, and Din Tai Fung offers zero-risk consistency if you want the same result every time. In the French Concession, Fu 1015 reworks Shanghainese classics inside a converted 1920s villa, while Ultraviolet — a single nightly table, 20 courses, one seating — is the trip's genuine special-occasion splurge if that's part of your plan.

Xiaolongbao, Done Right

Nanxiang for history, Jia Jia for locals, Din Tai Fung for zero risk — pick your reason

Xiaolongbao is easy to get wrong as a tourist checklist item — "eat one soup dumpling, tick the box" — when the real story is that Shanghai's dumpling culture genuinely spans a spectrum from tourist-facing history to locals-only consistency to industrial-grade technical precision. Choosing among these three, rather than defaulting to whichever one shows up first in a search, is the difference between eating a dumpling and understanding why this dish matters here.

Old City / People's Square (multiple locations)

Worth knowing

• —Nanxiang's queue is almost entirely a weekend-lunch phenomenon — the exact same shop is walk-in friendly on a weekday afternoon.
• —Bite the top of the dumpling first to sip the broth before eating the rest whole — the classic technique, and it avoids a scalding mouthful of hot soup on the first bite.

Save to Trip Board

Concierge pick

French Concession Dining Beyond Dumplings

Home-style braises, Art Deco fine dining, and Shanghai's most theatrical tasting menu

Xiaolongbao is Shanghai's most famous dish, but it's a starting point, not the whole cuisine. These three restaurants map a real range — accessible home cooking, formal Shanghainese fine dining in a genuinely beautiful historical setting, and a category-defying immersive tasting menu — that shows why Shanghai's food scene has real depth beyond the one dish every visitor already knows to order.

French Concession

Worth knowing

• —Book Jian Guo 328 a day or two ahead if you're visiting on a weekend evening — the small lane-house setting means limited covers, and it fills up with locals as much as visitors.
• —Fu 1015 and Ultraviolet both require advance booking, often weeks ahead for Ultraviolet specifically given its single nightly seating — don't leave either as a same-day decision.

How to book

Booking contacts and lead times for Pro subscribers.

Unlock

Save to Trip Board

Sources: shanghaitourism.org, tripadvisor.com, wanderinchina.com, rachelgouk.com, corner.inc.