Shanghai for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Shanghai eats in twelve languages before lunch. This list is a working editor's cross-section of that noise: a Turkish grill room in the basement off West Nanjing Road, a sheng jian counter that opens at 06:30 for the office crowd, a Sichuan dining room on Jiujiang Road that keeps two services a day, a ramen bar inside a Lujiazui mall, and a jazz club on Fuzhou Road that runs past midnight. These are not the tasting menus the concierge sends you to. They are places with a phone number, a street address, and a reason to sit down. The city rewards visitors who eat where the maps get specific, so every venue below is anchored to a coordinate and an operator you can call. Read the hours before you go, ring ahead for the weekend-only rooms, and treat the addresses as the argument. Skip the hotel restaurants that recycle the same room-service menu; the interesting cooking in Shanghai is happening at street level, at counters, in rooms with real doors and honest phones.