10 CLASSIC Shanghai Dishes We Can't Live Without

Oh my gosh, that's so tender. So good. This is one of the best dishes of this dish I've never had in my life. Game over. Hey guys, what's going on? I have a couple of my friends joining me today. Can you tell them apart? One is Grace and one is Christine. I don't know which one is which. You really don't know which is which? I'm kidding, of course I know. They did get me because they told me they were triplets and I fell for that. But we are here today at You Garden here in Flushing. I haven't done a Shanghai video, Shanghai-ness food video on my channel before mainly because I don't really like Shanghai-ness food. I prefer really spicy flavoring, really spicy and Shanghai food is more, it's more sweet. Not as much spicy. You guys are Korean. So you probably, have you had Shanghai food before? I never, I never had it. I've had it once. Yeah, because Grace I took you here. Besides the fact that I've had it with you before, I've never had Shanghai food. Right. I never tried it. So I can't wait to try this food. And most of you might have heard of this popular Shanghainese dish called soup dumplings. I love soup dumplings. You love soup dumplings? I love soup dumplings. But did you guys know that's an authentic Shanghainese dish? Oh no. So it came from Shanghai? Came from Shanghai, along with other great dishes that I never knew until I came to this place. And we're just walking around Flushing looking for a place to eat. We wandered in here and never looked back. And I've been here three times since then. I love this so much. I'm converted. I love Shanghainese food. So I wanted to share with you guys some of the most popular and most awesome Shanghainese dishes they have here. And let's start with appetizers. And this is kind of like banchan in Korea where we have some little cold dishes that come out. This is a very popular Shanghainese dish. Dan, my Shanghainese friend, gets this dish every time he goes to any Shanghainese restaurant. And this is something that not everyone might like because it's pretty sweet. And also, it's gluten. Like this is just 100% gluten. I hope you guys aren't allergic to gluten. It soaks up a lot of the juice because gluten is like a sponge. It's very sweet. Very sweet, very popular Shanghainese dish. And that's kind of typical of a Shanghainese dish because of the sweetness, the flavoring. That's what a Shanghainese dish tastes like. It's sweet, but I feel like it's not overly sweet. It's not overpowering. So I really like that. And you get the crunch of the bamboo shoots. You get the crunch of the wood ear, which I think is a good balance. I think it goes really good together. It's grace approved. For me, it was a little too sweet. But maybe with a bowl of rice on the side, it would be good. Well, I'm glad you're going to bring that up because we will have our rice soon. But we're going to go on to our next appetizer, San Huang Ji. And this is interesting because it means three yellow chicken. And they say because when it steams, when it comes out of the steamer, its skin is yellow, which you can see here. And its feet is yellow. And the mouth, I guess the beak is yellow. So everything is yellow. Everything is yellow. Right. You tip it in the special soy sauce mixture. So dip that in there. Let me give you some. Thank you. You guys let me know how this is. Do you guys like the chicken with the skin on or off? I usually eat it with the skin off. To be more healthy? Yeah. To be living the healthy life. Yeah, I don't care. Whatever tastes good to me. I really like this. I feel like this is a must get when you come here. The chicken is so unbelievably tender. And the sauce adds such a nice sweet and saltiness to it. It's so tender. The chicken is right through it. I love how it's moist and it's not dried whatsoever. The skin, I would prefer without the skin. Maybe because I'm so used to not eating chicken with the skin on. But even with it on, it's still good. I like it. I'll tell you what. The skin is something you guys might not get used to because it's slimy. Yeah. It's a different texture. It's a good texture though. Yeah, you like the texture? I like the texture of it. So would you prefer with the skin on or off? I would say skin on. Oh, nice. I would say skin off. Give me all that flavor. You guys are really different for being twins. I love the skin because I feel like the skin provides a different texture. And I love the taste of the skin because it's fattier. Be careful. One thing is there's bones in there. So you gotta be careful when you bite into it. Let's move on to our next dish. This you guys haven't had before. Grace, you haven't had this last time we came. Very special Shanghai dish. This is Tang Cu Pai Gu. Sugar, vinegar, spare ribs. It looks very barbecued. It looks very barbecued, right? Yeah. Wait, how do you say it again in Chinese? Tang Cu Pai Gu. Let's try some Tang Cu Pai Gu. Let's do it. Here you go. Love the flavor of this dish. It's sweet and savory at the same time. Now, it's not supposed to be over tender because it's actually a dish that's... I was just going to say that. No. It's supposed to be more chewy, jerky-ish. Flavor is definitely on point. I thought that it would be a weird mixture of sweet and sour. But actually it works really well. Let's move on out of the appetizer round and bring you our first main entree, which I'm really excited about. The lion's head meatball. Can I tell the story, Grace? Yes, please to the owner. Grace never had this before. When we went to eat here once, I told her it's lion's head meatball. I told her it's made from real lion's head. I actually believed it. She came home and she's like, Guess what I tried today? I tried lion's head meatball. I'm like, oh really? I'm so glad. Mike, I still hate you for that. I felt so special. I was like, I've never heard that before ever, but I tried it. You think I will feed you Simba? I love the lion king. This is what you think about, like what us Chinese people think about when you say Chinese meatball. That's what it is. Ground beef, such a nice marinated sauce. I've had this dish multiple locations in New York City. Never as good as this place. Oh my gosh, that's so tender. So good. This is one of the best dishes of this dish I've never had in my life. Game over. This is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Literally, I can't stop eating it. It's so juicy. I could eat this for my breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's sweet, of course, going with the Chinese cuisine motif. And you got a little bok choy to kind of cut down on all the sauce and saltiness and give it a little texture. This on the outside is so barbecued perfectly. And we call this Hong Shao because it's made with a soy sauce base. And it's red on the outside. Look at it on the inside. So unbelievably tender and juicy and perfectly cooked. Guys, come here. Get this dish. Don't share it. We're being nice that we're sharing it with you, okay? Finish this Hong Shao. I'm being nice. I only took like two bites. Otherwise, I'd just take a meatball and shove it in my mouth. That's how barbaric I am with good food. All right, we got more dishes coming. What? This is one of my favorite dishes in the world. And I haven't had it at this restaurant yet. So I'm kind of nervous whether I'm going to like it or not because I have such high expectations for this. This is Hong Shao Rou. It's pork belly in Hong Shao sauce, which is a soy sauce base sauce. It's kind of like what you have with the meatball. It's a little sweet, and it's going to be a lot of fat. I'm going to have to take another one. Me too. Give me three. Oh my god, that's so good. I'll try this. This piece is going to be awesome. That's like fatty. Oh, that piece is going to be awesome. This is so tender. You literally could chew right through it. So usually with the lean meat parts on this, I don't like as much as the fatty part. I think this is meant for the fatty pieces. Yeah, the fatty pieces are insane here. Here, Grace, try this piece. This piece is perfect. Why, thank you. Yeah, try that. Look at all that fat. I call that a fat volcano. They just brought this out. I've never had this before. I don't even know what it is. This is fried fish. I'm going to just use my hands and grab it. You get down and dirty with it. This is like a Chinese fish and chips. You see how green it is? That's because the batter is made with seaweed. I definitely taste the seaweed. I taste it too. Oh, wow. It's like you're eating the ocean, right? It's like you're eating the ocean. Yeah, it's like eating the ocean. Whoa, this is really good. I taste the seaweed. Oh. It's kind of like I took a seaweed wrap, and I wrapped it around a fish, and I fried it. This is really good. All of these dishes have been really tender. Very tender. But this one, you literally taste the seaweed, and it's like you're, you took it out of the ocean. This is one of my favorite Shanghainese food items, and I always get it because I can't, it's like one of those things where you're like, you ate it about a thousand times, but every time you go back to a particular restaurant that makes it, you want to get it again. You know what I mean? It's like a go-to. It's classic. Shanghainese wontons, and they're usually made with chi cai, which is a very particular type of vegetable that makes dumplings and wontons taste beautiful. Usually pork inside. The soup typically comes with little dried shrimp inside, seaweed, some egg noodles. You know what? I'm going to throw some hot oil in here. I agree with you, Grace. I got to have some black vinegar and hot oil in my soupy wontons. So delicious. I like their wontons better than any other wonton in New York City. The skin is so light, and it's not too thick where you don't taste the meat too much. And it's so big. The filling is so big. This is literally the biggest filled wonton I've ever had in New York City. And the first time I bit into it, because I had to ask them before I came here, I was like, do you guys make it fresh in-house? They make everything fresh in-house. The filling is so nice. Is this the first time you're having a wonton? Yeah. What do you think? It's so good. Can I dispel something for you guys? I do a lot on this show where I talk about food I like, and I talk about some places maybe you may think the food tastes good, but they're known for something. For example, I hate Zhou Xing Hai because their soup dumpling is not the best. And a lot of people like to go to White Bear in Flushing. Chinese people, they know about White Bear in Flushing, and that's where they get your wontons. I'll tell you guys this. I went to White Bear, and I tried to film a video there. I bought the wontons and everything. I started filming the video. It tasted so bad, I couldn't finish the video. This wonton was like one of the first in New York that I've had that I'm like in love with. I'm in love with it. Look how massive this is. You had the soupy wontons. Now meat is older, tastier, brother. I see hot oil. The hongyou chaoshou. How do you say it? Hongyou chaoshou. It's the same type of wonton they use in the soup, but with this peanut-y hot oil mixture, you guys are going to go crazy for this. That's awesome. Amazing. I love the peanut-y sauce. I love the little spice. I could dunk more hot oil into this, definitely. We definitely know that. You and your hot oil, you guys are on a whole other level. We're in love. This is what it's like when a guy loves his hot oil. Nothing can break you guys apart. I love this sauce. I could drink this. I don't know. I could dip stuff in that. I taste the peanut in it. Oh, it's so good. Which one do you guys prefer more, the soupy one or this one? I like this one just because it's more moist and the flavor is trapped inside of it. Once you take a bite, it just explodes in your mouth. Nothing is more Shanghainese than Shanghainese soup dumplings. My favorite. I love soup dumplings. Well, the soup dumpling here is amazing. My soup dumpling place, I feel like it's still like, you can't eat it, but these are really solid. Plus, after you eat this, I want to tell you a reason why you need to come here and eat and try their soup dumplings. After you eat this. This is the crab meat soup dumpling, which she has had before. And I love the way they make it. They make this in an open kitchen with all the aunties making it. And this takes so much... I mean, they're so good. They're making it look like it's all so natural to do, but it's so hard. Everybody has their different way of eating it. I like to dump out the soup. I just want to know how much soup this is. Like almost a whole spoonful of soup. I like this place because the meat, they're not cheap with the meat. They put a lot inside of it. It's a big dumpling. And the soup inside too, it's really good. The hot oil makes it. Right? Makes everything better. Thank you. People hate on me sometimes for letting hot oil so much. I understand your love for hot oil. Thank you. I'm hoping they're still doing this when you guys come here because I don't know how long they're gonna do it for. If you come here and order only $10 worth of food, they give you a free soup dumpling. No way. Yeah. You can't eat all the free things. No. Only $10. Look. Just get a couple of your favorite dishes and they give you a free dumpling. That's awesome. You can't go wrong with that. These aren't crappy dumplings. These are solid soup dumplings. It's good. And the meat is so filling. It's so worth it. My favorite, I think, is the lion meat. I knew it. Senba. Yeah. Senba. I feel like I should hold it up and the sunshine will come down. And there's also the pork. The barbecue pork. It was very tender. But overall, it was amazing. I loved it. Did you like the wontons? The wontons, they were so good. Honestly, everything was really good. My favorite is definitely the Senba. Lion head. I love Senba. Senba's head. I love this dumpling over here. The hot oil with peanuts. It's so moist and so flavorful. If he didn't stop me, I would've probably ate the whole dish. I would've eaten all the food. I don't know if you guys saw in the video, I literally had to move dishes away from Grace. I was like, no. Because I'm like, we took down, we had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 8. Oh my god, damn. It's 9, 10. 10 dishes, right? Yeah. I think we had... If he didn't take it away from me, I would've honestly finished every single one of them. And it just came out like my stomach just full. But you know, it's okay because this food is amazing. I never... I feel really bad because I never had to be like stop eating because we got more coming. So 10 dishes. Take it away from her. And I'm so glad you guys are able to come with me because I... I don't know. I might've taken like two bites out of each dish and that would've been it. Mike, if you ever need anybody to finish your food, you already know who to go to. Well, I'm so glad you guys got my back. I'm so glad you guys are able to come with me. And this place, like I said, I don't even like Shanghainese food and I love this place. So definitely check this place out in Flushing. I have the address for you guys in my description box. And you know what? I'm going to put my favorite dishes that I had today. I'm going to put it in the description box as well so you guys can have that. I really love it when you guys are able to go out and try authentic stuff and that's why I do these videos for you guys. So try this place out. Let me know how it is. Thank you all so much for watching. Thank you guys for joining me again. Thank you for having us. Take care, guys.