Shanghai Shengjian

I left the lovely banana house about a week ago. After a brief sojourn at the Grandparents' house, my parents and I left for Shanghai to look at the new apartment they're renovating. So I spent two days exploring the city and getting over jetlag.

I'll have a separate entry for all the cool things I saw in Shanghai, but first I have to gush about the most amazing street food I've ever tasted. It's more flavorful than my favorite eggy pancakes or the lamb kabobs every kid in Beijing loves. Oh my god they're good.

They're called Shengjian bao, (生煎包), literally translated as Raw Fried buns. Instead of simply steaming the pork filled buns, the raw buns are fried in a shallow cast-iron pan and covered with a bamboo top to capture the steam, which ends up cooking the rest of the bun. The resulting bun has an amazing crispy bottom, a soft top sprinkled with sesame seeds and chopped chives, and a filling with tons and tons of yummy juices.

The place I went to, Yang's Fry dumplings (I really don't know why they translated bao as dumplings, but every real Chinese-American knows that they're called buns), is a hole-in-the-wall place which apparently everyone in Shanghai has discovered, especially during lunch time. It has become so popular that an identical store opened right next to the original one, and there are a bunch more throughout the city.

The filling is made with little bits of gelatin that melts during the cooking process. So the resulting pork filling is actually floating in a sea of delicious juices, all held by the wrapping. I didn't know this the first time I bit into these buns, and the scorching-hot juices sprayed all over the table and my face. The fact that this little place doesn't provide napkins doesn't help the matter at all. As I discovered later, the right way to eat a fried bun to actually to first bite a small hole and suck all the juices out. Then dip it in vinegar and finally gobble it up. Yang's sell four for 4 yuan. Best lunch ever? Definitely.


These buns take an assembly line to make: one to roll out a whole strip of dough, two to roll out round skins, and two to fill the skins with a pork filling.


The buns are fried in these really really big pans.



Check out their golden and delicious crispy bottoms



Dip them in a vinegar and chili sauce = most amazing thing ever.



Every table needs a large pot of chili to keep the customers happy.


Definitely check this place out if you're ever in Shanghai. Yang's Fry Dumplings on Wujiang Road.