Photo taken at Ambassy Club, Huaihai Zhong Lu, near Fuxing Lu More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

The perennial search for good pizza continues … from this side of Huangpu River. Finding good pizza in Shanghai, or anywhere in China, is like being in a Western movie. You’d have tried and seen it all - the good, the bad … and the kind that tastes like melted plastic. We’ve found our tiny slice of paradise in La Casbah’s Pudong outlet located along Pucheng Lu, sandwiched between a Motel 168 and Karma Yoga......

Once in a while, we feel trapped in a sea of ordinary looking restaurants lodged in the bowels of malls. Nizang promised nothing of that. The restaurant is located in the back of a housing estate along Dongchang Lu in Lujiazui. A short stroll past apartments and small shops will land you in front of Nizang’s blazing neon signboard. Enter through a stone-cobbled pathway and flickering bamboo trees to the soundtrack of quiet running water,......

Right when we walked into Issimo, the classy new Italian restaurant at the Jia boutique hotel, we wanted to fall in love with the place. Dressed in brick and wood and adorned with dark leather furniture, Issimo seduced us with its warm beauty. The staff seemed to be in on the game as well, lining up near the large and lively open kitchen to greet us as we walked in. Immediately after we were seated......

A new hotpot restaurant in Chongqing that named itself after the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12 has been shut down by authorities after a huge public outcry. The Chinese characters used in the name of the restaurant "512震宗锅" (or "512 Quake Pot") was a homophonous pun for "authentic hotpot". Netizens have called it the "most shameless hotpot restaurant in Chongqing" and the owner of the restaurant has apparently been sent in for "criticism and re-education".......

From Sexy Beijing:American style fast food is big in China these days and chains like McDonald's continue to expand across this massive market. At the same time, young Chinese are fatter than their parents were. Coincidence?......

We figure that it was time to do a post about our favorite Shanghai restaurant of them all. Assuming that the overarching criteria for "favorite" is how often one goes to eat at a certain restaurant, then Coco 壱番屋 (more lovingly known amongst its many fans as Coco Curry) towers above all the other establishments on our list (and apparently, we're not the only ones). This Japanese import franchise (there are seven of them scattered......

By Sue Anne Tay The search for the perfect lunch in Lujiazui is also the perfect sojourn to the hum drum office life. Our half-Jamaican colleague told us that Shanghai’s first Caribbean restaurant just opened up near our office. The food, he raved, was both reasonably priced and delicious. The next week, armed with a fistful of 10RMB bills, we were determined to find our sliver of island paradise after a frantic morning at work.......

UPDATE: More than RMB 20,000 in lucky draw prizes donated so far! More details here. What: Shanghaiist’s Benefit for Sichuan’s Earthquake Victims When: This Wednesday- May 21st, 2008 Where: Sasha’s Restaurant and Bar (rain or shine) 11 Dongping Lu, near Hengshan Lu (东平路11弄，近衡山路) Time: 6pm-10pm The Deal: BBQ with sausages, burgers, chicken kebabs, short ribs, salad bar, AND free flow Stella Artois beer. Veggie options will also be available. Cost: 180RMB (100% of proceeds,......

Set back from the junction of XinLe Lu and XiangYang Lu, opposite a blue-domed Russian Orthodox Church stands the Mansion Hotel. A limestone building in manicured grounds, this place gives off the same whiff of 1920’s luxury that you see in the grand old financial institutions of the Bund; if you like Hamilton House you’ll love this place. On the fifth and highest floor, the Mansion Veranda restaurant is one of the nicest terraces in......

The title of "Best pizza in Shanghai" is a hotly contested one that frequently sparks passionate debates, not least within Shanghaiist towers, and these days, it's a crowded field in Shanghai, with a number of restaurants jostling for position. However, in this correspondent's humble opinion, Pizza e Pasta might just pip the others to the post. Quite simply, this is authentic Italian pizza. We'd always assumed that such a thing was impossible outside of Italy......

Before you click play on this video, be warned: it is not for the squeamish or for animal lovers. A little while ago we headed out to He Lin, a Korean seafood restaurant on a street crammed full of other Korean and Japanese seafood restaurants, in Minhang district. We live beyond the ring road in the wilds of Putuo, but even we thought it was a bit of a trek to get there — and......

“You’d think Mister Tsuri would’ve tasted the food before he opened his stadium,” slurred a jovial member of our dinner party, as we spilled sake down our throats in a red-shag-carpeted cube. “There is no Mister Tsuri,” we explained. “It’s called Matsuri – it’s a restaurant name, not a person.” “Shut up and drink,” he shouted, toasting over a table littered with half-eaten dishes. That pretty much summed up our experience at Matsuri 123 Japanese......

We've heard about this for a while, but never managed to head down so we weren't sure what to expect when we got to Kommune the other day. An OCN-style networking mingling over dinner? Thank god for the laidback Aussie nature, it's more of a cozy get-together among friends, i.e. booze and all-you-can-eat BBQ minus the pretense. So the price has now been upped to RMB 148 (from RMB 100) with two drinks thrown......

We were invited to a private beer tasting at the soon to be opened Boxing Cat Brewery, and we always enjoy free food and beer (even if it is in Minhang). Boxing Cat Brewery is a collaboration between Gary Heyne (former brew master of Henry’s) and Kelley Lee (from iiiit!). They’ve put together a nice pub/restaurant that has a warm homey feel, a place likely to draw a lot of “regulars”. Gary plans on keeping......

More photos on the Shanghaiist Contribute page. To see your photos on our Contribute page, use Flickr and tag your photos “shanghaiist”. Or you can email your photos to photos@shanghaiist.com and they will automatically appear on our site (and here).......

We checked our mail this morning and were happy to see a new Sherpas menu dropped in the box. However, when Shanghaiist flopped down on the couch and ripped open the plastic out fell a ... K.K. Rabbit menu? The Sherpas site is still up and, as far as we know, running fine. This rules out the suspicion they'd been bought out by someone with less money. Unless a reader knows better? So we guess......

So our search for alcohol-fueled Friday lunches led us to New Heights the other week. Antipasti lunch buffet with soup and a complimentary glass of wine sound exactly like what we need. The restaurant was relatively empty, the kind that is good for a chatty girlfriends lunch, an obligatory lunch with your workplace counselor or just a quiet meal by yourself taking in the bund view. While the spread doesn't look like much, it......

This Shanghaiist has been living in our fair town for over four years, most of it spent searching for two things: the love of a beautiful woman and a great, authentic burrito. While we're still striking out on the woman front, we're inching ever closer on that elusive burrito, first with the action-packed weekend special from NYC Deli, and now with the cheesy wonder found at Taikang Lu's Togo taco stand. And by stand, we......

Photos here and here Recently we've had the pleasure of dining in two local restaurants in Qingpu Town, technically part of Shanghai but very close to Jiangsu Province, and both times our plates, bowls, cups and spoon came vacuum packed in plastic, supposedly "sanitized" for our pleasure. We had never seen this before, despite having dined at our fair share of greasy spoons throughout the country. But the folks we ate with last night......

We liked Backyard Cafe. We like its successor, Kakadu, even more. After proclaiming that we were going to visit the new Australian restaurant during the Spring Festival holiday, we did as we always do and ended up lazing in bed instead. We finally made our first trip down there, and are happy to report that Kakadu is what this particular diner is always pleased to find in Shanghai: quality uniqueness. We profess to be quite......

We root for any joint that is ballsy enough to open up on Dagu Lu, the strip where many a restaurant has gone to die a lonely, customer-less death. So it was with a considerable measure of hope that we entered Kitchen 88, the few-months-old Chinese restaurant right next to everyone's favorite DVD stores. Maybe the proprietors here would be able to break from the pack and show a little more lasting power. With a......

Can't get enough about Hamilton House? We came across this short video piece from New Zealand's TV3 on our very own Hamilton House, which we enjoy visiting quite a bit. General Manager Richard Xavia is a Kiwi, and the angle of the piece is about how a place like Hamilton House is attractive to the increasingly sophisticated tastes of the young elite. Not a mind-blowing point to make for those of us here, of course,......

It wasn't until we read this interview in Salon with Jennifer 8. Lee (and that's not a typo, folks), New York Times journalist and author of the book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, that we suddenly realized that it has been forever since we've had beef with broccoli or General Tso's chicken. We think it's because we haven't made room in our ordering agenda given the unbelievable amount of......

Most Shanghaiist readers are familiar with legendary dive bar C’s and with the music pub Logo too. Darkness, taxi rides and alcohol make the rest of the area a bit of a blur but we have the benefit of living there. The area, called The Xinhua Community, is centered around Xinhua Lu’s heritage architecture and greenery. We covered this a bit by introducing J. G. Ballard’s old home in a previous post. It also has......

We dropped by Hamilton House last Friday for lunch, something we should have done earlier maybe. (Actually, we had headed over on Thursday but the restaurant was closed for a private wine tasting event.) So there was a decent lunch crowd – enough to make you want to enter yet not too many people to make you wonder if you’ll need to wait all day to get served – and the lunch menu seems......

Photo from danwashburn Way back in '04, when we were young(ish) and brazen, we declared that Da Marco on Yandang Lu had the best pizza in Shanghai. "I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life," is what we said. It was easier to be so sure-minded about pizza back then, because there were very few reasonable options Shanghai. Are there more now? We think so. But perhaps, after nearly six years, our......

The corner of Fumin Lu and Julu Lu is a hotspot for expat diners: Nepali Kitchen, Shintori, Guyi, Otto, Coconut Paradise, and Mesa. But smack dab in the middle are also a handful of Chinese restaurants that don't get much mention in our beloved English-language rags. We checked one of them out recently and have now added Hui Yuan Fang (汇元坊) to the list of worthy destinations located within that intersection. We're not big fans......

The dire restaurant choices at Pudong Airport will get a boost when Terminal 2 opens on March 26. Restaurants announced in the new terminal include:1930s style fine dining at "Peace @ The Bund" Cafe Ritazza Burger King Korean fast-food Heineken Baran Italian restaurantHK-style dumplings There are also the requisite Chinese options and a Teppanyaki place. No word yet as to whether the Teppanyaki will feature an all-you-can-drink option for any nervous flyers. More news here.......

This Italian delicatessen in the Old French Concession (Yongfu Rd) has been opened for a few months now, and manageress Alessia Vettore will not hesitate to open bottles and unpack fresh Italian cheese to seduce your palate. Even if supplies come in small quantities, the tiny place offers a wide range of “choice-quality traditional Italian products, including Modena balsamic vinegar, wine vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, dressings, pasta, ready-to-serve sauces and creamy savouring toppings, wines,......