CHINESE STREET FOOD TOUR IN SHANGHAI CHINA! Can This Food Court Replace Street Food? | Fung Bros

Andrew we fell for the trap. If it's a beautiful trap, are you mad? Welcome to another Shanghai episode of Fun Bros Food. So you guys, there's no more street food in Shanghai. They took it away. But one of the byproducts of that is that there are some very high quality good food courts. So what we are going to right now is the most diverse, high quality, and super budget food court in all of Shanghai. It is the Real Food Court on Nanjinglu. One thing I really like about this food court is it's super diverse and it's very symbolic of Shanghai. It has French food, it has Japanese food, it has Shanghainese food. It is unlikely that food courts in other cities of China would have this international diversity. Shanghai Food Court, let's go! All right you guys, so we have just arrived at the food court. We have some decisions to make. We're not going to be able to go everywhere. It's crazy right now. You know what's popping right now? And we eat this at 66 sometimes. It's malatang. It's a hot pot thing where you get to choose your ingredients, choose your own adventure, and then they throw it in a pot. All right, to me, in terms of what I have not seen at the ones in, you know, America, the purple thing. They have a lot of fish cakes here. Their selection of fish balls are off the charts. We just got to get a shot of the sausages, that's it. They are reliving, David, those old Reynolds Wraps commercials where they were like, oh you can cook anything in Reynolds Wrap. This is a foil commercial right here. This is actually fascinating to me because obviously, in America, you wouldn't be allowed to do this. See, this dish itself is kind of like some version of a seafood boil malatang type thing. I mean, it's not too different than the other ones, but just the format with the foil, mind-blowing. In case you guys didn't know, Chinese people love anything considered hot pot. Actually, these are dry hot pots. Basically, imagine hot pot with the soup removed and replaced with oil. All right, you guys, I just received my Shanghai local classics. I'm super excited to try this. Let's go. Yo, man, David. You know, it's only right that in Shanghai, we open up with some Shanghainese classics. We're gonna eat the xiaolongbaos. A authentic Shanghainese xiaolongbao has a tiny bit of juice in it, but not that much. Yeah, and you can actually see the meat through the skin. Some ones that are almost like mantou, too. Xiaolongbao, a.k.a. xiaolongbo. Nothing's different. This pork and shrimp one, I'll take a bite for you guys to see. Almost tastes more like a shumai. Mmm, xiaomai. Because they have the Shanghainese xiaomai, and the Shanghainese xiaomai is very different. There's another thing called a tangbao that has way more juice. Well, that tastes almost like the shumai that mom and dad made. Wow. Does it not? Wow, points for nostalgia. Fried pork chop, a.k.a. zha cai gu. I'm gonna dip it in this. Then we have a chow nian gao as our carb. It almost feels like the whole community is in here. What is this? It is a fried rice cake. I actually really like the pork chop. Not a fan of the rice cake. It has a cool texture, crispy and chewy, but the fried pork chop was actually pretty good. What I like about this food court is that the people here, it actually has a lot of international flavors here at the food court, but there's actually not that many international people. It seems like a lot of these people might be local Shanghainese people who live in the area. Shanghai egg rolls. Egg rolls, after all, are authentic, but the thing that determines the authenticity is about the filling. David, we've eaten a decent amount of northern Chinese food. As far as we know, do they eat egg rolls in the north? I've never seen one. You got the juice busting out of the side. Look at that. I really like the wrapping on the Shanghai egg roll, but the filling, to me, it's just cool. I actually liked it because there's pork, cabbage, and mushroom in it, and then the outside was a little bit chewy. This is actually, to me, one of my more favorite egg rolls that I've had. Yo, this is probably the most classic Shanghainese dish because they don't even serve this in other provinces. Chow nian gao, stir-fried rice cakes. I didn't expect it to have that much flavor. You think? This is like the Chinese pesto because the rice cake is like pasta, and then the veggies are kind of like the pesto sauce. Oh, man, this is good. I keep eating this. Don't eat too much, man, because we have the very fresh Yang's dumplings, aka the most famous chain of them all. Yang's is sort of like the In-N-Out of Shenzhen bao. Yeah, and everybody tells you, like, oh, you got to get Yang's when you go. Is it the best? I don't know. We'll find out. It's got a very particular characteristic to it, sort of like an arugula flavor. I like this one a lot because I like vegetables in my dumpling. I like it because the skin wasn't overly fried. Nah, comparing it to Can Can food court in Alhambra, the skin is thinner, which I enjoy. Guys, another Shenzhen bao. Let's see what flavor this is. It's shrimp. I'm pouring the vinegar into my Shenzhen bao right here. It almost tastes a little bit like a hot dog. I personally like the Shepherd's one a little bit better. I'm personally not used to eating shrimp with the fried shell. That's not my favorite combo. This is going to be the Yang's dumpling, the OG one. This is the one that sells out before everything else. I just drank all that soup. That's really good. It's fried top here. Look at that. That's the best one, man. That was the best one. Yang's is the best. Just get the Yang's. The Yang's special at Yang's dumpling. Who would have thought? My two favorite things from this were the egg roll and Yang's Shenzhen bao. For me, I know what you're going to say. If it had a little bit more juice. Wow. The pork and shrimp Xiaolongbao right here. The non-traditional. Like I said, this is the real Xiaolongbao, so it's not actually as juicy as you think. Hey, wow. You didn't have to, but you did. Eating food from this restaurant, it was called Really Good Steamed Foods. Steamed chicken tofu wrap. Wow. That's really good. I loved anything wrapped in tofu. Yo, this dish was low-key delicious. Wow. There's meat inside of this. Soup was really good. The broth. The broth. That broth could cure any regular sickness ailment you have, okay? Man, that was a sleeper dish. That was really good because you know what? It didn't look like it had that much flavor. And not only that, it didn't look like you would serve something that was that restaurant-like at a food court. The garlic, the broccoli. Veggie dish. It's kind of like stir-fried cabbage and vermicelli with the chili peppers. Oh, wow. That's good too. None of the food at Really Good Steamed Food actually looked like it had that much flavor, but it does. Yo, I'm a really big fan of this millet congee, though. Those grains. It's a sweet congee. It's really good. And you know what the best part is? It tastes like it's good for digestion. There's no young kids involved. Yo, yo, yo. Go with your grandparents here. They'll love it. At least this side of the food court. Here, David, we have two smoothies. We have the strawberry banana yogurt smoothie in a pouch. This is a avocado pear smoothie. Oh, that's really good. Wow. That's not too sweet. This caught me off guard. Wow. This is actually really good. And I don't know if you agree with me. This food is way better than Can Can. The Can Can is not the top level, okay? These were $3 each. At Can Can, they're $1.75 each. Obviously, you're in a mall too. Oh, six xiaolongbaos was about $4.25, which is still cheaper than America. The xianjinbao, less than $3 for six. So, it's about 50 cents per piece. Pretty fair price. The metal skewer is different. Yangroucuan, you know, originally from influences from the Middle East, it has sort of worked its way almost into the Chinese food encyclopedia in terms of modern food culture. Yeah. This is actually a really high quality one, man. They're not going to let you open up in the mall if you ain't bringing the quality. As we wrap up, these are actually all the spots that we're going to try in the old Shanghai section. These are foods that have existed for hundreds of years. Maybe the kids aren't eating this food at home necessarily, but that they do get that experience in. It's like you're eating with grandma or grandpa, like a big community cafeteria. A big, nice community cafeteria with a Gucci store up top. All right, guys, that wraps it up for our Shanghai section of the Food Corner Crawl in Shanghai. And guess what? 50 feet away, we got to go to the other side. Let's go. We have arrived to the new school section. Would you say that it's foods that have been invented in the past 20 years? Not all of them, but a lot of them. They're going to take new formats. Like, obviously, Chinese people have eaten buns, but some of these buns, actually, Andrew, I've never even seen before. Salted egg yolk and pork fillet. Never heard of it. Black sticky rice and thick mashed taro bun. Sticky rice. Golden pudding durian bread. Black sticky rice, purple potato bun. Starry custard bun, durian cheese, and scallion pancake. So we got to pick like four. Look how matcha this spot is. Andrew, we fell for the trap. If it's a beautiful trap, are you mad? We are going to attempt to see if the matcha soft serve tastes different when it's inside half of a honeydew. I'm going to get the piece that's close to the honeydew. That's really good matcha ice cream, man. I think that the reason they wouldn't do this in the States is because people would think it was too much of a gimmick. No, I was going to say I could see it at the night market. What aesthetics were rating that maybe a 10 out of 10? Yeah. Taste-wise, it's probably not worth it, to be honest. We're at the Guo Kui spot. Guo Kui, the first time I had it was in Chengdu, but apparently it could be originally from Hebei. Yo, this is hot as hell. I'm going to try to rip it really fast. Red moon, black sugar. You might notice, Andrew, very, very few people are ordering Guo Kuis. Do you think... This is not the hottest booth. Do you think it's because in Shanghai they wouldn't go for this inland type of food? I think it seems kind of like a fair food, something that you walk around and eat, and I gotta be honest, I think they could put more meat in it and make it a little bit more substantial. That's my only criticism. All right, everybody, as you can see, this food court is getting crazy. It's very busy, and there is actually even more food than I had imagined. Man, some of the lines for some stuff, we weren't even going to be able to get to it. I think it's fitting to finish at the Japanese section, because if they do one international cuisine very well in Shanghai, it's actually Japanese food. Yes, Japanese food is really, really good out here, and this sushi bar looks amazing. They have seared salmon sushi. That is not regular. I mean, this guy is making it fresh. I think it's real. It's real. Oh, yeah. Look how monstrous this is, man. How often do you just see just grilled pineapple like this? Kind of debating on what cut of meat we should get grilled. Because they do have lunch specials. But I feel like if we're not going to get a lot, we might as well get the highest grade. That's true. It's pretty interesting. It goes all the way from 36 kuai for 100 grams, all the way to 168 kuai. All right, so here's the thing. I thought it was only 168, but it's only per 100 grams, and most steaks they sell at 300 grams. So it's going to be like 500 kuai. Wait, you can't get a small amount. No, they just serve it by the steak. Right, right. Here for our last round, we have seared salmon sushi. We have some mixed Japanese skewers with a humongous prawn and pineapple and scallops. And then we got some fresh Angus beef steak. It's a grilled salmon. It has some teriyaki sauce, I believe, swiped on top. It's delicious. Loved it. When it comes to being more raw or cooked, it's a really weird mix because you get the burntness of the cooked side, but most of it's raw. I would say it's 40-60. 60% raw, 40% cooked. This prawn is humongous. Look at this. I'm going in. Prawn skewer. Juicy, not dry, salty, shrimpy. Pretty good. There's a pineapple. It's just raw, really sweet pineapple. That was delicious. It was a great palate cleanser. And if you guys know about lunch steak in Japan, they typically weigh it out and they serve it in a very non-traditional fashion. This is the Angus combo, 68 kuai. This is $10. You're going to watch them cook this right in front of you. Wow. I thought they overcooked it, but it wasn't, and it's actually got a ton of flavor. Better or worse than pepper lunch? It's got more flavor than pepper lunch, but that's not a better cut of meat than pepper lunch. Oh, okay, okay. Let me flip the camera. Give me the camera, Trey. It's just in the camera, man. More peppery than pepper lunch. I have a durian cheese bao that smells so much like durian, and it's so fluffy, dragon fruit. Yeah, watch this. I'm going to rip it. This tastes so much like durian. This one's cool. It didn't burst with flavor. I'm really interested about the durian one. It wasn't bad. It was really well done. The bun fluffiness level, 10 out of 10, bro. For me, my major takeaway is that Shanghai really is an international place. There's no way that they can have this many international booths without there being like a desire from the locals to eat all these different foods from different countries. And you know it's actual Shanghainese because, as you can see, there's apparently not a lot of foreigners here. So this is not a expat mall. This is a Shanghainese mall. I'm happy to see it. I mean, I'm not going to lie. 12 years ago, I did a study abroad in Shanghai. There was nothing like this that existed. To come back 12 years later, do I miss the jovial, you know, folksy atmosphere of outdoors eating? For sure. But, you know, this is the way society moves. There's progression. Sometimes you miss the old things, but you like the new things. And to see this, I got to tell you, they take a lot of food that is normally sold on the side of the street. They clean it up. And like you said, they sell it below a Gucci store. I was really glad that they were able to kind of bring the authentic flavors, even in a mall. I think sometimes when you eat in a mall, you tend to think that some authenticity or some kind of grittiness disappears. Like even pizza in the mall, like Sbarro, you don't think that that's going to taste legit. You never think anything in the mall is authentic. That's the fact. You never believe that. But it is. And it's tasty, and it's good, and it's still affordable. It may be a little bit more expensive than the street, of course, and it should be. But you have all the options here. All right, you guys, thank you so much for watching that food court crawl through the real food court here in Shanghai. Like I said, we just wanted to see the new street culture or at least what has come up in place of it. I think this place is also right across the street from a historic landmark, Jing'an Temple. So if you guys come here, you can check out both. Make sure you give this video a thumbs up. Turn on your notifications so you don't miss a video. And please let us know what other food courts you would like to see us check out around China. Again, this is David. This is Andrew. Justin's behind the camera. Until next time, we out. Peace. Yo, is this where all the people overseas are getting the Balenciaga from? You don't just see a Balenciaga store.