AUTHENTIC SHANGHAI Street Food | Trying Traditional Chinese Breakfast in China 🇨🇳

Tad bit chilly this morning. Good morning you guys. Another beautiful day here in Shanghai. Bright and early day. Bright and early is for sure. Today we're taking a breakfast food tour with Untour Food Tours again. Super stoked. We actually didn't have dinner last night. We started ourselves. So hopefully we're hungry enough to you know try all the food this morning. We after the we the noodles was the last thing we ate yesterday at like four o'clock. We haven't eaten anything since then. So we were preparing for this. Really peaceful park this morning. Yeah we have a park right across the street from our hotel and there's so many people out exercising this morning and it's so early. We did not expect this. I thought it was going to be a lot quieter but we're seeing the morning life in Shanghai which is kind of nice. Topher. Sammy nice to meet you as well. Hi. Topher. Topher. Pleasure man. Nice to meet you. Welcome to our Shanghai Street Eats breakfast tour. We have a lot of food to eat. Part of the reason so much is because it's a lot of carbs. China it wasn't until the last 15 years or so that China became majority urban. So most people grew up in quote-unquote rural areas. So that means breakfast and lunch are the big meals. And so breakfast is a lot of noodles and breads and buns and noodles. So we're gonna try all of those. Yeah that's my kind of food. This is called Xiangyang Park. You can tell it's French design because of this beautiful long colonnade of trees. These people gather every morning of the year that it's not raining or it's not too hot. Yeah great way to start the day. We already went down there and got some shots of everything and the badminton is pretty cool too. I'm enjoying it. Yeah always welcome. All right so we're at our first stop. We're gonna get some egg bread. This is something you can get all over China. There's regional variations of it. Shanghai is infatuated with scallions. Green onions. And so we're gonna have that in several forms. Yummy. Oh look at that. Look at the steam. This is like my perfect breakfast. I love these things. This is a danbing. We have a crunchy flaky crust. They crack an egg on it. Some fresh scallions. She put the same sauce that they put on like a jianbing on here. And a little bit of chili oil. Crunchy, oily, salty, warm. Perfect start. This is a Hunan style restaurant and Hunan is known for being very spicy. But they don't open until lunchtime. And so they rent out their kitchen to this family. And so they do danbing until about 10 30 or so. Pot stickers. This stuff. Pot stickers is guotie. In the Chinese guo just means a pot. Like a wok. Tie means to stick or sticker. And it is a fried dumpling. Not necessarily a breakfast thing. In my house we have it for breakfast because if you've made too many boiled dumplings you can't re-boil them because they break apart in that process. You could steam them. The wrappers get a little bit leathery. Some people like that. My wife likes that. In Taiwan they call that very cue. It's kind of stick. When you say cue you kind of chew through it. Kind of sticks in your teeth. That's what she's aiming for. I like to pan fry it. It warms it up. Also changes the texture enough that it feels like a different meal. But that's a long process to boil and pan fry. So they do it the other way around. They'll pan fry it first so it gets a nice kind of golden char on the bottom. And then they'll sprinkle some water on top of that and cover that. And then it steams and ensures that it doesn't burn. It makes it really extra juicy. Look at that dumpling. All right. Wow. That is so warm and delicious. Is that like a pork broth? Yeah. Yeah. That is so good. That crispy crunchy bottom. It's so savory and delicious. That's a good one. That was a good one. Such a good amount of meat in these guys. So juicy. Oh my gosh. I think these might be the best pan fried dumplings you have. Generally in Shanghai you would get this with a sesame sauce. These guys have just said we're not going to do that. So they've done their own sauce which is very unique and I've not found it anywhere else. And super good. This is my favorite thing on the tour. The sauce is vinegar, a little bit of chili oil, and there's what they call a spicy soy sauce which is a Shanghainese Worcestershire sauce. Those are so flavorful. Juicy juicy pork with what was the weed called again? Shepherd's purse. Shepherd's purse is the weed in there. I think we've had some dumplings the other day that had this in there. Second most common weed in the world which I did not know that. These are so so good. Chinese breakfast is like my kind of breakfast. Like carbs, pork, chili oil, all the good flavors. That last stop was so good. Still have that chili flavor in the back of my throat. It warmed me up quick though. So good. Here next up we're getting fried bread which is always one of my favorites and then coffee. So we're coming here for some fried bread. It's called the Changbing. Also features scallion, spring onion, but it's fried. It's on the inside and the outside so you get some roasted scallion flavor on the outside. You get a little bit more fresh scallion flavor on the inside and it's gigantic. We buy it by the weight rather than by the the size. There's one frying in there. We'll go check it out. We had this experience yesterday. We went we saw this on the side of the road and we were like oh let's get some and I said I was like two pieces please. I got two kilos. That's amazing. A couple of tires of bread. Yeah we got two kilos of this bread. It was by the weight. So we learned that lesson yeah yesterday. We're gonna go sit back there but we can all we can go in the kitchen. Okay okay awesome and now we get to learn what it is because we were like oh this looks delicious. Let's get it. In little places like this you sort of just make your presence known and then the social norm is okay I gotta there's more people I gotta eat faster so we can just be patient and we'll find it we'll find a spot. They grind soy milk every morning here. This is something you get all over China and generally you get the original flavor. A lot in the summertime you can get a cold. You can get sweetened as well and then you also get a savory version and that's usually the more interesting one because it reflects something about the regional tastes. So in like in Sichuan and Tongting in the southwest it'll be spicy like fiery spicy. There'll be a little bit more vinegar as well. Okay. In the north, super soy saucy, savory and in Shanghai of course we've got scallions that are that are if you're so interested there's a they do a scallion gelato as well which is interesting to try once. We got the scallions. We have what we call shrimp rice which are tiny little dried shrimp. Yeah. Some pickled mustard tuber. This is some extra fried dough sticks. Some vinegar, some soy sauce, some little chili oil, a little bit of that Shanghai Worcestershire sauce and then she adds the freshly ground soy milk. That's delicious. Warms up your soul. The chili oil, the fresh scallions. Soy milk generally would be paired with the fried dough sticks but you need to get those freshly out of the fryer otherwise they get soggy. Not so great. So they don't do that. They do the changbing instead. So we're going to substitute the bread as the dipping implement into the soy milk. It's fried enough to where it keeps that crunch and you get that like sesame seed flavor. Shanghai has more coffee shops than any city in the world around 8,500. Wow. Which apparently is more than New York and Tokyo which are number two or three combined. I was going to go with like a traditional flat white but I had to go with the osmanthus latte just because what did you say it was the taste of Shanghai? The pumpkin spice of Shanghai. The pumpkin spice of Shanghai so why not and they decorated it so beautifully with the osmanthus leaves on top. It's like a hybrid between a coffee and a tea because of the floral notes. You definitely get like a tea flavor. It's lovely. This is like a fudgy brownie. Would not call it very traditional Chinese. It's good. It's gonna be cold but the Chinese aspect is it has peanuts and sesame but also a little bit of chili flake and some citron peppercorn. Citron and chili flakes. Okay. Coffee's kicking in. Feeling good. Yes. Once upon a time it's full of lanes so old Shanghai you would have almost like communal living in a way where you would have studio or maybe one bedroom apartments. Maybe there was a kitchen there. More often than not you would have a shared kitchen downstairs. Maybe a shared bathroom and a shower in the neighborhood as well. You get a nice art deco motif up there. Shanghai has along with Mumbai and Miami the most remaining art deco in the world. One of our favorites. Tried and true. Jianbing. This one's slightly different than the Beijing style so you get regional styles. This one's better. Okay. Okay. Don't tell Garth. You can't. I've told him before. This is the Shandong style. Shandong's where I used to live and it's the original style so it's a millet based batter. Right. It kind of depends on what they're getting at the market but generally we'll have like some mung bean in it. Maybe a little bit of corn but no wheat. Okay. Or if there is a wheat just a little bit of wheat and that's why she doesn't need to oil up the the griddle because there's no gluten to stick to it. Cracks an egg on top. I wonder how much she makes a day. Around a hundred. She said it's a little slow these days. Classic. This is our very first breakfast item we ever had in China in Beijing. It's definitely a favorite for us. Crunchy, savory goodness. You can't miss it whenever you're here. So when I lived in Shandong I was based there for seven years and the jianbing, that base bread, is one of the things you could have instead of rice or noodles as the is the filler and so they would there you'd have your your stir fries and then you would fill it in the in the jianbing. The origin story of those is a military general named Zhuge Liang who was active during the Three Kingdoms period. Supposedly his army lost a battle. They had to leave their kitchen supplies behind as they fled and then Napoleon once said an army marches on its stomach and if you do any any work in China you know that like meal times are sacred. So if you're in a meeting and it's getting to like 12 45 people are not thinking about the objectives of the meeting. They're thinking about why are we not at lunch now. Yeah we get on well here. And so very paramount to figure out what are we going to feed our troops in the morning. They realize they're surrounded by millet and confiscated what they could, mixed it up in the batter, flipped their shields over on the fire and then made hundreds of those, fed them to their troops. And so it goes down as like a breakfast food. You know if you have a tough day going out you get a jianbing and then you go go for it. The version we had is called a jianbing guozi and the guozi is the fruit. So kind of like the ultimate purpose for doing something. So like you plant an apple tree to get the fruit right your fruits of your labor. So that is the fruit of the jianbing. Whole reason we have a jianbing is to make this jianbing guozi. This tour's been so fun. So many old favorites and new things to try. Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. You have a favorite food item so far? The soy milk soup. Yeah? Yeah. I love this. I love all the different textures with the fried bread, the soup and all the different flavors. It's so warm. And it's so warm and cozy and it also feels like a little lighter I would say. Okay. This is a noodle restaurant. Once upon a time it would be a hand-pulled noodle. The noodle master went home during covid. They couldn't find a suitable replacement so they they went high-tech and they got the machine. Yeah. So the idea with pulling noodles is you align the gluten strands so that it cooks. It's boiled all the way through but it has a bit more toothsomeness to it. You have to chew through that gluten. So this does the same thing but instead of aligning the gluten strands it compacts them together so you still get that nice like chewiness, that nice texture that comes from pulling noodles. We're on to our fourth iteration of scallions. Yeah. So this is fried scallions. Okay. So the fried scallions there, they're diced up but also they utilize the oil they fried the scallions in because it has this nice roasted scallion flavor and that's the base for the sauce. There's some sugar in there, a little soy sauce color and some vinegar. It's simple. Yeah those noodles look amazing. I know. All right. Yeah I'm like am I cutting or am I slurping? It's easier to share if we cut but it's unlucky to cut noodles. You just cut them. They have like that perfect bounce to them, a little bit chewy. So amazing. Simple comfort food right? Yeah these noodles are fantastic. Well look you got your slurp down. This is a fan favorite for me. That's delicious. So this one is not necessarily a breakfast dish it's just really good. Okay. This is bamboo tofu. Okay. It's not bamboo and it's not tofu. It's made of soybeans like the soy milk we had earlier. Yeah. If we boil it you can turn it off to boil. It's like a boiled milk where it develops that little film on top. Is this before it becomes like a tofu skin? Different. It is tofu skin. Okay. There you go. The difference is this has been layered up. Okay. So they put it on a bamboo drying rack and then it's stir-fried with red onions, a little bit of chili, dry chili and a pepper that we call a gambling pepper. I think maybe you had some of this in Beijing as well. Maybe sometimes they're spicy sometimes they're not. I don't really know until we get a spicy one. Tommy always tends to find the spicy one. It's nice to have some um some vegetable between all the carbs. A little a little palate cleanser if you will. This is in the shepherd purse is what passes for the vegetables. The shepherd's purse. Every neighborhood in Shanghai has a market. You can tell there's organic material in here. There's a smell. Not terrible but it's it's alive. It's alive. This market's set up like a like a Chinese menu where you've got your veggies at the center. Gotta have vegetables. And then you have proteins surrounding that. It's growing and drying on the stem. It's like kind of like a carrot. We got fried tofu down here. We got tofu knots. We got pressed tofu. Aged tofu. The sticky tofu unfortunately it's covered so we can't we don't get the essence of that standing out here. And Chinese food you know has it's cooling or warming. If you have too many warming foods you lose your temper more easily. You get the fights. So you have to balance that out with cooling foods. And then but if you have too many cooling foods you get depressed. So you have to balance that out with warming foods. It's a bit of a yin and yang kind of thing. So what would be a cooling food? This is cooling. In a second we'll see the bitter melon. Bitter gourd. It's very cooling. You get cooling teas as well. And then warming is spicy. Ginger. Lamb. Mango. Lots of things I like are maybe that's why I'm so feisty. I need to eat some more cooling foods. Cool my temperament a little. So I can't believe how fresh all these vegetables look. He was just telling us that their country cousins bring it in every single day and then the city cousins sell it of course in the shops here. But wow all the vegetables look fantastic. In China when you say meat it's pork. So we've had guests that have arrived frustrated because they're vegetarian. They learned how to say I don't eat meat. But they're getting served lamb and beef and chicken and and fish. So there's nothing you can say which means I eat vegetarian. So China eats two-thirds of the world's pork. And any part of the pig you want you can get it. You get it here. They do wonderful, wonderful. There's chicken eggs divided up by where they've been raised. Then we've got your favorite the century eggs here. Century eggs. The lady had her bag of fish on the counter. It was so fresh it was the bag was hopping around a little bit. But then as soon the fish got camera shy so of course. Have you tried jellyfish before? Oh yeah yeah it's all about texture. It has a bit more of a snap than calamari does. But it's not too far off. Really? Oh interesting. But here we've got chicken. We've got duck back there. And then we've got some pigeons over here. Are you a fan of pigeon as well? Cantonese style? Yeah. Yeah super good. Super good. My daughters are a big fan of the brain. Slice it down the middle and fold it out and that's what they go for. Adventurous eaters. Wow. This is going to take like five minutes to cook. This takes 15 seconds to cook. Yeah exactly. These are swamp eels. So they live in brackish waters and this is by girth. I guess you could say. Okay. Her job is to fillet these eels. So you take them back, braise them and then put them on a red braised soy sauce. Put them on noodles and then go to town from there. This is yellow croaker. That's the most popular fish in Shanghai. That size you can just deep fry them and eat the whole thing. You get larger versions over here as well. Sometimes you'll find that they still have their hook in their mouth. That's to show how fresh they are. No way. That's so cool. So you've got rice is divided up by variety and where they're grown. And then congee is that's the most popular breakfast in China. So it's pretty amazing the variety and the organization of everything in this small shop. And he was kind of saying you don't shop for the week. You kind of shop for the day or the meal. So you come in buy fresh maybe once or twice a day. You get exactly what you need. Pretty cool. For bao, like a couple of these could be a could be a breakfast as well. You get regional variations of what's inside. So the one we got is I'd say my favorite. Wow that filling is really good. It's just so pillowy and fluffy. So it's pretty funny the last stop we went to. We went to yesterday before we started walking around this neighborhood just because it was so busy. And the fresh steam coming off just so inviting. So we had to go try it. And it's one of the stops on the food tour so we made a good decision. They are very good. All right so this is our stop for they have all different basically we can everything we've had almost everything we've had we can have that again here. It's kind of a breakfast like all-day breakfast place. But we're gonna we're just gonna get the soup dumplings. Soup dumplings the classic a favorite. Slurp loud enough so they can hear you outside. Nice. These never get old. This breakfast hall is filled with so many I feel like so many classics. Not a lot of unknowns inside. It's really nice. Yeah you guys have so many options for breakfast. The variety is crazy. And time for dessert. Last stop right? Yeah last stop. All right. Time for something sweet. This is kind of like a Panda Express. Yeah. So this is a kind of a version of what you might call like a three plus one. So you'll go to some restaurants or like a canteen like this where you choose how many veggies and how many meats you want. You just give them the number and there's a set price for each combination. And then the people who work there just know how much of each to give you. We're gonna get stuff made in here. So there's different maybe you can see through there that's where they're boiling our window as well. Different shapes of glutinous rice balls. Well the outside's all the same. It's a glutinous rice flour. The inside is what's a little bit different. The one we're getting is seasonal. They will make it with sugar and black sesame. Ground up black sesame. And then they hold it all together. They use some lard. So that's why it's so amazing. Nice and silky. Yeah. Center is a little too sweet. And the outside is a little too plain. Outside's all about being kind of gummy. Got chew feeling. A kind of chewiness. Getting it gets up into your teeth and stuff like that. That's desired. Desirable in here. Sesame paste, lard, brown sugar in like an almost like mochi like exterior. But this one is steamed. That is fantastic. This is incredible. I love that gummy. That gumminess that sticks to your teeth. The sesame and sugar. That's a good combination. Oh my goodness. But the leaves are such like a vibe too. It's cold but I love it. Nice to meet you. Have a good day. Yeah I saw so many on TikTok and YouTube. Yeah. You traveled to Beijing. Yeah. Yeah I saw you. Very pretty. Oh thank you. It's over. Thanks for an awesome tour. My pleasure. I'll drop you off at your favorite coffee spot. Untour knows who to hire. You guys are the best guys. Yeah. Thanks. So knowledgeable. So much great history. Yeah. Amazing tour. Thank you. All right. We appreciate it. By the time you come back we should have a dumpling tour ready as well. Yeah. Thanks guys. Bye. Thank you. I'll tell Garth to say hello. He has glowing things to say about you as well. Okay. Have a great day. Yeah. Enjoy Beijing. Okay. See you. Bye. Thank you. Wow. I'm so stuffed. Another amazing food tour with Untour Food Tours. Oh my gosh. The variety of food here is pretty crazy isn't it? Oh my gosh. There's so many different things to try. I feel like we could be here in Shanghai for a while and try like a different food for breakfast every day. I'd love to know like what is your guys' go-to breakfast food. Yeah. Tell us your favorites. Thank you guys for watching. Another great video here in Shanghai. See you guys in the next one. Bye.