At noon, the line stretches out the door and there’s a noisy rumble of loud voices inside the Ruijin Erlu and Nanchang Lu branch of Fengyu (丰裕), a neighborhood staple that has fed locals for decades deep in the heart of the former French Concession. According to Dianping, China’s most-visited food website, there are 35 branches of this eatery, whose name aptly means “plentiful abundance,” and some are franchised with slightly varied menus. This branch is state-owned, and it opens early, like most of Shanghai. (Latecomers will find most of the dishes sold out.)
There’s a method to feeding here: line up at the register and order from the illuminated menu above the cashier. Pay and bring your receipt to one of two windows. On one side, stacked bamboo baskets hold steamed treats such as an open sticky rice dumpling called shaomai or big fluffy buns (包子, bāozi). Avoid the soup dumplings (小笼包, xiǎolóngbāo) – there are better ones elsewhere. Instead, try the fine fry dumplings, a Shanghai must-try locally known as shēngjiān bāo (生煎包). These juicy buns are filled with minced pork and surrounded by a dough that gets pan-fried and steamed all at once for a crisp-bottomed, tender treat. Four per order is a bargain at just 4 RMB (75 cents). Surrender your ticket and collect your food.
Step to the right for noodles and soups and know that you’re likely to be pushed, maybe unintentionally shoved – something that happens with regularity in a city of over 20 million people. At lunchtime, we observe a woman in a wrinkled white kitchen uniform yell through a wall of smeared plexiglass while stirring the boiling contents of a large iron wok with long chopsticks, a flotilla of wontons bobbing amidst a tangle of noodles. Multi-tasking, she releases an old tap, where a gushing stream of water tempers the very full wok. She yells over the noise with intimidating force, confirming an order. She gives an impressive performance on a busy day, expertly manipulating long chopsticks to stir the noodles. Five large bowls are simultaneously heaped with different ingredients according to the pile of tickets on the counter. Some bowls get a brown splash from a glass bottle while others get a pinch of dried shrimp shells and a sheet of dark seaweed. She neatly portions the noodles into even skeins and whips a netted skimmer through the water, magically dividing the wontons into a portion of little dumplings (小馄饨, xiǎo húntún) and our own bowl of pork and vegetable parcels (菜馄饨, cài húntún). The wontons float in a light broth of seaweed and dried shrimp shells with threads of egg sheets and a sprinkle of green onions. We push our way through the crowd, find a seat and slurp.
Still hungry, we head to the right of the noodle station and hand a ticket over for a fried pork chop. The wok station is to the right of the noodles, so we watch and wait, slurping our soup. In moments it’s ready. There are loads of places to find these treats in town, but rarely beyond the borders of Shanghai.
Fengyu is among the humblest ways to experience an everyday taste of Shanghai. The workers are mostly retired locals, and it’s not uncommon to see a neighborhood resident bring in his own battered bowl for an order to go. This no-frills eatery delivers most of our Shanghai snack needs in just one stop and all in a fast, cheap and delicious thrill.
Published on June 30, 2014