Editor’s note: This post is the first installment of “Best Bites of 2012,” a roundup of our top culinary experiences over the last year. Stay tuned throughout this week for “Best Bites” from all of the cities Culinary Backstreets covers. Hai Di Lao Hot Pot Restaurant We’re usually loathe to mention a restaurant that has locations all around China, but we were blown away by the dedication to customer service here – something that is sorely lacking in China. Too often, it’s a choice between authentic flavors or service. Not at Hai Di Lao.

From a country that maintains a “national strategic pork reserve” – vast bunkers of frozen meat that can be released when the price of the commodity gets too high – one might not expect to find an impressive number of traditional vegetarian restaurants, but you’d be surprised. While exact numbers are hard to pin down in China, it is thought that around 20 percent of the Chinese consider themselves Buddhist, a number that tops out at around 280 million people. In culinary terms, that translates to hundreds of millions of would-be vegetarians – though, as in any religion, devotees interpret tenets at will, and most “vegetarians” in China enjoy a sprinkling of pork in their tofu to “add flavor.”

When Yi Sheng Yue Wei opened on Yongkang Lu almost three years ago, its neighbors were pajama-clad retirees, a mahogany furniture workshop and the Shikumen History Museum – which, to be honest, is actually just one history buff’s storied alleyway house. Now the two-block street is one of the most laowai-gentrified in Shanghai, with bars run by French interns, coffee shops stocked with beans from Ethiopia and competing fish-and-chips shops. Rents have skyrocketed, and there’s even talk of transforming the thoroughfare into a pedestrian street. But amongst the hustle, bustle and inebriated foreigners, Yi Sheng Yue Wei remains, loyally serving the same home-style Cantonese food as it did when it first opened.

There is literally nothing like a bowl of steaming má là tang (麻辣烫) when Shanghai’s wet, cold winter sets in. In English, it translates to “mouth-numbing spicy soup,” and if that weren’t indication enough that it will get your sinuses going, then the fire-engine-red broth certainly is.

Earlier in 2012, Jing’an Villas – a square, block-sized 1930s-era housing area in the heart of downtown Shanghai – survived an ironic plan that called for permanently relocating all of its 3,000-plus residents in order to better “preserve” the historic neighborhood. Luckily, the plan was shot down in a party committee meeting. For now, at least, Jing’an Villas remains the perfect setting for trying longtang cai, simple, home-style alleyway food that features local favorites.

Dinner and a comedy routine isn’t a concept that has caught on in China. A few Sichuan restaurants feature a traditional show with the help of some loud music, a man with a flashy cape, and a mask with many thin layers that changes with a quick, hidden tug. But a Hunan restaurant? Never. At the popular neighborhood joint Hunan Xiangcun Fengwei, however, the finger-licking good food from Chairman Mao’s home province shares top billing with the subtle art of Chinglish menu translations that at first glance seem to defy explanation.

Breakfast in China traditionally consists of something brothy and stomach-filling, such as congee (a rice-based porridge), wonton soup or xiǎolóngbāo (soup dumplings). Also popular are savory fried foods like scallion oil pancakes – in Shanghai, lines of hungry customers waiting to get their morning pancake fix from places like A Da Cong You Bing can literally stretch around the block. It’s thus no surprise that Western-style grab-and-go breakfast options are of little appeal to locals.

There is often some confusion when it comes to the many varieties of dumplings in Shanghai. The city’s most famous snack, xiǎolóngbāo, is a soup dumpling that neatly encases its broth inside a thin dumpling skin. It is not, as many first-time visitors assume, a dumpling floating in soup. For that, we turn to the humble wonton soup.

With a menu from the frigid provinces that border Korea, Dongbei Siji Jiaozi Wang – literally, “The Four Season Dumpling King from the Northeast” – is all about hearty dishes to warm you up from the inside out. The further north you head from the Yangtze River, the more the temperate climate demands that wheat trumps rice as the staple grain, often showing up on menus as dumplings and noodles. Yet despite its eponymous claim to represent China’s Northeast, not even the Dumpling King can escape Shanghai’s astringent influence, specifically in the condiment selection. Here you dunk your boiled dumplings in vinegar and sweet chili pepper rather than the typical Northern garnish that adds soy sauce to the mix (or sometimes boldly goes it alone with no vinegar), occasionally coupled with roughly chopped garlic.

Is there anything that warms the heart of a food-obsessed traveler more than civic pride in a local culinary specialty? In a country that more often celebrates a particularly polarizing political leader, the great affection among the people of Lanzhou for their famous noodles – which the city has reportedly even sought to trademark – gets our stomachs rumbling.

The three states of naan may not have any political standing, but they do enjoy culinary representation at one of Shanghai’s finest Uighur restaurants, Xinjiang Yining Yuanzheng, aka Xinjiang Expedition. We’re talking bread without borders, dough diversity at its finest, and a refreshing change of pace from the Chinese staple grains of noodles and rice.

One of China’s most ubiquitous culinary exports, Sichuan cuisine is famous for the 麻辣, or málà (mouth-numbing spice), that comes in the form of a peppercorn (花椒, huā jiāo). Prompting a tingling sensation that has been likened to licking a nine-volt battery, the lemony husk is tossed into dishes with dried chili peppers, and never more skillfully than at Yu Xin.

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节, zhōngqiūjié) lands on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, relatively near the autumnal equinox; in 2012, it falls on September 30. Also sometimes called Mooncake Festival, it is a public holiday in China and Taiwan on which families gather to give offerings to the full moon, float sky lanterns and eat mooncakes (月饼, yuèbing). A culinary tradition with legendary roots, mooncakes are sold everywhere from grocery stores to five-star hotels and come with competing origin stories that relate how these sweets came to represent the holiday.

Confucius once said, “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.” He clearly never met a food writer, because superlatives and immodest speech are basically all we have to work with. But had Confucius opened a small patisserie, it would probably be Lillian Cake Shop.

Does anyone say “use your noodle” anymore? Our grandparents used to admonish us with that idiom when we didn’t think a situation through, but the phrase seems to have mostly gone out of fashion along with polyester suits. However, deep in the former French Concession, one esteemed food vendor is definitely using her noodle to help her customers enjoy, well, noodles.