Shanghai is famous for its swampy weather in August – it’s hot and humid in the lead up to Indian summer. Staying hydrated against the rising mercury is crucial if you’re out hunting a meal of street food, so here are the best sips to keep your yin and yang balanced this season. Mia’s Green Apple Mint Juice This neighborhood Yunnan specialty restaurant takes bold flavors from southwest China and elevates them in simple combinations. In many of their noodle and main dishes, mint features prominently - there is even a salad composed entirely of mint leaves that will leave you wondering why anyone is even bothering with iceberg lettuce.

When Tonkatsu Hamachan first opened in 2001, it became an industry favorite – one of those places chefs, foodies and lifestyle journalists kept to themselves. Perhaps they closely guarded this spot because the dining room barely fit six tables, most of which were usually occupied by Japanese businessmen. The restaurant itself refrained from self-promotion – the shoji screen with hiragana script and a frosted glass door would have been as illustrative as a blank canvas to the mostly Japanese-illiterate pedestrians in the expat-friendly enclave of Jing’an. We lived just two blocks away from Hamachan for over a year when we first moved to Shanghai in 2007 and didn’t know about the tonkatsu genius until a friend drunkenly whispered the secret to us one night.

When Wuyuan Bingjia first opened in 1936, it was one of many Shanghai-style bakeries around town, churning out trays of benbang dim sum dishes to be eaten on the go or taken home and enjoyed with the family. Now, as the city grows skyward and Shanghainese palates skew more international, these old-style bakeries are slowly dying out. Wuyuan Bingjia is one of the last ones standing, and it’s not thanks to the service. (Word to the wise: Be ready to order when you get to the cashier or you’ll get an earful from the waitstaff.)

Fun fact: More than 70 percent of the meat eaten in China is pork. And while stuffing yourself with xiaolongbao and hongshao rou is a must when eating in Shanghai, it can be nice to have a respite at halal restaurants like Miss Ali. Yan Ali, the owner and namesake of the restaurant, arrived in Shanghai from Xinjiang – China’s predominantly Muslim province in the country’s far northwest, where she previously hosted TV shows. Ali didn’t like the way her native cuisine was often represented in Shanghai – with waiters robed in garish “costumes” and performing songs and dances from their region – and decided to create a more accurate representation of the restaurants of Xinjiang.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I keep hearing buzz about “yangmei” season in Shanghai. What’s all the fuss about this fruit? What’s in a name? Shakespeare could just as easily have written, “A yángméi (杨梅) by any other name would taste as sweet.” This little red Asian fruit has a plethora of monikers: Myrica rubra, Chinese bayberry, yamamomo, Japanese bayberry, red bayberry and waxberry. But a decade ago, the sweet and sour fruit was rebranded as the yumberry in the United States (where it is sold in juice and powder form, but not fresh, due to an import ban on the live fruit) to stand out from other exotic “superfoods.”

Since we last wrote about the best places for a cuppa back in 2014, Shanghai has become the city with the third-highest number of Starbucks in the world, and these new shops serve flat whites and cold brews from an interactive barista bar. We should expect more of these fancy cafés, as the Seattle coffee chain is planning to double its current number of stores in China by 2019 – going from zero to 3,000 in 20 years.

Editor’s note: To cap off the year, we’re taking a look back at all the best eating experiences we had in 2015, and in Shanghai, that means everything from fried pork buns to shakshuka made with local ingredients. Yang Yang’s Dumplings The chengguan were out in full force shutting down our favorite street food hot spots this year, including one of Shanghai’s most popular night markets on Fangbang Lu and the soon-to-be-closed Tangjiawan market. We’re reminded that it’s ever more important to support those vendors who take pride in their craft and hand-make everything from start to finish.

Food lovers mourned the loss of Shanghai’s Muslim market when it packed up its stalls a couple of years back, but the closure wasn’t too unexpected. Street food is always in a state of flux in Shanghai, and add to that the ethnic tensions that have developed between the Chinese majority Han and the Muslim minorities that butchered whole lambs outside Putuo’s Huxi Mosque each Friday, and it seemed like a matter of time before the weekly event was closed. The government ostensibly blamed neighbor complaints (the bazaar seemed to have outgrown the sidewalks, interfering with traffic and sending smoke from the grills into the residential areas), and vendors were abruptly told to pack up.

Editor’s note: We regret to report that Bai Jia Qian Wei has closed. Mention Anhui to most Shanghai residents, and you’ll most likely get a response along the lines of, “My āyí is from there.” Migrant workers from Anhui, one of the country’s poorest provinces, flood into Shanghai tasked with building the city’s skyline, massaging the clenched shoulders of white-collar workers and washing our dishes. Despite the fact that the province is the source of a third of all of Shanghai’s migrant workers – and that its cuisine ranks among China’s Eight Culinary Traditions – Anhui food isn’t held in the same regard as Sichuan or Cantonese by Shanghai gourmets.

One of the seven necessities of Chinese daily life, rice is eaten in many forms throughout the day, including – and especially – at breakfast. Congee is undoubtedly China’s best-known breakfast food, but less famous globally, and wildly popular locally, is the unassuming rice ball (饭团, fàn tuán).

Planning dim sum with friends at Jade Garden might require “Save the Date” cards: The flagship restaurant of Hong Kong’s Maxim’s group is the hottest table in town and – at the time of printing – the next available reservation is six months away. For yum cha aficionados who aren’t deterred by hours-long queues, the Jade Garden does save some tables, but it’s less of a walk-in and more of a mass sit-in.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is all about balancing your yin and yang, a system that involves dietary practices as well as exercise, massage, acupuncture and herbal medicine. Winter is considered a “yin” season, meaning that it is cold and damp, and you should therefore eat warming, or “yang,” foods to balance out the external conditions.

Shanghai is famous for its swampy summer weather, and although this August was the coolest in 14 years, it’s still hot and humid out there as we head into Indian summer. Staying hydrated against the rising mercury is crucial if you’re out hunting a meal of street food, so here are the best sips to keep your yin and yang balanced this season. Mia’s Green Apple Mint Juice This neighborhood Yunnan specialty restaurant takes bold flavors from southwest China and elevates them in simple combinations. In many of their noodle and main dishes, mint features prominently - there is even a salad composed entirely of mint leaves that will leave you wondering why anyone is even bothering with iceberg lettuce. By supercharging fresh apple juice with a fistful of pressed mint leaves, Mia’s makes the idea of a juice cleanse just a teensy bit more appealing.

Cantonese seafood restaurants are almost always stuffy dining institutions, with gilded menus listing astronomically priced shark’s fin soup and braised abalone in private dining rooms with gaudy chandeliers. Like a rebellious younger sibling, Apo’s Seafood has taken the marine Canto theme down a road more graffitied, democratizing the experience by scrapping the stuffiness and serving up affordable, delicious fare from the ocean.

Unwieldy English restaurant names often lose a lot in translation. Take Zhu Que Men, or “The Gate of the Vermillion Bird.” The name, which draws on Chinese astrology and Taoism, might seem a little highfalutin’ for a home-style noodle joint, but the subtext speaks volumes.