Wandering around Shanghai’s quieter streets, you may often hear a thump thump thwack! ringing out from a streetside café. If you’re lucky, it means someone is pulling noodles fresh to order, and if you’re even luckier, you’ll happen to be hungry enough to enjoy a bowl.

Editor's note: The year is coming to an end, which means it's time for us to look back on all the great eating experiences we had in 2014 and name our favorites among them. Elixir Health Pot We used to ignore the steamy glass windows of Elixir Health Pot when we walked past. “Healthy is not how we take our hotpot,” we thought with our noses in the air, ignoring the sweet smell of ginseng and spicy aroma of chili peppers simmering in pork broth. Then a trusted foodie friend asked us if we’d tried their wulao meat. Another mentioned their collagen broth a week later…. So last winter, we gathered a crew of longtime hotpot fans and headed to the healthiest steamboat in town. Turns out it’s also the best all of us had ever had, and it’s now our warming go-to as soon as the temperature drops. Best not to think too hard about all the opportunities we missed over the years; we’re more than making up for it now.

Hairy crab season is once again sweeping Shanghai’s diners into a frenzy, with the bristly crustaceans popping up on street corners, in streetside wet markets and, most importantly, on dinner plates. This year we’ve even seen reports of elaborate live crab vending machines hitting the streets in Nanjing and an attempt to start a black-market trade in German crabs.

Beyond the stunning juxtaposition of the Bund’s colonial architecture with some of the world’s highest skyscrapers, one of Shanghai’s most charming, local architectural experiences can be found on the southern edge of the former French Concession, in the neighborhood of Tianzifang. Slated to be destroyed to make way for (yet another) mall development in 2008, Tianzifang's artist community rallied to save the warren of original laneway houses that are uniquely Shanghainese.

Shanghai offers a huge range of dining at every price point imaginable. Fortunately for us, cost is not necessarily commensurate with quality in this town; you don’t have to break the bank to eat well. In fact, some of our favorite eateries offer bargain set lunches. Mi Xiang Yuan Hidden down an alley, Mi Xiang Yuan, a Shanghainese joint owned by a local celebrity chef and his family, serves affordable set lunches that bring in the crowds. Try their marinated pork rice bowl (卤肉饭, lǔròu fàn) or "lion’s head meatballs" (蛤蜊牛蒡肉圆套餐, gélí niúbàng ròu yuán tàocān), and you’ll also get a side of soup, tofu and vegetables of the day plus a bowl of rice, all for less than 30 RMB ($5), no matter which benbang main you try. You can’t beat that price in the Xintiandi neighborhood.

Anyone looking for a bit of entertainment or foodie satisfaction while on a layover in Shanghai will need to look well beyond the confines of the airport. Pudong’s international airport may be a huge, mostly gleaming, modern space, but it has some of the most overpriced, bland food and off-brand shopping with little to do beyond making repeated attempts to connect to the free Wi-Fi.

Though giant pandas subsist almost exclusively on one single plant – bamboo – the same would not stand for the other, more human, natives of Sichuan province. Its capital city, Chengdu, was once famed as the start of the southern route of the Silk Road, along which exotic vegetables and spices were ferried inland from Burma, India and around Central Asia.

It’s a rare feat, even in Shanghai, when a Chinese restaurant serves authentic dishes in an atmosphere that is style-conscious, laid-back and affordable. Spicy Moment manages all three, so it’s no surprise to learn that the owner, Lao Deng, owns a quirky interior design shop just across the street and constantly moves between the two spaces. His jaunty hats reveal an eye for style, and perhaps this Hunan native can take some credit for turning Wuyuan Lu into one of the former French Concession’s hottest browsing – and now eating – destinations.

Strict vegetarians in Shanghai face a double-edged sword when it comes to staying meat-free. On the one hand, the country’s large Buddhist population means they are in good company. It is estimated that the total number of vegetarians in China reached about 50 million last year. However, while tofu dishes can be found on just about every Chinese menu, that doesn’t mean that the dishes are strictly meat-free. To vegetarians’ dismay, pork and meat-based broths are often used to give the soy-based dishes more flavor, and special requests (even simple ones like “no meat”) are not usually complied with (or understood). Traditionally, meat is often sliced in very thin strips (肉丝, ròu sī) and used to flavor vegetable and tofu dishes, as opposed to being the star

Editor's note: We're sorry to report that the vendors and restaurants at Sipalou Lu and Fangbang Lu have suffered the same fate as those on Wujiang Lu and have been shut down. For street food, head to the area around Er Guang. In the lead-up to the 2010 World Expo, the government tore down one of Shanghai’s most famous food streets, Wujiang Lu, so the city would appear more “civilized” in the eyes of businesspeople and tourists visiting from around the world. Sparkling cookie-cutter international brands replaced family-run hawker stalls, and Wujiang Lu’s fried bun purveyors and stinky tofu vendors were scattered across the city. But its sad fate, which left a gaping hole in the city’s culinary landscape, also created new opportunities, allowing Fangbang Lu to become one of the city’s top food streets.

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.)

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.

Editor’s note: In the latest installment of our recurring feature, First Stop, we asked Lillian Chou, former food editor of Gourmet and now a freelance writer in Beijing, where she heads first for food when she arrives in Shanghai. There are several factors that decide where I eat first when I arrive in Shanghai – mostly, it’s whether I’m alone or with friends and what kind of eaters they are and how much time we have.

Dear Culinary Backstreets,I am a practicing Muslim and have a hard time finding halal food in Shanghai. Do you have any recommendations? Eating halal is difficult in a country whose cuisine considers pork its staple meat. Pork consumption in China - the largest consumer of the meat globally - reached record levels last year, averaging 86 pounds per capita. Since 2007, the government has operated “strategic pork reserves,” which include underground bunkers of frozen pork and live pig farms, to help regulate porcine inflation. If you pop into a wet market, you’ll see rows of pork vendors selling everything from cutlets to brains, but typically only one butcher filleting beef and lamb. Above that stall, you’ll inevitably find Arabic script and the characters: 清真 (qīngzhēn, or “halal”).

A scenic highway wraps around the island city of Xiamen, allowing easy access to the mountainous interior and rocky coastline, but on the east coast the natural scenery gives way to man-made propaganda. Three-story-high characters facing the South China Sea dominate the skyline. As red as Mao’s Little Book, these towering characters proclaim “One Country, Two Systems, United China,” a stern reminder visible to the residents of Jinmen, a Taiwanese island less than 2 kilometers from the ancient port city’s shores. This sightline marks the shortest distance between the People’s Republic and the Republic, and while government policies may differ greatly depending on which side of the Taiwan Strait you call home, the food culture is remarkably similar.