Shanghai's sweet food is a hybrid, and the hybrid is the interesting part. The city's own pastry shops sell a Chinese repertoire - flaky pastries, glutinous rice sweets, filled buns and sweet soups - while the old concession bakeries sell a European one that has been in the city for a century: butter cookies, cream cakes, coconut tarts, rum balls and sponge rolls, made to recipes that no longer exist in Europe. Both are cheap, both are eaten standing up, and both are worth seeking out rather than settling for whatever is in the hotel lobby.
The Shanghai repertoire
The most famous item is the pork mooncake, a small flaky pastry filled with seasoned minced pork and sold fresh from the oven, usually with a queue outside between September and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Even outside that window, the savoury versions - pork, or pork with salted egg yolk - are sold all year at the classic shops. Sweet options include tangyuan, glutinous rice balls with sesame or black bean paste filling served in hot sweet soup, usually at breakfast or as a dessert at festivals; da gao, a chewy rice cake; and a range of steamed cakes with red bean, jujube or osmanthus. The city's own taste runs less sweet than Cantonese cooking, so these are mild rather than cloying.
The old bakery tradition
Shanghai's Western-style bakeries date from the 1920s and 1930s, when Russian, French, German and Jewish bakers set up in the concessions and their products were absorbed into local eating habits. The survivors still make a recognisable but distinctly Chinese version: butter cookies in flat round tins, cream-filled layer cakes, small jam tarts, butter cream horns and a dense sponge roll. The other enduring form is the peanut or sesame brittle and the candied fruit sold by weight in old grocery shops, and the shops themselves, with their glass counters and paper bags, are half the appeal.
Practical notes
The famous pastry shops queue badly around Mid-Autumn and Lunar New Year, when the whole city buys boxes as gifts; at other times you can walk in and buy a single mooncake. Buy the savoury pastries hot and eat them within the hour, since the pastry softens quickly. Most shops are cashless and sell by weight, so order by number rather than by weight. Boxed items travel reasonably well for a day or two, but anything with fresh cream should be eaten the same day, especially in summer.
