Shanghai Restaurant Menu

Shanghai Restaurant serves a wide-ranging Chinese menu from its Manners Street dining room in Te Aro. Wellington's visitor organisation includes it among the city's restaurants suited to independent travellers and groups, and that shared-table character is easy to see in the menu's scale. Instead of narrowing the experience to one signature dish, the kitchen moves through dim sum, cold plates, soups, seafood, duck, meats, tofu, vegetables, noodles and rice.

A meal can begin with small plates that reward ordering across the table. Steamed juicy pork buns, pan-fried dumplings, spicy wontons and stuffed chicken wings sit alongside honey barbecue pork and Shanghai-style sweet-and-sour ribs. Cold dishes introduce another register through garlic cucumber, black fungus salad, five-spice beef and several chilli-dressed meats. Soup choices range from chicken or vegetable sweet corn to hot-and-sour, West Lake beef and seafood tofu.

The larger dishes balance familiar comfort with preparations that encourage a longer dinner. Peking duck can be served as crisp slices in pancakes, diced meat in lettuce cups and a soup made from the bones, while Shanghai-style duck is stewed in soy. Chicken with cashews arrives in an edible bird's-nest presentation, and Kung Pao or Szechuan chicken provides heat. Seafood runs from prawns and soft-shell crab to whole-shell crab treatments and fish in a spicy golden broth.

Rice and noodle sections make it straightforward to round out a group order. Beef ho fun, Shanghai thick noodles, Singapore rice noodles, Yangzhou fried rice and stir-fried rice cakes each bring a different texture, while tofu, seasonal vegetable and egg foo young dishes widen the choice. Heat symbols help diners judge the chilli level, and sweet pumpkin cakes offer a concise dessert ending after a table built around contrasting plates.

Address: 121 Manners Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand

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