Shanghai2Taipei Menu

Shanghai2Taipei sits above Ballarat Street on the first floor, placing a broad Chinese dining room in the middle of Queenstown's pedestrian Mall. The restaurant accepts bookings and presents its menu bilingually, an approach that suits both quick orientation and a more exploratory meal. Its name signals the route between two cities, but the food reaches well beyond them, moving through dim sum, seafood, regional stir-fries, hot pot and banquet dining.

Yum cha provides an easy starting point. Prawn dumplings, Shanghai pork dumplings, sticky-rice siu mai and barbecue-pork buns can be combined into a varied first round before moving into a seafood list that makes strong use of New Zealand produce. Coromandel scallops, salmon, scampi, crayfish, paua, mussels and clams appear in preparations ranging from sashimi to steaming, ginger-and-spring-onion stir-frying and hot-chilli broths. The result links local catch with several distinct Chinese cooking techniques.

The land-based dishes shift confidently between different flavours and cooking methods. Kung Pao and hot-chilli chicken sit beside pork belly, twice-cooked pork and soy-braised ribs; beef can arrive with ginger and spring onion or in chilli oil, while lamb takes cumin and chilli. Dry-fried venison gives a local ingredient a Chinese treatment, and mapo tofu, spring-onion noodles and pork dumplings in chilli sauce provide substantial choices that do not depend on premium seafood.

For groups, a set banquet builds a progression through fried starters, dim sum, a shared main, vegetables, rice and dessert. Hot pot can be individual or communal, with plates of lamb, beef or wagyu, a grid of seafood and vegetables such as lotus root, mushrooms and tofu. Brown-sugar sticky rice cake and salted-egg custard buns finish the food, while jasmine tea, sake, local wine and craft beer give the table several different ways to pace the meal.

Address: First Floor, 34 Ballarat Street, The Mall, Queenstown 9300, New Zealand

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