Shanghainese restaurant with a Western twist

Shanghai-style dandan noodles. Photo provided to China Daily

The pork at Lesheng is a Shanghainese variant. But the restaurant uses quail eggs instead of chicken eggs.

The pork is fat but not greasy, rich and moist with sweet glutinous sauce. The bite-sized fried quail eggs, an unusual ingredient in Shanghainese cuisine, come with crispy skin and do not make one feel too stuffed compared to having one whole chicken egg with the fatty pork.

For many gourmands, the best part of the dish is in the sauce, which goes well with a bowl of white rice.

A lighter option for what Shanghainese call "the hot dish" is the sauteed shrimp. Traditionally, the shrimp is a "cold dish" that face-loving Shanghai housewives only cook during festivals or big occasions to treat guests to show off that "we are so wealthy that we are even serving seafood as appetizers", although the shrimps served are usually small. The hot sauteed shrimps are as sweet as the cold ones, but the shells have been fried so that they can be chewed and swallowed together with the meat.

An unexpected dessert is the pear and pipefish soup, served in a white cuplike bowl. The sweet, thick, jellylike soup is a rare find on the city's traditional dining table as most Shanghainese restaurants prefer serving sticky rice as desserts. The soup provides a delightfully soothing end to the meal, a reminder of the restaurant's foreign pedigree.