Favourite Breakfast in Shanghai, China

We've been in Shanghai for almost 3 months now! We can't believe how fast time has gone.

So little update for you guys (If you don't care for an update, you can just continue to scroll down below to discover our favourite Chinese breakfast!), we are now taking mandarin classes and are quite busy. Our University we're taking our classes at is almost 2 hours away from our home, perks of living in Pudong. We love our classes though! We've learned a lot so far and made us discover our love to learn new languages. We're thinking of making a whole post on studying mandarin in Shanghai. Anyways, we're back on posting on our blog after 1 month of being away. Like Chinese people would say, 加油 (Jia You)!

So here is our top 5 favourite breakfast. In our opinion, breakfast is one of the best meal of the day in China! We personally really enjoy it and will probably miss it the most when we'll be back in Canada. Chinese people eat very heavy for breakfast. It includes lots and lots of carbs, and we love it!

1. Jian Bing

Jian Bing is probably our most favourite breakfast meal! You can find it practically on any street and should not cost more than 3-5 Yuan. It consist of a delicious eggy crepe filled with a crispy fried cracker, hoisin sauce, spicy sauce, coriander, scallions and mustard pickles. When you take your first bite, it's simply an explosion of flavour that you'll quickly become addicted!!! This is one of those breakfast you wish you could have everyday. Certainly not so healthy, but oh so good!!! It's such a unique meal that everybody needs to try. CAUTION!!! Some vendors are very generous on the spicy sauce, so be sure to ask for less/none if you can't handle spicy.

2. Bao Zi

Bao Zi are basically bread made out of rice flour, filled with yumminess! They come in sweet as well as salty flavours, however Chinese people usually eat the salty versions in the morning. They come filled with meat, vegetables, tofu, and the list goes on. Our personal favourite is the meat one! It's so tasty and we love how the meat is so juicy that the inside of the bread soak up some of its flavour. We love to have them for breakfast when we're getting tired of the fried breakfast, and bonus, they are also very cheap! Usually around 3-5 Yuan.

3. Dou Hua

Dou Hua is a Tofu (Dou Fu in mandarin) based meal that can be ordered either sweet or salty. We love having this meal in the morning because Tofu gets you full with plenty of good nutrients, and easy to digest. We personally only tasted the salty version, which usually comes with soft tofu topped with soy sauce, spicy sauce, scallions, coriander and pickled mustard. It is even more delicious if you eat it with our next favourite breakfast...

4. You Tiao

This one is probably one of our favourites, and definitely Alvin's favourite! The you in You Tiao literally means oil in Chinese and tiao refers to long shape of the bread. So You Tiao is basically an oil-drenched fried long bread and it is absolutely delicious!! It's kind of a mix of doughnuts with churros with pastry. The exterior is so crunchy and flavourful, while the interior is so soft, doughy, and airy. I know it sounds like it's just an explosion of oil (which it probably is) but it is definitely worth trying!! And it's obviously not something that you would (or should) eat everyday, but it is an amazingly yummy guilty pleasure. You can eat it just like that by itself, or in a rice porridge, which is also really delicious.

5. Cong You Bing

This is another fried crepe style breakfast. It's basically a flaky pancake filled with scallions! It's a very simple dish but oh so delicious! Plus, this is one of the breakfast that's so easy to make at home, we even have a recipe on the blog here.

 

Of course there's a lot more delicious breakfast in Shanghai and China in general (such as the famous Sheng Jian) however these are just our favourites and best breakfast we've eaten so far :).

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