What is tangyuan and where can you eat it in Shanghai
We take to Dianping for three of the city’s best.
You shouldn’t need a reason to have dessert, but if you do, the Lantern Festival is a great excuse. Also known as yuanxiao jie (元宵节), the festival falls on the 15th day of Chinese New Year — that’s Friday, March 2, 2018 — and it marks the end of the Spring Festival with lanterns. More importantly, it’s when people traditionally eat a sweet rice ball called tangyuan (汤圆).
Tangyuan is a dessert made from glutinous rice flour. It’s mixed with water and shaped into balls — yuan means round in Mandarin — which are cooked and served in soup, or tang. Size-wise, they range anywhere between a marble to a golf ball, and it comes hot in a bowl.
In and around Shanghai, tangyuan is typically filled with sweetened black sesame paste and boiled in water, but other regional varieties exist. They can be stuffed with red bean paste, ground peanuts, or left unfilled, and simmered in a sweet syrup. Sometimes, flecks of osmanthus flower are added to the soup for fragrance. Savory, meaty versions also exist, and more trendy styles see them packed with chocolate.
While tangyuan can now be found year round, Lantern Festival is when people usually eat it with family as a symbol of togetherness. Not with your loved ones? No worries, just grab a few friends (or go by yourself, we don’t judge) and enjoy it. To help you out, we scoured food review app Dianping for three restaurants with highly rated tangyuan.
Yongfoo Elite 甬府
Yongfoo Elite is a private members club with a two-Michelin-star Shanghainese restaurant. It sits inside a villa that formerly housed the embassies of the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and England, and you can dine in the gardens when the weather is nice. They only do pricey set meals for lunch (¥380+) and dinner (¥780+), and one of their top dishes is the classic tangyuan. A user called “Konghaizhi” praised its delicate skin and the “sweet aroma of osmanthus.”
200 Yongfu Road / 永福路200号
5466 2727
Dadong 大董
Dadong is a Beijing duck restaurant with four branches around town, and two outlets snatched a Michelin star each in 2017. While the roast duck is the star, the coconut tangyuan (¥38) is no slouch either. It’s exactly how it sounds: glutinous rice balls stuffed with black sesame and cooked in coconut milk, which user “Big Stomach George” called “irresistible.”
IAPM — 6F, 999 Middle Huaihai Road / 淮海中路999号6楼
5466 5758
Reel Mall — 5F, 1601 West Nanjing Road / 南京西路1601号越洋广场5楼
3253 2299
Clove International Center — Tower 4, 858 Dingxiang Road / 丁香路858号丁香国际商业中心西塔4层
6858 2966
IFC — LG1–83, 8 Century Avenue, Pudong / 世纪大道8号国金中心LG1–83
6858 5778
Shengxing Snack Shop 盛兴点心店
Sometimes you want good old street food, and Shengxing doesn’t disappoint. This old school spot is a dumpling paradise — big ones, small ones, meaty ones, veggie ones, and this black sesame tangyuan. It’s only ¥3, which user “Daisy_8503” said was “amazingly sweet.”
528 Shunchang Road / 顺昌路528号
5306 7325
