Shanghai Street View: Snack Capital Rising
Shanghai is no stranger to imported greasy snack foods, with Cantonese roast meats becoming all the rage these past few years on the booming popularity of Hong Kong-style diners known as cha canting. But clearly the city still yearns for more oily eats from outside, this time with the new arrival of Taiwan’s premier maker of deep fried chicken fillets.
The waits in line were an hour or more over the weekend at a shopping mall in Hongkou district that was proud home to the newly opened Hot Star, better known in Chinese as Hao Da Da Ji Pai , a name virtually synonymous with deep fried chicken fillets in Taiwan. The oily treats have actually been available in Shanghai for several years through a chain of imposter stands also bearing the Hao Da Da name. But the arrival of the original Hot Star, which added the word “real” to its Shanghai name to emphasize its authenticity, has clearly become an instant hit among both the city’s huge Taiwanese population as well as locals looking for an Asian alternative to KFC.
Despite the long waits, locals and Taiwanese living in Shanghai have patiently waited in line each day for the last 2 weeks to sample a slab of the chicken neatly served in little sheathes of super-absorbent paper along with a tasty dash of black pepper. If readers are picking up on a greasy theme to this column, it’s because that’s the best way to describe these tasty treats that more broadly reflect Shanghai’s growing love affair with snacks from other parts of China and Asia.
I actually arrived 10 minutes too late to the Shanghai Hot Star on the first Saturday evening after its mid-August opening, as a team of a half dozen tired but satisfied looking employees informed me their daily supply of about 1,000 fillets had just sold out as of 6:20 p.m. Darn! But in all honesty, I previously waited in a long line to try a Hot Star fillet from the original stand in Taiwan’s famous Shilin Night Market, and can truthfully say that one was probably enough for me.
Hot Star’s early success, and the success of foreign snack foods in general, is the product of a vibrant culture of knock-off restaurants that often bring outside food to Shanghai long before the real chains set up shop. The city is already home to a chain of Yonghe Doujiang , a famous Taiwanese chain known for its soy milk, even though the real Taiwan chain has yet to come to the city. Stands selling pearl milk tea, another Taiwanese specialty, are also ubiquitous throughout the city, though I admit I don’t know which, if any, actually come from Taiwan.
It’s knock-off restaurants like these that pave the way for the real companies like Hot Star to thrive in Shanghai, and indeed other Taiwanese famous names like dessert specialist Meet Fresh, better known by its local name of Xianyuxian, and steamed dumpling specialist Dingtaifeng have all opened Shanghai outlets that regularly attract large crowds. And of course no dining district would be complete these days without a Hong Kong-style cha canting, complete with the requisite rows of salted chickens, smoked ducks and slabs of barbecued and crispy pork hanging from hooks in the window.
All of this probably testifies to the fact that Shanghai is quickly earning a new title as a culinary crossroads of China, and is becoming home to an increasingly diverse array of tasty snack foods not only from all parts of China but also Asia and the rest of the world. If Shanghainese stomachs can safely digest those greasy chicken fillets, then they can probably survive just about anything, boding well for the city’s future development as an Asian snack food hub.
