Shanghai cuisine, referred to as Shanghai cuisine for short, developed with the development of Shanghai and its art. After the Opium War, treaty of nanking made Shanghai one of the five trading ports. A large number of western economies and cultures were imported, and merchants and scholars from all over the world gathered, which impacted Shanghai's market and culture. Shanghai's catering industry, along with its culture and art, has also undergone rapid changes. This kind of culture and art, which transcends the original category, develops in Shanghai, bears the imprint of Shanghai and the times, and is bred, grown and spread in Shanghai, is collectively called "Shanghai School". It is under such conditions that Shanghai cuisine stands out among the major cuisines in China. It includes not only borrowing from other people's local dishes, but also all kinds of local dishes modified according to Shanghai's dietary customs on the basis of maintaining the original characteristics.

1, the rise of Shanghai local cuisine

The development of Shanghai cuisine began with local cuisine. According to historical records, restaurants appeared in Shanghai as early as the end of the Southern Song Dynasty and the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty. By the end of Ming Dynasty and the beginning of Qing Dynasty, besides snacks and simple meals, banquet dishes in Shanghai restaurants were already very rich. 1 843 after Shanghai was forced to open to the outside world, the invasion of foreign capitalism also stimulated the development of national industry and commerce in Shanghai, and the catering industry in Shanghai flourished rapidly. There are groups of shops in the streets and alleys of this city. According to 1 876, there were as many as 100 restaurants in Shanghai from Xiaodongmen to Nanjing Road. There were three different types of restaurants in Shanghai at that time: first, many small and medium-sized restaurants operated economical and convenient dishes and meals, and also operated a small amount of stir-fried dishes. For example, the famous popular dishes in Shanghai in the early days include fried pork venetian blinds, bacon tofu, shredded pork and soybean soup, grass carp vermicelli, eight treasures hot sauce, fried three delicacies, family photos and so on. There is also a "guest meal" (a dish, a soup and a bowl of rice), which is eaten by many people. The second is some large and medium-sized restaurants, mainly engaged in cooking and "harmony dishes". Harmony is the first restaurant in Shanghai. It is a combination of cold dishes, hot dishes, big dishes and soup. There are many varieties and the prices are more affordable. It was very popular then. Prices in Cai He are high and low, and the highest is Yinyang 1 O Cai He, which consists of eight dishes, eight small bowls, sixteen dishes, four hot meats and four snacks. There are ribs, bird's nest, hanging ducks, mandarin fish and so on. There are also those from 8 yuan, 6 yuan, 4 yuan and 2 yuan, and customers can choose at will. Third, some famous shops mainly deal in banquets and high-end famous dishes. These restaurants are large in scale, well-equipped and elegant in style, such as Qinhe Restaurant, Hongyun Building (pictured above) and Dazhong Garden, which are the earliest local restaurants in Shanghai. At that time, the main famous dishes they operated were roast duck, braised shark's fin, three-silk shark's fin, sea cucumber with scallion oil, steamed shad, eight-treasure duck, abalone in clear soup, first-class bird's nest, clam yellow croaker soup and so on. Visible Shanghai cuisine has developed to a higher level. At that time, the main characteristics of Shanghai cuisine were: taking local fish, shrimp and vegetable specialties as raw materials, cooking was good at braising, steaming, stewing and frying, cooking was not good at frying, the dishes were rich in oil and red in sauce, with high quality and efficiency, while the soup was mellow and not greasy, salty and palatable, with a strong flavor of Jiangnan water town.

There are local restaurants in Shanghai.

In the late Qing Dynasty, with the development of local restaurants in Shanghai, catering operators and chefs from all over the world also came to Shanghai to open restaurants (above). The first person to enter Shanghai was the Anhui Restaurant in Xiaodongmen. It serves both dishes and noodles in soup. Its specialties are fried back and stewed sea cucumber. Two particularly famous dishes are wonton duck and big blood soup, which were famous in Shanghai for some time. At that time, the main Huizhou restaurants were Cuilou, Tongqing Garden and Greater China. While Anhui restaurant entered Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi restaurants also appeared in Shanghai. Suzhou cuisine is famous for its boat dishes in Taihu Lake. Because the taste is similar to that of Shanghai, and Suzhou and Wuxi are often in Shanghai, they are particularly popular, such as Tongzhi Laozhengxing Restaurant, Samsung Garden, Dehe Pavilion, China Merchants Hotel, and later Southeast Hongqinglou, Dali and freshwater fish dishes. By the early 1930s, Suzhou-Wuxi restaurants accounted for about half of Shanghai restaurants. During the Xianfeng period, there were Xinghualou and Cuibiju in Guangdong Cuisine Pavilion, and then there were Guangdong Merchants Pavilion, Xinya Pavilion, Dasanyuan Pavilion and East Asia Pavilion. Ningbo restaurants came to Shanghai earlier, such as Hongyun Building on Jinling East Road, Zhuangyuan Building on Yongjiang River and Zhuangyuan Building on Siming River. They mainly deal in seafood dishes and are very popular with customers. Zhenyang Restaurant first started in Guangxu period, such as hankou road Lao Banzhai; You Lou, Xin Banzhai Restaurant, etc. The earliest Beijing schools were Huibin Building, Yuebin Building, Taibai Building and Shanjiayuan. During the Tongzhi period, there were Sichuan restaurants, the earliest ones were Daya Building, Beauty Caution, Du Benefit, Taohechun, and later there were Jufengyuan, restaurants and Meilong Town. Henan restaurant first had Liangyuan Zhimei Building, and then Houfu Building. Fujian restaurant has Xiaotian, and one day, there will be paradise. The Muslim Pavilion began in the early Ming Dynasty, including Hong Changxing, Chun and Nan Laishun. Vegetarian restaurants include Kutokuhayashi, Feng Chun Song Yue Mansion and Jade Buddha Temple. In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, 1 1 local restaurants appeared in Shanghai. From the early years of the Republic of China to the end of the 1930s, hangzhou dishes, Chaozhou cuisine and Hunan cuisine joined in one after another, forming a pattern in which six local flavors, such as Shanghai, Jiangsu, Wuxi, Nanjing, Huizhou, Guangdong, Beijing, Sichuan, Fujian, Hunan, Henan, Shandong, Yangzhou, Chaozhou, Qingzhen cuisine and vegetarian cuisine, gathered together, which provided good conditions for the development and enrichment of Shanghai cuisine.

(C) the new characteristics of modern Shanghai cuisine development

From 1930s to the end of 1940s, this was the most prosperous period of restaurants in Shanghai. At that time, local restaurants in Shanghai were still in the majority, and business was booming, especially banquets were very popular. Because Shanghai food is cheap, there are many dishes, and Shanghai is a modern big city, people who come to Shanghai have to taste Shanghai food, so most of the banquets in Shanghai are held in restaurants in Shanghai, so business is very good, and so are restaurants in Wuxi, Suzhou, which are similar to Shanghai food. Because Shanghai cuisine constantly absorbs the advantages of foreign restaurants, especially with Suzhou and Wuxi cuisine, Shanghai cuisine has more characteristics of Jiangnan water town. First of all, we should pay attention to fresh materials and seasonal vegetables. Mainly fish and shrimp in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, live fish are displayed in fish ponds all year round for customers to choose and cook on the spot. Second, there are many kinds of dishes, and the four seasons are different. For example, there are stir-fried grass heads, stir-fried gouqi heads, bamboo shoots, medlar, stir-fried bean sprouts, saury and squid in spring. There are fried eel paste, steamed shad and crystal shrimp in summer. There are many famous dishes in autumn and winter, such as chrysanthemum crab bucket, fried crab powder, fried crab yellow oil, lion's head with crab powder, soft-shelled turtle with rock sugar, hairy crabs soaked in oil, braised rings, shrimps with black ginseng, preserved winter bamboo shoots, big fish heads in casserole, herring-scented lungs, and chin-scratched fish. Thirdly, in terms of cooking methods, Shanghai cuisine pays equal attention to roasting, steaming, simmering, nesting and frying, and gradually turns to roasting, frying and steaming, among which frying and frying are the most, especially good at cooking fresh seafood in four seasons. Fourth, the taste has also changed a lot. At first, Shanghai cuisine was dominated by thick soup and thick juice, and then it gradually became moderate, light and elegant, and there was also thick oil red sauce. When cooking braised pork, braised pork, braised fish and other dishes, spices and thick oil red sauce are still used to make the food fresh and obscure. Stir-fried dishes are used in cooking, paying attention to freshness, white color and salty taste. Especially in summer and autumn, rotten chicken, rotten pig's feet, rotten belly, rotten pig's tongue, rotten herring and other dishes with bad taste are rich in flavor and quite distinctive, which is quite different from the previous early Shanghai cuisine and shows a trend of integrating all kinds of ignorance and constantly improving self-development.

At the same time, the operating conditions of many local restaurants are constantly changing. Except for a few big shops and famous shops in downtown areas, many other local restaurants are hard to do and have few customers, because most of the customers in Shanghai come from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Everyone likes to eat in local restaurants and seldom goes to foreign restaurants. In the mid-1930s, banquets were very popular in restaurants in Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi, but few in restaurants in Guangdong, Fujian and Sichuan, especially those hosted by Guangdong restaurants. Although the color is beautiful, the number of dishes is small, the seasoning is simple, the cooking is tender, and the taste of the dishes is not as good as that of Shanghai. Because the operation is not suitable for the characteristics of Shanghai, many restaurants learn from Shanghai to meet the needs of local consumers in Shanghai. Some of its own management methods and seasoning materials have also changed, such as Shanghai Cantonese Restaurant borrowing western food to cook long fish and auspicious prawns, so as to gradually adapt to the consumption characteristics of Shanghai, and thus various so-called "Shanghai-style dishes" have emerged. In fact, these foreign restaurants have become restaurants with various flavors, which can not only adapt to the consumption characteristics of Shanghai, but also adapt to foreign tourists. In fact, by the 1940s, most of the operators of these restaurants had been replaced by those of Shanghai restaurants and became an integral part of Shanghai cuisine. Due to the long-term coexistence and mutual influence between Shanghai local restaurants and foreign restaurants, Shanghai local dishes (including Suzhou and Wuxi dishes) have absorbed the characteristics of local restaurants, while foreign restaurants have gradually assimilated into Shanghai dishes and become various local flavor restaurants with Shanghai characteristics. Shanghai cuisine has gradually developed from the original local cuisine into a local cuisine with local flavor, with Shanghai, Suzhou and Wuxi Jiangnan water towns as the main body. In Shanghai in the 1940s, there were many restaurants and famous dishes, and food was the essence at home and abroad. The Grand View of Shanghai Market published in the 1940s systematically introduced the characteristics and different flavors of Shanghai cuisine with the theme of "Eating in Shanghai". Newspapers all over the country once praised: "Shanghai is a world of food." In a word, Shanghai cuisine is a kind of cuisine that strives for survival in adaptation, development in adaptation and innovation in development. Its style is characterized by adaptation, trend and development.