If you want cheap bad Chinese food for white Americans DO NOT go to shanghai restaurant! The food here is authentic, though the menu features a bit of a mix of northern and southern Chinese food.The highlights of the yearly Chinese dinner I attend here include the duck, the spicy cabbage banchan-type premeal dish, the fish soup, and separately, the dessert soup that contains little rice dumplings and is just the most delicious and one of the strangest things I've ever found myself squee over.As for their other offerings - the whole fish always seems to be mostly skin. Not sure where the fish meat goes but it is hard to locate on the platter! I'm not a fan of their sliced rice patty dish as I find it too chewy. Their spicy squid is quite nice, however, and tastes the way you'd expect any spicy squid dish at any Asian restaurant to taste. The whitefish in what seems to be a cornstarch sauce, and the baby shrimp in a similar sauce were both tasty and cooked perfectly. The fish soup is super light on the fish but the pieces you do find are again perfectly tender and well seasoned. If you like pork, they also make a pork shank that the rest of the folks in my group devoured like wild animals, so it must have been remarkably delicious.If you are Chinese, have Chinese friends, or at least have had authentic Chinese food and know what to expect then shanghai restaurant will be pleasing to you. If you are not any of those things, probably best to avoid this place unless you're super adventurous, or order really boring things from the menu!The staff are always wonderfully accommodating and provide excellent service with a smile regardless of whether you speak mandarin or not, but things are arguably facilitated if you have someone who does in your party. The location is a bit difficult to find now that the overpass on Preston is in construction mode. The restaurant is in a strip mall just south west of the intersection of Preston and the 635.

Man and I were doing a roaming food tour of Dallas when we stopped in at Shanghai exclusively for their xiao long bao! They offered two types of the juicy soup dumplings (on the appetizer menu): pork and pork with crab. We ordered the pork and sat back for a 15 minute wait during a very slow mid-afternoon. At this point, all we could do was the inspect the scenery: typical Chinese restaurant with about 20 plastic covered tables and booths, posters of Asian cities plastered on the wall, and golden cat and buddha greeters at the door. No flatscreen tv mentioned in earlier Yelps, but there was a laptop sitting at a back table blaring Asian sports and variety shows. The menu itself seemed Americanized, with descriptions fully rendered in English, but there were definitely some authentic gems listed. Too bad, we were on our one-dish tour...but we are definitely intrigued enough to come back for more.The xiao long bao of course were great! I loved that these were big, super juicy and well seasoned. I've had Royal China and Jeng Chi and found theirs anemic and dry, so I have to say these are the best I've tried yet.Service was admittedly slow-paced (after all, we had ordered only one make-from-scratch appetizer split between two people) and typical of other ethnic Chinese places we usually haunt, meaning we're no strangers to neglect. Despite that the staff were sitting down to their own lunch by the time we polished off the XLB, they still managed to take care of our refills and our check.We'll be back.