Xiao Shaoxing 小绍兴 @ Shanghai (2025)

This was one of the first restaurant I ate in Shanghai when I arrived in 1996, and it has been one of my comfort food place. Talking about chicken soup for the lonely soul!

Located in the basement of Longemont Mall 龙之梦购物中心 next to Zhongshan Park, there’s a food court that has all the best eateries in Shanghai opening a store there. And these are not just a counter but an entire branch serving the same things as the main restaurant.

And among the famous restaurants is Xiao Shaoxing, a specialist in Shanghai-style poached chicken 白切鸡. The food has remained affordable despite that everything in Shanghai has become so much more expensive. I said this in 2018, and said the same thing now (2025).

One of the most recognised brands of Shanghai restaurants, they have been around since 1940s. And they kept the standards all these time, because it remains state owned. The rest of the food were so so, except the chicken.

This restaurant, the name of which literally means ‘little Shaoxing’, has been present in Shanghai since the 1943, when founder Mr Zhang arrived in Shanghai from the eponymous Zhejiang city, birthplace of Lu Xun. At first, Zhang etched out a living for himself selling snacks, but as time went on, his tender poached chicken grew in popularity and it is now the restaurant’s signature dish.

Their mainstay is the Three Yellow Chicken 三黄鸡 – chicken with yellow beak, yellow skin and yellow feet. The chicken is cooked to perfection, every piece is tender and full of the chicken flavour. The jelly of the fats formed between the skin and meat is the highlight of this signature dish of the restaurant. Comes with their signature soy sauce, which I suspect to be mixed with MSG.

This place is the only one in Shanghai that I know that sell chicken blood pudding. Great source of iron during the resource scarce Shanghai in the past. You can taste the wonderful chicken stock used for making the soup. After all this is a boiled chicken restaurant, so there’s plenty of chicken stick.

I don’t know what my infatuation with the blood pudding, it is not as if I need the supplement of iron. But the fact that it is no longer available in Singapore made me order this whenever I am in China, Taiwan or Thailand. Besides the pudding, there’s sliced chicken gizzards inside the soup as well.

Chicken oil vegetable rice 鸡油菜饭 is a Shanghainese local delicacy using chopped bokchoy mixed with chicken rice. The chicken rice is similar to our Singaporean chicken rice, except it does not have the garlicky and fragrant taste given that it uses a different type of rice and does not use garlic. Besides the chicken oil vegetable rice, you can also get the famous Xiao Jinling 小金陵 salted duck 咸水鸭 in the same restaurant.

Xiao Shaoxing is a great little place to chow down on affordable, tasty Chinese food, not to mention brush up on your Shanghainese with some locals. Forget about service, you are there for the food.

Xiao Shaoxing 小绍兴
1018 Changning Rd, Changning District, China, 200051
龙之梦购物中心B2层2027

Visited Apr 2025