How do you order in a Shanghai restaurant?

Ordering in Shanghai goes wrong over the shape of the meal, not the language. You think you are ordering your own dish; what arrives is several plates in the middle of the table that anyone may reach into.

The difficulty is the meal, not the language

Chinese meals are shared: every dish belongs to everyone, and you order for the table, not per person.

The rule of thumb is one dish per person plus one more: three dishes for two, five for four. It is a rule of thumb, not a rule: appetite, plate size and whether you want soup move the number, and four dishes for two is normal where plates are small. Order short and add later: ordering long leaves food behind.

Visitors order badly in the European sequence: a starter each, a main each, eaten separately, which leaves one plate of meat per person and an empty middle. Dishes are ordered at once and arrive as they are cooked.

A menu has a structure

Menus are grouped by category, not starter, main and dessert: cold dishes, then meat and fish, then vegetables, then soup, then rice and noodles, roughly the order of service too, though not strictly.

A well-ordered table takes one dish from each group, not four from one. Order only meat and there is no vegetable and no staple, which a Chinese host reads as a meal that never took shape. Rice is often ordered separately and arrives late.

Pictures, dish numbers, and the code on the table

A menu may have no English, or English so poor that dish names are nonsense; a translation is a hint, not an answer.

Look for a menu with photographs, commonest in tourist districts, chains and mall restaurant floors: pointing at a picture beats any sentence. Otherwise each dish carries a number or code: say it, or point at the line. Many restaurants now take orders by scanning a code on the table, which opens a menu on your phone; it may be Chinese only but usually has pictures.

The practical answer is a phone with a translation app, the camera aimed at the menu: Baidu Translate and Youdao handle camera and offline packs, and Pleco is the standard offline dictionary.

Allergies need writing down: ask your hotel for the requirement in one Chinese sentence, carry it and show it rather than explain aloud. A Chinese kitchen may not read allergy as a European one does, and cross-contact is normal in a small kitchen. For a serious allergy, see a doctor before travel.

Service, paying, and ordering wrong

Dishes come when ready, not in sequence: cold dishes, hot dishes and soup alternate; ask for them in stages for a slower pace.

The bill is paid at the end, at the table or the door counter. Splitting is unusual: one person pays and the others transfer their share later. A few upscale and hotel restaurants add a service charge, sometimes already on the bill, disclosed before you order.

If a dish is wrong or not what you expected, say so at the table; Chinese restaurants fix it more readily than visitors expect, replacing it, taking it off the bill or cooking it again. The earlier you say it, the easier it is.

A normal meal needs three things: one meat or fish dish, one vegetable, and a staple of rice or noodles; a soup or cold dish makes it comfortable. What visitors almost always forget is the vegetable: the meat is ordered, the rice is ordered, the greens are not. The rest of the table’s rules are in the food and etiquette guide.