Shanghai Fresh — Restaurant in Cambridge

1 month edit: ??? They deleted my review. These people need to be reported for their shady business practices.

Original review on 9/4/21: I regret not looking more into the recent reviews of this sorry excuse for a restaurant (and probably should've seen it as a red flag when a previous customer was arguing with the waitress and left their food untouched), but I was tired and hungry and anything would've sufficed at that point. Anyone who has had only Panda Express as a point of reference would know that this ain't Shanghai and this ain't fresh.

Low quality food, fine, what can you do. But the series of events that followed the oversalted pea sprouts and tasteless fried rice was just absurd and hard to describe as anything other than blatant robbery.

Order of wonton noodle soup was incorrect, the bowl arrived with wonton and no noodles. I asked the short haired waitress and she pretended to go back into the kitchen to check on something then proceeded to ignore me. Called the long haired waitress over and she was pleasant and patient, graciously offering to correct the order. Wonton noodle soup arrived and at this point we're already more than halfway done with all the other dishes. Split open a wonton and saw what I was dreading and half expecting based on the food quality: RAW MEAT. Please just cancel my order and get me off this wild ride. Long haired waitress again graciously complied and apologized. Short haired waitress, clearly seeing us as a nuisance trying to get a free meal (sorry I can't eat your raw food???), shoves the check in our face without us even asking for it. Check was incorrect, charging us $19.45 for the pea sprouts that were $12.95 in the menu and an additional dollar added to the xiao long bao out of pure spite I guess. Thinking it would be quite simple to correct this (maybe not so honest) mistake, I tried speaking with the long haired waitress. Short haired waitress swooped in, loudly said that they changed prices in September, then showed me a DIFFERENT menu with the price BLACKED OUT. What is that supposed to prove? Do they just have this fake menu readily available to scam customers who notice discrepancies in the check?

I ended up just paying and leaving, upset with my appetite lost.

Short haired waitress, please find a job not in the service industry. Long haired waitress, I'm sorry you have to work with her and thank you for being the only positive thing from this absolutely...

It was one of many little Chinese restaurants in Cambridge, conveniently located just out side of Central Square Station.

As the name states, it serves mainly Shanghainese cuisine, and as such I ordered stirred fried Chinese rice cake, the wok temperature was controlled just right and the rice cake tasted soft with a slight taste of burned flavor, which makes it great.

The highlight of the meal was the Sweet and Sour Lotus Roots, which I had it many times before but never presented in this manner, it was almost like a Michelin star restaurant style presentation, but pretty okay on the taste. I felt the slices were cut a bit too big, hard to bite on, and the sweet and sour sauce hardened after the dish was put on the table, overall, it was an interesting presentation and okay taste.

Most importantly, I want to note the service of staff there, they don’t smile, just stop by and drop dishes in your table, and asks if we are finished when we have half of a dish still left and eating. So if you are more of a service oriented person, this restaurant is not for you.

🍡Must order🍡

Sweet and sour lotus root Stir fried Chinese rice cake

📜Score (five star scale):

🏝Environment: ⭐️⭐️

👍Services: ⭐️⭐️

🍽Taste: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

💰Price:...

Very tasty food! The "thumbs up" and "red pepper" symbols on the menu guided our decision making as we figured out what to order for a late night dinner.

We got here around 8:30pm on a Thursday night and the line was still out to the door. Fortunately it was moving pretty quick as people finished up their meals for the night. We saw an awkward situation when the hostess seated two separate parties at the same table, despite the fact that there were other tables opening up soon and not much of a line left. It's a small restaurant so I wouldn't be surprised if that's common practice during the busy hours.

After about 20 minutes, we were seated and the waitress quickly brought out some hot tea. The menu was easy to navigate and, like I said before, the symbols made it easy to decide what to order. The Shanghai Shrimp w/Chef's Special Sauce was a burst of flavor to my taste buds! The Yu Xiang Shredded Pork was pretty good too, though it had a bit of a kick and the bamboo masked the taste of the pork. The portion size was a little disappointing; it would be nice to have more food considering we ordered four plates for three people and we managed to wipe clean each dish!

Yummy food and good service- I...