Shanghai Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Colorado

Are you ever in the mood for Americanized Chinese food? You know, the overly sweetened, dripping with pink sauce, crispy fried stuff? Well...this is the place! This nostalgic type of cuisine is anything close to authentic Chinese cuisine, but there is a special time and place in this world for it...just like B horror flicks. It was very nostalgic for both myself, raised in Cortez, Colorado, and Bob who is from the Boston area.

Ambiance: It is pretty typical for a small town Chinese restaurant; it brought back good memories. For example, they have the paper placemats that show your Chinese horoscope.

Service: We arrived right before 6 p.m. on a Friday night. The dining room was pretty full, and the servers looked a little overwhelmed. One of the servers told us that we could choose our own table. We saw a few other parties seated and given water before we finally flagged a server down. It had been 20 minutes. However, he seemed pretty apologetic and quickly took our order. The appetizers came out six minutes after that. You could tell that they were trying to redeem themselves quickly. The entrees came about 15 minutes after that. A female server also stepped in to help and she was quite the character. She seemed like a lot of fun.

Food: We started with an order of egg rolls and crab rangoon. The egg rolls were nice and crispy! The crab rangoon was probably some of the best I have had in a long time. The wonton wrappers used were crisped to perfection. The sweet and sour sauce and Chinese hot mustard were served in the same  small dish in the shape of a yin yang. The moo shu pork was highly recommended on TripAdvisor, so I had to try it. I was very pleased with my choice! The pork had a very nice sweet and savory flavor. I also had plenty of thin pancakes to create the perfect little moo shu wraps. Bob had the sweet and sour chicken. It came with bright pink sweet sauce. The white meat was thickly breaded, not dry and pretty tender. Bob thought this was typical of the East Coast style of sweet and sour chicken.

I can't wait to tell my family that lives in this area to make sure...

Updated review 9/15/2023 Unfortunately, we will no longer be coming here. After my bad experience below, we gave them a few more chances and it was decent, however, lately their food seems like it's leftovers from the day before. I get that places can have an "off" night, but this "off" night has been 4 times recently.

My go to is always chicken lo-mein which is pretty hard to mess up, but when your noodles come out like mush, and the flavor is off, that's disappointing. My daughter said the same thing.

My husband and daughter always get the egg drop soup, but this was uneatable. They said it was like they combined 3 day old leftover soup with new soup so they didn't have to make as much or have to throw away leftover. It smelled awful. The crispy noodles were stale.

My husbands always gets the pu pu platter, and its been a favorite of his over the years. The past couple of visits, he's said one thing is usally bad to eat. But this time, everything he took a bite of, he just spat out.

We ended up just throwing everything away. It's not worth our time driving another 30 minutes to return it or get a refund.

I thought maybe the food was bad because we have to drive 15 minutes home, but it's been the same even eating in.

March 2021 - I came here for the first time tonight. I ordered chicken lo mein no veggies, beef lo mein & plain lo mein for my girls. Came home and there was a mix up with one of the items in the order. I called and the girl was very nice about it and realized my meal was mistakenly put into someone else's bag. I drove 15 minutes to return the wrong meal and given my correct meal. After having a few bites, which were delicious, I noticed short dark hair in my food. We all have long blonde hair, so this did not come from us. It's absolutely disgusting when you find someone else's hair...

What To Order: Orange Chicken or General Chicken

I've been eating at Shang-Hi every year since 2005. Its our favorite Chinese restaurant in Pagosa and every ski trip we visit at least once.

The staff at Shang-Hi are awesome, very friendly and are always attentive to any needs you might have. Several occasions while visiting in December we were all gifted nice bamboo & canvas roll out calendars.

The food is always great, the General Chicken and Orange Chicken served atop a bed of shredded cabbage. The chicken is fried to a crisp, has great flavor and then covered in sauces that are some of the best I've had.

We've tried many of the items on the menu, including soups but the two chicken entrees are my favorites. Prices are fair with most entrees priced around $13, service is excellent, and food to table times are good.

If you staying in Pagosa Springs, this is a great place to go for a sit down dinner. With few options in Pagosa, this is one of our...