Our usual weekend dinner gang was craving Shanghainese food, and we decided to gamble on this place based on the DH reviews. The restaurant was kind of crappy inside and not clean, including the unpleasant w/c. Undaunted, we decided to stick around, since the place was packed and we figured that meant the food was good.

We ordered off the 'set dinner of four dishes' menu, which offered lots of choices. We had: eggplant with pork and chilies, gai lan with beef, roasted half chicken, and Szechuan green beans. The meal also came with a complementary shrimp in peanut sauce appetizer. We also had some rice and both steamed and deep fried Chinese bread. Overall, it wasn't awful, but the gai-lan dish was way too salty, the eggplant dish was overcooked and mushy, and the Szechuan green beans were burnt, so we had to send the beans back for a do-over. We also were appalled that little bottles of Tsingtao beer cost 5 bucks each. At least the chicken and the prawns were okay.

Surprisingly, service was good throughout the meal. As for value, it was too pricey for the quality of the food. I think we will look elsewhere for our next Shanghainese meal.

Not recommended.

Okay, so what are you expecting from a place like this? It's a cheapo greasy Chinese restaurant. (Okay, maybe not so greasy, but you get the idea...)

Not too worried about my health here, it seems passably clean I guess. The service that night, well, I guess they're running a little short-staffed, but efficient enough that I can't really complain.

The food? Well, the soup was a big miss. It was some crab thick soup, liberally populated with huge chunks of canned mushroom. It's not good to start off on the wrong foot as that kind of sets the tone for the rest of the meal. Luckily, that was the low point. High point might have been the special duck that everyone orders (honestly, might be worth a visit just to sample that) and the "8 treasure rice" for dessert. Everything else in between? Well, passable, but I wish they would stop using all that damned canned mushroom in everything!

It's got a decent menu, good prices, now if they could only clean up the restaurant a bit and try using some quality ingredients, maybe put more care into the food, they may have a winner.

I won't tell you to stay away from this one, but I'm hesitant to recommend it either. The quality just isn't there. It might, just might, be worth a quick visit for the couple of dishes I mentioned before... but only if I couldn't find it elsewhere.

Ningtu is a Shanghainese restaurant but it also serves southern dishes you find at Cantonese restaurants. The service was extremely quick and the place was completely packed for mother's day, there were still people waiting when we left at around 8:30PM. One of our servers spoke English but I'm not sure about the other ones. We ordered the 6-dish set meal for $75.00 which arrived almost all at once within 15 minutes (making for a crowded table).

The set meal also comes with rice, stir-fried prawns, and soup. We ordered hot & sour soup which was decent except that it was a little heavy on the sour side which I generally dislike but other people at my table were amenable to (they usually drizzle red vinegar on their soup anyways). The prawns were not bad. We also ordered honey garlic spareribs which were surprisingly not oily, sticky, or dense, like it usually is at other restaurants. A nice change unless you LIKE them sticky, oily, and dense. The most interesting dish available at Ningtu in my opinion is the crispy rice ("guoba"), served with a clear sauce/broth containing bamboo shoots, ham, peas, and shiitake mushrooms. I don't recommend having the server pour the broth over the crispy rice pieces at the beginning since that will make them soggy, mix it in your own bowl. Other dishes we ordered were beef with bamboo shoots, a fish and bean curd dish, pork with celery and cashews, and bean curd with green beans; the order listed here being my order of preference.

The restaurant itself is quite bare but clean and bright; the exception as always at Chinese restaurants being the washrooms. In general the food was quite good and the 6-dish set menu meant we spent less than $15 a person.

Casual restaurant, don't expect ambiance. Don't order steamed pork dumplings here (go to wong's shanghai wonderful for that) What surprises me is that the common noodle dish, stir fried shanghai noodles with pork IS NO GOOD HERE. The "lin goh" is alright. What's really good is the hot and sour soup, chinese doughnut (different and delicious!) the "chee fann" (rolled rice with chinese donut in centre),the cheap soup noodles,meat dishes, the appetizer dish with game/smoked duck meat, CAN'T GO WRONG. (the deserts are mediocre)

I love this restaurant, I really do. So does my family and relatives. You could have a large table filled with dishes and feed a 15 person table for under $100. Usually including tips, it comes to ~$80. Their fried fish dish is the best I've had (and still is) out of 5 other restuarants I've tried.

You probably don't recognize the name but give this restaurant a try. I've had both lunch and dinner here on numerous occasions and what you get is solid. The food comes out FAST (sometimes too fast) and is good quality. Some of my favorites are the hot and sour soup, spicy szechuan green beans with minced pork, steamed dumplings, and the chicken served with the dark vinegar. The place is usually packed at lunch on the weekends so don't get there too late. One of the better shanghai restaurants in the city.

Had an opportunity to go recently for lunch again. It was as good as I remembered it. Both times we had a table full of young kids and we were very well treated.

Food was great. Not too greasy which can be the case for the shanghai fried noodles and fried rice cakes. Juicy Buns (Shiao Long Bao) were excellent. So much so we ordered a second round. Tan Tan noodles were just ok... have had better but other items made up for it.

Friends that we went with said very good things about dinner too so we may just have to try that real soon.

We went to this family style restaurant for lunch. We chose the Shanghai Style Dim Sum items.

1. Sticky Rice Roll with preserved vegetable, Chinese donut and pork sung. This roll is made right away and not pre-made like some of the other restaurant, The cruchy taste of the preserved vegetable and the Chinese Donut balance off the chewy of the rice.

2. Braised Beef Noodle Soup - the Beef is stewed and it melts in your mouth, the noodle does not get soggy (Thin Shanghaines noodle) and the soup stock is unbelievable mixed with lots of flavor.

3. Beef Xiao Bang - Its like a sandwich with the bun part made of of flaky dough dipped with lots of sesame seeds and the marinated cold beef is stuff inside with some spicy pickle cabbage. Once you bite into it, its crunchy and soft at the same time and the spicy pickle gives it a mild heat.

4. Hot Sweet Soy Milk - we asked for less sugar and its tasty and help to absorb all the carbs we were eating.

The dishes comes out vey quickly so if you are on a time crunch, this is a perfect place for lunch.

They also sell handmade rice noodle (Shanghainese Lin Go) for you to buy for home.

The decor is an East Side Family Restaurant but the food and the courteous service is Outstanding.

Next time I will try the crab with the Farva Beans and Noodles under. The people at the next table had it for lunch and they say it was really good.

It's hard to find a decent Shanghainese restaurant in Vancouver. Richmond has a number of excellent choices but sometimes I'm just not up for the drive nor the wait.

I've been to this restaurant a number of times since I was first introduced to it a couple of years ago. The food is quite good and not that greasy.

I always order the Shanghai rice noodles (chow lein go) and the fish maw and crab soup. The soup is very good although I don't really understand why they put frozen peas into it?! It doesn't make it seem very authetic afterwards. I don't mind too much though, as it does not take away from the soup itself. The steamed pork dumplings are pretty good but not as juicy as I'd hope. Potstickers here are also try-worthy.

Ningtu is truly a neighborhood restaurant. The decor is a bit dated, but customers come here for the food and not so much for the decor. This place is usually hopping and I can understand why. This is the first Shanghai restaurant I've ever tried the fried rice bowls. They're like unsweetened rice crispies squares with savoury sauce poured on top. I thoroughly enjoyed it although it is definitely a sharing dish.

The servers are all very nice and they don't rush you out the door after you've finished your meal. It is helpful if you speak a bit of Mandarin if you want some help deciding between dishes you want to try out when conversing with the servers.