Sweet Old Shanghai: Heritage Bakeries
February is sweet season (you know – sweethearts, sweet delights…) so just in time for Valentine’s Day, we take a look at Shanghai’s surviving heritage bakeries and legacy of Western pastry classics.
A selection of Shanghai heritage pastry classics from Kaisiling – Left, clockwise from top: Napoleon, chestnut cake, eclairs, more chestnut cake. Right: Cream horns (top) and yet more chestnut cake (bottom).
In 1997, when I first moved to Shanghai, the city was dotted with small local bakeries specializing in light, fluffy cakes lavishly decorated with cream. Many had picture windows into the cold room, so you could stand on the sidewalk and watch the pastry chefs creating elaborate icing decorations.
While my children stood mesmerized by this show, I was mesmerized by the idea that within these no-frills, state-run bakeries, a tradition begun in the treaty port days had somehow survived and become Shanghainese. For Shanghai’s cosmopolitan legacy lies not only in her fabled architecture, but also in her culinary heritage—especially when it comes to sweets.
In 1980s and ’90s Shanghai, you could stand on the sidewalk and watch pastry chefs decorating cakes like these in small local bakeries
The little neighborhood bakeries have by and large and disappeared, replaced by high-gloss chains, but a few heritage bakeries survive, along with a range of Western pastries and desserts that Shanghai has made her own.
On Wulumuqi Road, a streetside bakery sells mooncakes, sesame balls—and palmiers (hudiesu 蝴蝶酥) chocolate éclairs, (hadou 哈斗) and mille feuille (qiancengsu 千层酥). Ask any Shanghainese, and they’ll tell you these are all local desserts.
So deeply are these pastries ingrained into Shanghai culture that a Shanghainese friend, on her first trip abroad, tells of being surprised to see a hudiesu in a Paris bakery—and even more surprised that the French seemed to think it was a French pastry!
Old Shanghai, of course, had plenty of bakeries. Standalone bakeries like the Astoria, First Russian Bakery, Tchakalian Brothers, and Tkachenko. [1]There were bakeries in hotels – the Park Hotel, the Palace Hotel, the Cathay – and there were in-house cooks who turned out cakes and pastries for western households.
They concocted all manner of European sweet delights: At the Astoria, for example, the owner’s daughter recalls that their offerings included milles feuilles, cream puffs, hazelnut slices, palmiers, cream horns, and extravagant wedding cakes. These Western chefs trained the first generation of highly skilled Chinese pastry chefs: The maestro of the Chinese wedding cakes at the Astoria was a Chinese chef named “Mopi”. [2]
After the foreigners left, it was these Chinese patissiers who carried on making the desserts that Shanghai had come to love, because of course, the cosmopolitan, hai-pai Shanghainese had come to love them, too. Were they a little bourgeois? Perhaps.
But then, there was that generation of loyal Chinese revolutionaries who had studied in France, and developed a taste for croissants – undoubtedly they would have been delighted with the French pastry legacy bequeathed to Shanghai. [3]
By the 1960s, the heritage bakeries remained open in name only, serving primarily as Chinese canteens. But with reform and opening up in the 1980s, a nostalgia for the tastes of Old Shanghai blossomed, and these bakeries began recreating their classics.
A few of our favorite heritage sweets and bakeries:
Hu Die Su: Palmiers at the Park Hotel
The crispy, buttery palmier—hudiesu (butterfly cookie) in Chinese—is Shanghai’s signature pastry, and the Park Hotel Bakery is the signature place to get them: a heritage hotel for a heritage pastry.
The Park is a Shanghai icon: designed by Hungarian master architect Laszlo Hudec for the Joint Savings Society (a conglomeration of Chinese banks) its cutting edge Art Deco design stands out even now. When it opened in 1934, it was the tallest hotel in Asia; it remained the tallest in the country until the 1980s.
Dining options were predominantly western: a 1938 advertisement offers epicurean French in the Dining Room, dinner at the Grill or afternoon tea in the lounge, adding rather charmingly, “the pastry cook has his place, and quite an important one.” [4]Today, the hotel insists that their hudiesu recipe is the same one that their French chef was using back in the ‘40s, and while it’s unclear exactly how long the Park Hotel has been making hudiesu, it was very likely served at that 1938 afternoon tea.
Named for its shape—depending on your perspective, it’s a palm leaf, or butterfly, or elephant ears—the palmier first appeared in early 20th century France, created with a technique so similar to baklava that it suggests a Middle Eastern influence.
Hudiesu are ubiquitous in Shanghai, and available by the bag in bakeries throughout the city. Shanghainese say that the version you prefer depends on which heritage bakery you live near: Jing’an people prefer Kaisiling, Xuhui people like Harbin Food Factory, and for Huangpu folks it’s the Park Hotel.[4]
But only the Park Hotel has block-long lines form every day to get hold of one of the 2,500 bags (five pastries per bag) they make each day. So what gives? As it turns out, a bit of the Shanghainese competitive spirit.
When the French bakery chain Paul opened in Shanghai in 2007, the city went wild for their authentic French pastries—including hudiesu. Shanghai pride took hold, and the Park Hotel decided to reclaim this local delicacy, appealing to a Proust-like nostalgia for the tastes of their customers’ childhoods. The culinary memory of hudiesu, coupled with a landmark heritage Art Deco hotel, created a winning combination.
Park Hotel Deli: 28 Huanghe Road – just around the corner from the main entrance of the Park Hotel, on 170 Nanjing West Road
Kaisiling’s Chestnut Cake
The pastry case at Kaisiling—a transliteration of Kiessling—is a jewel box of delights: eclairs, cream horns, cream cakes—but most people are here for their trademark chestnut cake, a soft cake mounded with whipped cream (“tossed cream”). Chestnut cake is a French classic, but the Kaisiling version would be unrecognizable to a Frenchman.
Kaisiling’s famous chestnut cake, chocolate éclairs, and Napoleon.
Albert Kiessling opened his namesake café in Tianjin in 1906, later opening Kiessling and Bader in the same city with a partner. In 1928, with funding from a northern warlord (among others), a Chinese pastry chef who trained at the Tianjin café opened a copycat restaurant on Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing Road), calling it the New Kiessling Café. Kiessling lore is that this chef, Ling Qingxiang, then modified the recipes for local palates, creating this unique and very popular version of the chestnut cake.
Kiessling’s Tianjin branch, and an ad for the New Kiessling Cafe on Bubbling Well Road – still the restaurant’s location. Ad photo: courtesy MOFBA
The chestnut cake pops up in memoirs of Old Shanghai, and author Eileen Chang (Zhang Ai Ling 张爱玲)—who definitely had a sweet tooth—mentions both chestnut cake and the New Kiessling Café in her novels. In Half a Lifelong Romance, a character finds herself thinking of sugared chestnuts and wondering, “is chestnut cake in season now?” In Lust, Caution, the New Kiessling Café is a setting for the meeting between Wang Jiazhi, the young college girl, and the Japanese collaborator Mr Yi.
Chef Ling and his sons continued working for Kaisiling
Kaisiling is still at its Nanjing Road address, though the original site has been replaced by a modern building.
Kaisiling: 1001 Nanjing West Road (the cafe has many branches, but this is the original New Kiessling Cafe location, though in a new building)
(The Kiessling story is a complicated one: For the Little Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising (MOFBA)’s investigations, click here.)
Hengshan Picardie’s Chestnut Cake
The Hengshan Picardie calls its signature chestnut dessert a cake, but this sweet treat is actually more akin to the classic French Mont Blanc: sweetened chestnut purée, sieved, and topped with whipped cream.
The Picardie still dominates the corner of Hengshan Road and Wanping Road, a position it’s held since 1934 when Swiss architect Rene Minutti designed it for the French property company Fonciere et Immobiliere de Chine (FONCIM). Built as an apartment house, the Picardie may well have had an illustrious bakery, but that’s not where the Hengshan Picardie chestnut cake comes from. Instead, its legacy goes back to another famous Old Shanghai restaurant.
The Hengshan Picardie’s chestnut cake, the bakery, and Chef Pan (foreground, in chef’s whites, watching one of his apprentices at work. Chef Ying is in the background).
In the 1930s, Chef Pan Fuliang worked in the pastry kitchens at the legendary DD’s on Avenue Joffre (Huaihai Road), where he learned how to make Mont Blancs.
DD’s, a Russian-owned restaurant, cafe, and nightclub, was gone by 1956, and the French-owned Picardie had become the state-owned Hengshan Hotel, then mainly used to house Soviet advisors. Chef Pan became the pastry chef at the Hengshan, and DD’s Mont Blanc became the Hengshan chestnut cake. In 1959, Chef Pan taught his apprentice Ying Guanbao how to make the DD’s chestnut cake, and Ying continued to turn them out for more than five decades, passing on the secrets of the chestnut cake to his own apprentice.[6]
Hengshan Picardie Bakery, 534 Hengshan Road (the hotel and bakery are now closed – the hotel is under renovation)
Ruby’s Cream Cake
Ruby’s light, fluffy cream-covered white cake, topped with a signature red cherry, came about when Shanghai native Guo Bingzhong returned for a visit in the 1980s and couldn’t find the cakes of his childhood. A graduate of Shanghai’s prestigious St. John’s University—the Harvard of China—Guo had emigrated to the U.K., but decided there was a business opportunity in bringing back the cakes he remembered so fondly.
Ruby’s famous cream cake (left), Ruby’s version of the chestnut cake (top) and the original location on Huashan Road.
The 1980s, the period of Reform and Opening Up, was a time of nostalgia for Old Shanghai, and that included culinary nostalgia. Guo’s timing was impeccable: Ruby’s old school pastries and red-and-white checked tablecloths capitalized on nostalgia at a time when Shanghainese had enough disposable income to indulge in treats.
Ruby opened in 1986, just in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Shanghai in October that year. And when it came time for a grande finale dessert worthy of a Queen, it was Ruby’s cream cake that was served.
Ruby’s founder Guo Bingzhong, and the three-tiered cake for Queen Elizabeth – see the “E II R” on the base?
Ruby’s: 375 Huashan Road/Changshu Road (many branches, but this is the original location)
Lao Da Chang
The Tchakalian Brothers French Bakery—Lao Da Chang was their Chinese name—was founded by Armenian Pierre Tchakalian, whose family had fled their hometown in Turkey in the wake of the Armenian genocide.
The family eventually made their way to Harbin, where they had a cousin, and from there, Pierre journeyed to Shanghai in 1903, where he worked for French wine importer Mondon & Co. After a brief stint in Russia, Pierre returned to Shanghai in 1917, when he opened the Tchakalian Brothers French Bakery, which quickly established itself as one of the city’s premier bakeries, with multiple branches including a prime location on Avenue Joffre (Huaihai Road), opposite the Cathay Cinema. [7]
By the 1930s, Pierre’s health, and that of the company, was faltering, and the bakery was eventually taken over by their Chinese creditors. Pierre died in 1946, and the bakery became a state-owned enterprise after 1949, retaining its Chinese name. These days, the only hint of its past is the letter “T” in its logo—and its old school pastries: chestnut cakes, cream puffs, hudiesu, millefeuille…
What are your favorite heritage sweets & bakeries? Tell us, and we’ll include them in the next edition! Emails us at info@historic-shanghai.com
Footnotes
[1] Katya Knyazeva, “Russian Restaurants of Old Shanghai,” avezink.com, October 16 2015, https://avezink.livejournal.com/27314.html
[2] Daphne Skillen, “Astoria Confectionary and Tea Room,” historic-shanghai.com, July 5 2014 https://www.historic-shanghai.com/the-astoria-confectionary-tea-room-a-memoir/
[3] “Lighting a Lamp Where Deng Slept”, Europe – International Herald Tribune, October 30, 2006.
[4] Hugues Martin, “Advertising Park Hotel,” shanghailander.net, August 26 2017, https://shanghailander.net/2017/08/advertising-park-hotel/
[5]“谁说上海人吃蝴蝶酥，只能去国际饭店?” 360.doc, May 30 2017. http://www.360doc.com/content/17/0530/06/35866646_658361127.shtml
[6]“The Best Chestnut Cake in Shanghai,” Shanghai Eye, November 30 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh64b0L9hDw
[7]Didier Pujols, “An Armenian in Shanghai: The Tchakalian Family Bakery,” shanghaitours.canalblog.com, September 2016 http://shanghaitours.canalblog.com/archives/2016/09/11/34307259.html
References
James Farrer. 2016. “Michelin Stars Over China: French Cuisine in Shanghai’s Culinary Contact Zones” Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Chinese Food Culture, Taipei: Foundation of Chinese Dietary Culture, pp. 113-38.
Gao, Ceng. “In Search of the ‘Old Shanghai Sweetness’.” Shanghai Daily, November 10, 2011. https://archive.shine.cn/feature/ideal/In-search-of-the-old-Shanghai-sweetness/shdaily.shtml
Guo, Ting. “How the Palmier Became Shanghainese: Displacement & Belonging”. Lecture, Historic Shanghai, Shanghai, China, May 19, 2017.
Museum of Foreign Brand Advertising, “Shanghai’s Original Coffee Brand: The Bittersweet History of CPC Coffee”, May 2021.
Wang Ying, “Pastry Commander”. China Daily, November 15, 2014.
Yuan, Nianqi. “荡荡淮海路13：老大昌，红卫过.” The Paper, January 13, 2021.
https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_10722181
Xu, Junqian. “The Perfect Confection.” China Daily, April 2, 2016. https://www.chinadailyasia.com/lifeandart/2016-04/02/content_15410020_2.html
Zhang, Wen Hua 记忆里的上海味道：老克勒们最爱的海派西点（上）“, 360.doc, February 16, 2019.
Zhang, Wen Hua “记忆里的上海味道：老克勒们最爱的海派西点（下）,” 360.doc, February 17, 2019. http://www.360doc.com/content/19/0217/11/36743738_815501283.shtml