Shanghai Heping Restaurant

Shanghai Heping is a solid choice, I've been here a few times and everything has been good, but nothing in particular stands out.  Just be advised that this place can get uncomfortably loud with noisy people.  Each time I've been there was always a rowdy group.  Typically I don't mind loud places that much, but the acoustics here are jacked and the noise of loud people can literally be ear-piercing.  Apparently the place turns into a karaoke joint late at night, too.

Okay I'm not sure what happened here. This is the first restaurant I tried in Chinatown and was feeling pretty confident about this place after reading the reviews. Turned out to be a big letdown.

The Xiao long bao was pretty good but I don't go crazy over something thats just brothy soups put into tiny buns. I've had the best ones in Shanghai and they just aren't my thing. Why do people wait 1 hour in heated shanghai weather just to eat them- I don't understand.

Now the real disappointment was the song hua yu (crispy sweet and sour fish with pine nuts). Sounds pretty good right? Not here. Its the worst song hua yu I've ever had, even the ones at a buffet taste billion times better! Even worse, the fish costs nearly $20. The fish was not fresh, nor crispy, and small in portion (not that I wanted to eat much of it anyways). I only enjoyed the pine nuts, sauce, and rice part of this dish. Wow, did I really just spend $20 for sweet and sour rice? Was not a happy camper.

On top of that, the service was bad--not sure if our waitress even said a single word to us the entire time.

Really good meal mostly Chinese people sitting at the tables. We had pork belly and spicy eggplant all the dishes were terrific. The soup noodles were the best