Shanghai Best

这是我去过的最糟糕的餐馆，没有之一！慎重以防黑店 This is the worst worst worst restaurant I have been to. After today’s experience, I begin to read the reviews before going to a restaurant. Today is Saturday and I want to have a nice lunch. I chose this restaurant just because it’s close and I am slightly bored with Chef Tan (which is the best Chinese food in New Port). When I got in, several tables were not cleaned. I saw flies! I told them to clean them because the dirty tables are close to mine. I ordered buns, noodles and soups. Surprisingly they used cheap plastic plates to put them! The chicken soup is even not hot (only slightly warm. They might just use the micro oven to heat it for a short time). And I am forced to give 20% tip! (I didn’t finish the soup. Actually when I was on the way home, I felt uncomfortable at my stomach.) What a terrible experience! I argued with them how could you mandate 20% tip for such awful service. Why the soup is only warm? (The owner of the restaurant said I could have told him and he can heat the soup. This is ridiculous. The soup should be made not heated.) I argued with them for 10 mins and because they wanted to do business with other dining in customers, they changed the bill to remove the tip and one soup. They clearly don’t care about google reviews. There are so many one star reviews in google reviews but do they want to improve it? They don’t care about customers, do you think they can make good food?

In all honesty I had googled "best dumplings in Jersey City" and this was one of the restaurants that were close by and seemed to have what I craved... however I was not pleased with my order... The soup was plain.. and the pepper steak with white rice was okay.. the chicken with broccoli was nothing out of the ordinary ... The dumplings had a strange taste and did not bring any dipping sauce... The best part of the whole 35$ meal was the "4$ watermelon ice juice" ... however I wasn't impressed nor did I feel satisfied.. they are also a bit pricey.. and was a bit disappointed at the fact that I couldn't combine my orders with vegetable fried rice..

As a Chinese, I am strongly not recommending this place. Avoid at all cost. If there is an option of negative stars, I’ll do that. Below are my reasons: 1. We dined in. They want to save the plates/lower the cost, they provided us low quality single use dining facilities. Except soup and buns. Even the dishes they provided were in the cheap plastic container. Again we were dine in not to go. Please refer to the pictures. 2. When we finish ordering the food, they told us that the tip is 20% hard-required. We understand during Covid restaurants are having a hard time, and we usually give decent tips 20%+. However, when the restaurant requires you to must pay 20% as tip, it makes us feel sick. Even if they require 1%, it’s so rude and ignorant. During the dining, no one was around. When we run out of water, we couldn’t find anyone. Thus, they don’t deserve the tip let alone they require that after taking the order. Overall, we were treated like sh*t. They don’t have the basic respect for a customer.

Overall a good option for a take out. Overall 3.5 stars for the price. Ordered few dishes for delivery. Food overall tasted pretty good except for few dishes. The beef in beef noodle was way too salty, almost too salty that few of us didn’t eat past the first - two bites. The general Tso chicken came so over fried that it was tough, chewy and dried. It didn’t look it because it was well drenched in its sauce, but it almost appeared double fried before delivery so it would get hot. Little confused about the scallion pancakes Bc it was.. missing scallions. Other dishes including mapa tofu and veggie dishes were good. I would say eggplant was the overall favorite. They were all packed well in its bags.

I would have rated negative if that’s an option. I have been in Jersey City for 7 years and Shanghai Best used to be my go to place. Yesterday I went to ShanghaiBest (have not been there for 1 or 2 years) with my family as my wife wants to have the sweet&sour pork which is considered a local dish in Shanghai. The food was mediocre(maybe an overstatement), but they charged us 20% Tips without any actual service. No one come to give you more water/checking if everything is fine/or even get you the check. We have to do everything ourselves. I understand that there maybe more risks/underwater job to do to keep the restaurant clean and sanitized, but I won’t pay 20% tip for no service. Ironically, the Chinese restaurant next to ShanghaiBest - Taste of north China, also charged 18% dine-in tip, but the service was so good that I see they totally deserve it. I have already get in touch with the bank to dispute the overcharge. I feel really sad to see a good restaurant (couple years ago) became to this low level and feel embarrassed as a local Shanghainese. ShanghaiBest? ShanghaiWorst!

Update: the restaurant is now open (since May 1st) after closing because of the pandemic. We have ordered takeout twice since then. They set up the pickup well for social distancing. I felt very safe ordering here and will continue to support this neighborhood restaurant. Loved the beef noodle soups and hot pots. Very good value for the amount of food you are getting. Service was friendly and efficient. Definitely a good place to go when you are hungry and need some comfort food.