Lunch Money: Shanghai’s Open Doors

This story is part of a new bi-weekly column, Lunch Money, where staff writer Lena Geller visits restaurants in the Triangle in an attempt to dine out for less than $15.

When I step into Shanghai, Durham’s oldest operating Chinese restaurant, the hostess beckons me toward her stand. “See that booth?” she asks. “Go, and I will follow.”

I head to the booth she’s pointing at, tucked in a back corner next to a bookshelf stocked with wine bottles and silk foliage, and slide in. I’m cocooned beneath a red and gold ceiling adorned with ornate dragon medallions. 

Shanghai has been holding court in a strip mall on Hillsborough Road, nestled between a Cricket Wireless and a Five Below, since the late 1980s. With no windows in the dining area, time feels suspended, like I’ve entered a pocket dimension where the outside world ceases to exist. 

At half past noon on a Friday, the restaurant is half full. Three men engage in conversation at one table. Duke students occupy another. A couple at the booth next to mine is chatting animatedly in Spanish. Several solo diners occupy booths throughout the space, poking at their phones with one hand while eating noodles and stir-fried veggies with the other.

The hostess is a whirlwind of efficiency, dropping items at several tables before materializing at mine. When she sets down my menu, the table wobbles slightly. She frowns. 

“Is the table moving or is it just me?” She places her palms on the surface and presses down hard. The table jolts. With a raised finger signaling me to wait, she disappears, returning seconds later with a tiny black square that she slides under one leg.

“One, two, three,” she counts and presses down once more. “Still moving?”

I shake my head no, and she whisks away. 

Another server brings over hot tea, and I check out the menu. I came here because of the lunch special. It’s remarkably budget friendly at $9.50, including an entrée, rice, and your choice of a pork egg roll or soup (hot and sour, wonton, or egg drop).

I ate at Shanghai a lot, growing up in Durham, but it was usually takeout, and my parents always handled the ordering, selecting multiple dishes for our family to share. As an adult facing my own menu in the actual restaurant, there’s something almost transgressive about selecting just one dish for myself.

There are more than 20 entrée options: beef with green peppers, new tze chicken, moo goo gai pan, and so on. Needing a strategy, I remember reading, in an old News & Observer review of the restaurant, that the chef specializes in Cantonese cuisine, so I ask the server which of the lunch entrées are Cantonese. Just the Cantonese chicken, he says. I order it with wonton soup and fried rice.

The soup arrives with a bowl of those addictive, crunchy wonton strips. It tastes like childhood.

When the main course follows, I’m confronted with what appears to be enough food for two people. The chicken is fried golden-brown and sliced into thick pieces, blanketed in a jellylike sauce. Beneath and around the chicken is a garden’s worth of vegetables: snap peas, zucchini, cauliflower, onion, summer squash, broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots.

The vegetables tucked under the chicken stay piping hot throughout the meal. When I bite into the chicken, it offers a loud, theatrical crunch that would be spelled with five Rs in a comic book. The fried rice isn’t revelatory but provides a welcome salty complement to the main attraction.

As I snap some photos, the hostess returns, offering to hold my plate at a slant for better lighting. In this windowless space, her impromptu food photography assistance feels both amusing and oddly touching.

When the check arrives with a fortune cookie, I’m pleased to see my total comes to just $10.25 with tax. I add a 20 percent tip, bringing my grand total to $12.30—well under budget, unlike my previous column where my tip-option panic pushed me over. 

With that out of the way, I crack open the fortune cookie: “Doors will open for you in many areas of your life.” 

If one of those doors leads to a gem like Shanghai, I’ll consider myself fortunate indeed.

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Reach Staff Writer Lena Geller at [email protected].Comment on this story at [email protected]