Another meal, another f*cked up order from M.

Mmmm, nothing like healthy servings of pork on a vegetarian dish.

What would be great is if Pasquale Pescatore takes over their lease and pulls a Black Betty on them...

M-Shanghai is a cute restaurant, and the staff are super nice, BUT the food is nothing like real chinese food. I agree with lots of you that cantonese food is usually too greasy. But what I expected from a place called M-Shanghai was food from northern china... tasty and not greasy, but it was basically tasteless western food shaped like chinese dumplings. A big dissappointment.

I have ordered from M for almost 5 years and it has always been pretty good but in recent months the food is just nasty! I mean its a cool $50 bucks for two people and it should be good right? Well it just sucks. I think they need to re-evaluate there menu and staff. I have given up on M :-(

the food i've had here has always been good, and my in-restaurant experiences there have been, for the most part, good and friendly enough. shame, though that the staff is unnecessarily rude over the phone when you try to order for delivery.

This place is pathetic! Avoid. The delivery takes forever and tonight (i guess because it is raining) they wouldn't come to my place (which they have delivered to before) unprofessional, over-priced, lame excuse for a restaurant.

If there was ever a place to stay away from THIS IS IT. Ae there 2 times IT was terrible te first time but gavve it one more try.. Dumplings are soggy and bland the freddie mercury meatblls would make him Turn in his grave if possible. they are the single worst thing I have ever eatten in ANY resturant ANYWHERE..As For the owner Mei She is THE Nstiest,Rudest,Bitchiest resurantur I have ever met.
DON'T JUST WALK PAST IT RUN!!!

My meal tonight from Shanghai was terrible! I had about five bites of the vegetable fried rice but couldn't even force myself to finish it. And the spicy wontons which are ususally awesome were barely edible. Guess I can cross yet another restaurant off my delivery list in the neighborhood.

I agree with previous reviews, m shanghai is just a hipster hangout.
And if you get stuck eating there after midnite on weekends you may have to finish your meal while people are smoking at the bar. ridiculus!
and the owner is a raging alcoholic that can make returning customers feel extremely unwelcome for no reason at all.
my husband and are never returning.
we dont need to spend our money on over priced greasy chinese food.

HORRIBLE HORRIBLE
my wife and i used to come here all of the time. but lately we have found the owner to be so rude. not is she very hot and cold (something you should never be in the restaurant industry) but the servers are extremely rude and lazy. why bother going to a place to eat where you will be treated like shit and by a grumpy owner and be served by waiters that obviously hate working there? its so not worth it.
and the scene after 2am is very dark and grim...beware angry drunks slouched over the bar on the weekends.

I have no idea what you guys are talking about, M's is one of my favorite restaurants. First of all it has been around forecer (even before hipsters took over and rent prices wet sky high). Second Mai is a great host, always friendly. Third, the food is great, the spicy wontons are amazing!

DO NOT EAT HERE! I really used to like M when I first moved to Williamsburg a few years ago. But in the last year or so, the quality of their food as well as their service has been deplorable. I got food poisoning from “The Amazing Salt and Chili Pepper Shrimp”, and when I called to politely inform them that they should check their shrimp, not only did they not apologize but basically told me I was wrong. Recently, a friend of mine ordered delivery from M to my house, despite my warnings. The order didn’t arrive for an hour and then came incomplete. When we called back, they said they’d rush the remaining dish over. An hour later when he called to complain, they said that if he was unhappy with the amount of time its taking they’d cancel his order – they wouldn’t do anything else. Of course, when the replacement dish finally arrived, it was the wrong dish – over 2 hours total for the wrong food!!!) DOES NO ONE WORKING AT M HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE WORKING IN FOOD SERVICE OR WITH CUSTOMERS?

i haven't had a bad experience here and have loved all the food i've gotten - including the crispy chicken (which i'm now craving).
it seems that some of the ranting self-proclaimed yuppie customers should just stick to their cheep greasy chinese take-out; we all know taste isn't something they're used to.

i liked the food there and i've had traditional shanghaiese food in china before- pretty good stuff. i love having steamed juicy buns in the neighborhood, even if they are not out of this world, as from the earlier posting about water logged- they are SUPPOSED to have juice pouring out from inside. anyway, yes the staff is stupid and obnoxious- that is the main reason i dont eat there more often- get rid of your lazy hipster staff!

Best Juicy Pork Buns ever!!!!!

M Shanghai ownz. Whenever I'm fuckin high as shit and want some quality Chinese food, I always order from them. The Mu-shu goes down easily after 4-5 monster joints and a late night fuck session with your mom and all of her friends. All these tofu-eating hipster queers need to bend back over and reinsert their favorite indie rock star's cock into their asses before speaking again.

I'd like to try this place. however, 15 dollars for fried shrimp? at a chinese restaurant? they can go F themselves.

Nice ambience and decent drinks but the food is mediocre. Tofu dish was at or below the level of usual Flatbush Ave storefront take-out -- and twice as expensive.

hey man, take out or not, if the take out sucks, why in the world would i wanna eat there? take out hsould be the simplest thing to get right, and if it cant be done right then the restaurant is not consistent, at all. at least those "greasy counter" places, are fair. and come on this is williamsburg, ur not gonna find a rat or cocaine in ur fried rice. maybe a hair, but even that scares u people.

I order delivery from here all the time but the food is real hit or miss. The sliced crispy chicken is DISGUSTING. OMG the sauce was almost completely corn syrup? The portions are also really small. I also want to know why the dude who answers the phone is such an asshole, he's actually hung up on me before. Other than that the kung pao chicken and beef with scallion are really good.

I've only ever had good experiences at this restaurant. The spicy wontons are one of my favourite things to eat in the world. The shanghai tofu, shanghai style rice cakes, noodle dishes, and garlic eggplant are all delicious. It is a bit pricey when compared to similar Shanghai style joints over the bridge however it is a lot less greasy and the ambience in the restaurant is a lot nicer.

And the owner is a sweet, attentive food connoisseur who knows many of her regular guests by name. yeah...
substitue sweet for raging
and food for alcohol
and regular by drinking buddies.

they really need to get it together in the delivery dept. TWICE when placing a large order for 5 people or more (60+ dollar order) they f*cked it up. and by that i mean we got the COMPLETELY wrong order. someone elses. the wrong order was also extremely late in arriving. after inquiring about the switched order and how to handle it, we were told the delivery driver was going to pick up OUR order at the OTHER house and bring it back to us after it had already been picked through. the dumbfounded girl on the phone seemed shocked when i said i wasnt too into this idea. i mean wtf? am i wrong in thinking we should get a couple bux off? an apology? something? she was a total bitch and couldnt be arsed to fix the problem. in the end we just got our money back and 2 hours wasted with no food. completely lame. again... this has happened twice. it bums me out too because i really love their food and the lady that owns the place that is always there. but who the hell do they have working for them? i ask myself this question a lot lately about newer neighborhood restaurants. i wont be back for awhile... not that they care obviously.

I have to say, I was rather shocked to see the negative postings about Shanghai, as I think the food is consistently great. Possibly the best dumplings I have had. What I do notice across the board, is that all these negative reviews stem from delivery and take-out, and I do think people need to take into account that the food is not meant to be served in this way. I agree, when dining in, my dumplings are piping hot-- when delivered, slightly soggy (though still very good). But this cannot really be remedied, and it should be understood that, like leftovers, delivered food is never going to be of the highest standard. I would high recommend dining in and giving it another try. I have always thought of it as one of the best restaurants in Williamsburg.

M.Shanghai's offers some of the freshest, healthiest tastiest Chinese food I've ever had -on the East or West coasts! And it's fabulous for vegetarians - where else can you get those delicious and flavorful veggie buns! YUM! And the owner is a sweet, attentive food connoisseur who knows many of her regular guests by name (and no, I'm not the owner or an employee - or family). I live in DC, but I make it a point to stop my M.Shanghai's whenever I'm in NY (where I've lived before). I'm surprised the other posters prefer the dripping-in-grease $5 Chinese food from the corner store, but if you have a care for your health and value quality M.Shanghai's is the place (plus it's a hip fun bar scene)!

Tonight my girlfriend and I decided that we were both in the mood for Chinese food. We were craving the delicious and flavorful but slightly greasy Sesame Shrimp dish ($6.99) from our local corner take-out joint. This dish, as is the case with most Chinese joints, comes in almost obscene portions, it's enough to feed both of us. So what did we do? We decided, "Hey, let's try that fancy Chinese place from the website restraunt guide" "let's treat ourselves to something special" BIG MISTAKE!!!! I scanned the menu for shrimp entrees and the only option was something called The Amazing Salt and Chili Pepper Shrimp it cost $15 (twice the cost of their rice and noodle dishes). I figured "this has to be great...it's really expensive and it's described as AMAZING..that takes alot of nerve. We'll get a couple appetizers and we can share the whole thing for a satisfying fancy meal". When I asked the guy on the phone if he recommended the seaweed or cucumber salad, he said "definitely the Seaweed!!!!" I had him throw in some seafood dumplings. With the $1 extra charge for brown rice my total came to...are you ready for this...$28.85. Not really extravagant...but for Chinese food, that's pretty expensive. But I reminded myself this isn't just Chinese food...this is fancy hipster Chinese food. So it's worth it. You're paying for quality ingredients and tender love and care and the waitresses and bartenders have expenses like me to take care of and it's expensive to rent a restaurant. My first concern when I went to pick up the food was that the bag didn't weigh very much. "Are you sure this is my order?" "yep" Unfortunately it was my order. We opened up the bag on our kitchen table. The "Amazing" shrimp, you remember..the $15 one, was a SMALL portion of fried popcorn shrimp. Little shrimps...like the ones that come in cans...like the ones you get in a basket at Houlihans but unlike the TGIF-style shrimp poppers these had no flavor. The brown rice? The chinese container was HALF-FULL!!!! Cocksuckers!!! Half a container and they charged me an extra dollar?!?! HA HA HA!!! I'm such an asshole!! The seaweed salad was Shit!!! It was swampy and greasy and tasted like old garlic...inedible. We threw it out. The seafood dumplings were good BUT NOT ANY BETTER THAN MY LOCAL CHINESE JOINT!!! Who the fuck are these people fooling?!?!? What kind of asshole would willingly pay 5 times the prices at a typical take out for insulting portions of sub-standard bland-ass fake-Chinese garbage? A bunch of Schproketz-style pampered yuppie shitbags-like me and you!! HA HA HA!!!! These cunt-monkeys really got over on me!!! The most offensive meal I've ever ordered in my life. Not kidding. I want to go apologize to the Chinese family on my corner.

absolutely horrendous. i ordered delivery on a weeknight. regardless of whether or not the food being carried to my house affected its quality -- i'm sure it was gross before it left the restaurant. the steamed juicy pork buns were waterlogged... they literally dripped clear fluid when you lifted them from the container. the sticky rice shumai were filled with semi-cooked rice. it hurt my teeth to chew on them. the shanghai style lo-mein promised "shrimp, shredded chicken, pork and spinach in a delicious brown sauce". the sauce seemed to consist of reduced soy sauce so high in salt that it gave me a headache instantly. the noodles may have been hand-made but they were never cooked - thick, goopy, and doughy. the rest of the dish, shrimp et al. were strangely absent. the Pinenut Chicken with Sweet Corn in White Sauce was the absolute worst. the white sauce was this watery conconction with no flavor. the chicken was steamed white and flavorless, and the sweet corn came with carrots and snow peas -- having been raised on frozen vegetables, i recognized this as a green giant product instantly. don't ever eat here. this 'pk' person above is obviously an owner or employee of this place.

Well, I would have to disagree about both the drink prices as well as the food. There is a happy hour every-day with 3 dollar pints, wine and well and also a late night food happy hour where all the dumplings etc are half off when you order a drink. As for the tofu problem above, I'd suggest eating in the resturant for better tofu consistancy--take out is always a risk. I love the food here, as a mainly veggie and a part time carnivore, and I find the staff to be nice, the atmosphere comfortable, and the price right. Check out the vegetable buns, YUM!

One late Sunday night I hadn't eaten dinner and with no food in the house, I was stuck between Anytime and M Shanghai. Not wanting to succumb to Anytime, I ordered the Ma-Pao Tofu from M. and when it arrived, not only was the rice cold, but what they call "silky," I call nasty. I've never had mushier or blander tofu in my life. I couldn't even eat it and I am not a picky eater by any means. The meat dishes might be great, but I would suggest that vegetarians avoid this place. I definitely will from now on.