Pork Chop Rice Cakes: Xian De Lai’s Old Shanghai Classic

Pork chop rice cakes — 排骨年糕 (pái gǔ nián gāo) — is a thin pork chop, deep-fried with its bone in, laid over chewy rice-cake sticks and dressed with a sweet-savory brown gravy. It’s Shanghai’s answer to “something hot, fried, and filling” in the middle of the day.

It is also the least street of our dish pages, and we’d argue one of the most Shanghai. You need chopsticks, a plate, and a table, and the good versions live in old snack shops and time-honored brands rather than at morning stalls. So start at the shop that has been making it longer than anyone.

What’s on the plate

Three parts, no surprises.

The chop. A bone-in pork loin (大排, dà pái) pounded thin, marinated in soy and rice wine, coated lightly, and deep-fried until the edge curls and the crust turns golden. Pounding it thin is the whole trick: it fries fast enough to stay juicy inside.

The rice cakes. Not the thin discs used in stir-fries, but thick, dense sticks of rice cake (年糕). They are poached soft, then finished in the same gravy, so the outside picks up color while the middle stays bouncy.

The sauce. Soy sauce and sugar, tightened to a gloss — the same gentle sweetness that runs through Shanghainese home cooking. A good version coats everything; a lazy one drowns it.

Judge a plate by the rice cakes as much as by the chop. If they arrive pale, stiff, or swimming, the kitchen is going through the motions. The chop should be hot enough that the crust still crackles when you cut in.

Where to eat it: Xian De Lai

Xian De Lai (鲜得来) — roughly, “freshness arrives” — is the name Shanghai associates with this dish. The brand traces itself to 1921, when it started as a stall near the Great World (大世界) amusement hall, and it has worn the nickname “pork chop rice cake king” (排骨年糕大王) for most of the century since.

The flagship to visit is on the Yunnan Road time-honored food street — the address in the card above, a two-minute walk from Dashijie metro. Hours run 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, which makes it one of the few old-school kitchens that still works for a late-afternoon snack. Amap puts the average spend around ¥33 per person, with a rating around 4.6.

A portion is one chop over a nest of rice cakes, with gravy ladled over as it’s plated. The menu also carries the old-Shanghai sides worth pairing:

• Double combo soup (双档, shuāng dàng) — a stuffed gluten ball and a tofu-skin roll in clear broth. The single combo (单档) is one of the two.
• Small wontons (小馄饨, xiǎo hún tun) — thin-skinned wontons in soup.
• Shanghai salad (色拉, sè lā) — the retro potato salad, with ham and green peas, that old snack houses do best.

Where else you’ll find it

Our September 2026 sweep of Amap menu data found 44 shops in the city whose menus name pork chop rice cakes outright. Most are budget snack chains — Fengyu (丰裕生煎), Lao Shengchang (老盛昌), Lao Shengxing (老盛兴) — where the dish sits alongside fried buns and wonton soup at chain prices (average spends mostly in the ¥20–35 range). Those versions are serviceable, not memorable.

Closer to the old standard, Dahuchun (大壶春) — better known for shengjian bao — lists it on Sichuan Middle Road, and Dafugui (大富贵), another time-honored brand, keeps it on the menu too. But if you’re eating this dish once, eat it at the specialist.

Menus change faster than guides. If a shop above has dropped the dish, ask for it by the characters above — any Shanghainese snack kitchen that still fries a proper chop will know what you mean.

How to order

Portions are counted with the measure word 客 (kè): 一客排骨年糕 (yī kè pái gǔ nián gāo) is “one portion of pork chop rice cakes.” Or just show the characters in the card above. Pay at the counter when you order.

Eat it as it arrives. Rice cakes tighten as they cool, and the chop’s crust softens under the gravy, so this is not a dish that waits. If you’re building a table of snacks, put this order in first and let the rest follow.

Around the same table

The same kitchen turns out scallion oil noodles for anyone at the table who wants a bowl instead, and the Yunnan Road strip it sits on is a short walk from the morning stalls in our Four Kings breakfast set guide. Make the pork chop your afternoon stop after a morning of youtiao and soy milk.