The Breakfast Club - Lai Lai Yong He Soy Milk in Shanghai, China

Winnie and some youtiao!

Today, I’d like to take you back to Shanghai (the land of Cha’s and Da Hu Chun) to talk about a different spot and an interesting difference between Taiwanese and Shanghainese breakfast styles. A popular chain across China and Taiwan for breakfast is Yong He Soy Milk (永和豆漿), which serves traditional breakfast at a very reasonable price. I actually learned about this chain on my trip to Shanghai, but as soon as I got back to Taiwan, I started to see it around more.

Breakfast is really a good start to the day – in fact, it showed that there was mainly a positive relationship between eating breakfast and test scores. This makes sense, as you’re getting some energy in you to start off the day. It’s the same when you’re travelling: to go see what you want and power through, you need the energy necessary to push your body until lunch. Also, I can’t pass any opportunity to eat something new or interesting. Thus, on our first morning in Shanghai, Winnie and I went searching for breakfast. We wandered through the calm streets looking for some congyoubing or some other type of bing that could help us, initially going in the completely wrong direction (south instead of north). When I got my bearings again, we went back up north towards the dot on my map. We walked through the side streets near the Yu Garden as a sort of short cut. Along the way, we saw some interesting exercise machines, residents lazily biking through surprisingly clear Shanghainese air, and even a momma dog and her pups playing around in the morning light. We walked through the 6am light, and eventually got to Yong He Soy Milk.

Winnie munching on some youtiao

I’m going to be straight with you here: service in China isn’t stellar. Especially at 6 in the morning, so you can imagine the wonderfully warm reception that we received from the people manning the spot. Anyway, we gave our orders and sat down, but I failed to realize that you’re supposed to go up to the cook and tell her your order for soy milk. So I forgot to do that until the end of the meal, and when I did I got a classic scolding that I quickly drank away. So what did we get? I ordered two youtiao’s, one congyoubing and a bowl of doujiang. I’ll start with the youtiao: I didn’t really taste anything. It basically tasted like oil that was also kind of doughy. There was literally so much oil on the youtiao you could smell the oil and see it drip onto the plate. I’m not sure what Winnie thought about it, but I wasn’t a particularly big fan of the youtiao, so I’m going to move on to the congyoubing. So these were actually quite decent – they were nice and salty, but also horribly cut . As in, I know it’s sliced into eighths, but can you really mess up that badly? And finally, the doujian was also pretty good. I ordered the sweet option, so the lady angrily poured in a few ladles of steaming hot soy milk into my bowl and scooped in a spoonful of sugar. At first I was a bit shocked – is that how you make it? Is it that easy? Then I looked at what I was ordering and realized that hey, maybe it is that easy. It tasted good (and sweet) enough for me to be happy leaving the restaurant. Hell, even Winnie liked it, and she doesn’t even like soy milk.

Our congyoubing. Please excuse the image quality.

Well, to conclude this part of Breakfast Club, a new series on breakfast at Eat With Mee, let’s just say you get what you pay for. The meal here was dirt cheap – definitely under $5 – and it shows in its taste. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a reliable breakfast spot in any major Chinese city, chances are you can find a LaiLaiYongHe Soy Milk shop that will get you through the morning.


You can find me on Instagram as @stumpyeatsfood and on yelp at theplumpcat.yelp.com. You can also check out more of my photos on Flickr! If you've got a restaurant recommendation or even a recipe that you think I should try, send it to me at ryanjchen2@gmail.com! Thank you for reading!