During the China 2.0 blogger’s tour, we broke off from more typical Chinese cuisine one night and visited the Uighur Restaurant (维吾尔餐厅) at No. 1, Shanxi Road South for dinner and dancing that is typical in the Xinjiang region of far western China (part of the Silk Road.)

Several locals showed up to meet us through Twitter, so besides me at our table there was Vincent Lo (newly arrived from Toronto,)  the China Business Network‘s Christine Lu,  Steven Weathers who does the Foreigner Perspective videos and a guy named Bill who isn’t on Twitter yet….actually, at some point I was told that Bill is a pretty big heavyweight in Shanghai but I had travel blogger fatigue and didn’t take enough notes about who was who. 

The food is served family style, with lots of lamb dishes (including excellent kebabs) and spices that gave everything a very Middle Eastern/Central Asian flavor.

Sure, there are a few items on the menu that I didn’t try (like bull or ox penis) but there are plenty of less exotic choices and the staff is very friendly.

A special treat is the live dancing on a small stage in the restaurant.

One performer did a dance with stacks of cups on her head, then at the end she removed them one by one and as a final flourish, poured out the water that had apparently been in the bowl at the top of the stack.  Not a drop had come out during her dance – very impressive!

At one point our whole table was invited up to participate in the dancing; I’m told that Christine shot video, but blessedly my less-than-stellar dancing skills don’t seem to have been uploaded to YouTube yet, so the world is spared that visual experience.

The Shanghai Bunny blog has a nice set of Uighur Restaurant photos.

There is a second Shanghai location at No. 280, Yi Shan Road.