Laz Shanghai

My family visit to LJ Shanghai was amazing! This restaurant is not your typical Chinese restaurant. LJ Shanghai is located in Cleveland's Asiatown neighborhood about 12 minutes east from Downtown Cleveland. Their menu offers a different style of Chinese food that is interesting. My family and I ordered the Shanghai fried noodle dish and the Chongqing spicy noodle soup and they were delicious! The soup dumplings are a must order for any occasion! We had to order the soup dumplings 2x because they were so good! Our dine in experience was very welcoming and relaxing. The service was great as well.

Read about LJ Shanghai in an article that said it was the best Chinese restaurant in Ohio. I just happened to be in the area shortly after and thought that sounded good. The food was wonderful! Absolutely worth the trip! On a recommendation from whom I believe was the owner, I got the soup dumplings and the spicy beef noodle soup. Both were incredible. I've personally never had soup dumplings before. Steamed dumplings yes, but I've never had one that was juicy when you bit into it. Its a completely different food! You can tell they're handmade and each one was better than the last. I even dipped a few into my soup broth and the hot oil was a great addition to them. The spicy noodle soup was also incredible. The hot oil was not overwhelmingly spicy but it had a subtle and growing heat to it. It added more to the flavor than it was hot. I could even still taste the oil on the tip of my tongue a few days after. I would recommend those dishes and they seem to be the most popular, however I don't think there's anything that wouldn't be delicious on that menu. Parking is street parking but its not a real tight area so there is plenty of parking within a block between the main road and side streets and you probably won't have to fit into a tight spot or parallel park. Parking is free. Most of the area I could see in front of the building was 1 hour parking, but that probably wouldn't be a problem for most people coming into eat. Check this place out!!

Decided to come here right before the show at Playhouse Square. You really have to go out of your way to come here...and we did because one of the couples that we were with suggested it. To be fair, most of the dishes on the menu are pork or shrimp, and we don't eat either one of those. We tried 3 dishes: seaweed salad, cucumber with garlic, and one beef dish. We were not impressed. 2 couples that were with us did seem to like their dishes, but we didn't try them, so I can't really comment. Service is fast, the place itself is pretty small and very basic. They don't let you split checks.