Makan Halal
A Thousand and One Nights Restaurant
Casual Dining · Shanghai, China
Cuisines: Middle Eastern, Lebanese
Long before Shanghai's current wave of Middle Eastern restaurants opened, A Thousand and One Nights had already established itself on Changshu Road, and the name gives a fair sense of what to expect once inside: low seating, patterned textiles, and a dining room built to feel like a departure from the street outside rather than an extension of it.
The kitchen works through a long list of Levantine staples. Hummus and falafel open most meals, followed by a mixed kebab platter that draws together lamb, chicken, and beef cooked over an open grill. Mansaf, the Jordanian dish of lamb cooked in a fermented dried yoghurt sauce and served over rice, appears on the menu alongside a veal shaslik and a kash khash kebab, a spiced ground meat preparation shaped onto skewers before grilling. A lamb chop, simply seasoned and charred, rounds out the grilled section. Meals often close with a pot of Arabian tea served with sugar cubes on the side, in keeping with the restaurant's broader effort to recreate the pace and hospitality of a Middle Eastern dining room rather than just its menu.
Changshu Road sits in the former French Concession, an area of tree-lined streets and converted lane houses that has become one of Shanghai's denser concentrations of international restaurants. The restaurant occupies a lane house of its own, tucked off the main road, and its interior leans further into the theme than most of its neighbours, with occasional dance performances and shisha service adding to the sense of a night out built around atmosphere as much as food. The restaurant has been operating long enough to have built a loyal following among Shanghai's Middle Eastern expatriate community as well as curious locals.
Contact information
- Address: 1, Lane 85, Changshu Road, Shanghai 200000, China
- Phone: +862164731178
