When it comes to Shanghai and service one things is certain: you can never guess what sort you are going to get. I think I’ve experienced the best and the worst service here, particularly in restaurants.
Some of the worst was at a local restaurant. It all seemed ok until I sat down (i.e, at the point at which walking out would look bad). What I think was the lady owner started shouting. She shouted at her husband, her daughter, the people walking past. Then some sort of electrician set his cart up in the middle of the restaurant and she had a shouty conversation with him.
My food was dumped unceremoniously in front of me while she carried on shouting. I had taken her recommendation for food and consequently ended up with two almost identical versions of the same food (some sort of tofu/ mushroom based concoction).
Note the waitress in yellow slumped in the corner and two identical bowls of food.
Worn out by all the shouting she then slumped in the corner and fell asleep. Taking advantage of this break from being shouted at, her daughter got up and started following a high impact aerobics routine on the TV RIGHT NEXT TO MY TABLE.
We even had a visit from a policeman, who was at the giving and receiving end of a nice bit of shouting.
Would I go back? Probably. The food was actually pretty good and in the absence of any reading material, the floorshow was really rather entertaining.