Shanghainese people are well-known for their patience in queuing, and Lanting Restaurant should have a say in this. In the era when the Internet was not yet developed, the Lanting Restaurant on Songshan Road was often a big pomp and circumstance, a small shop with six tables, and almost every day had to wait for two hours. After the demolition of Songshan Road, Lanting Restaurant moved to the Shantou intersection of Middle Xizang Road; Although the store has more than doubled, Lanting was included in the 2018 Michelin Guide Shanghai to Bib Gourmand list, and now it is located in the bustling People's Square area, so the traffic is only increasing, and the queue myth continues.

The menu of Lanting Restaurant is not complicated, with an A4 sheet of paper, black on a white background, all the dishes are clear at a glance, and the signature dishes are bold. For most diners, it is enough to come to Lanting and collect all the signature dishes, which basically represent the highest level of Lanting, and the production is usually the most consistent. Chicken bone sauce must be ordered at every table, a typical sweet red sauce local dish. This dish involves stir-frying bone-in chicken in cooked lard, Shaoxing cooking wine, soy sauce and sweet noodle sauce until purple-red, and repeatedly boiling it to collect the juice. Lanting Restaurant takes this as a signboard, with a large turnover, it naturally has a cost advantage, and over the years it has also figured out the taste to perfection, the sweet sauce flavor is just right, the chicken is tender, crispy, fragrant, smooth, and the sauce is thick, and it is the best for bibimbap.

The noodle dragged yellow croaker is also one of the signature dishes of Lanting, the method is not complicated, the batter is fishy with pepper, the boneless yellow croaker is hung in the paste, and the medium and high oil temperature can be fried twice to get out of the pot. Lanting's noodles drag yellow croaker level is on the line, the flour skin wrapped in the outer is fried crispy and golden, which seems to be swollen, but in fact, the dough is crispy and thin, and under the crispy skin is the tender and full yellow croaker meat, which has excellent freshness. A small dish of balsamic vinegar dipped in vinegar adds the finishing touch, and the yellow croaker dough dipped in vinegar sauce is sour and not irritating, refreshing and oily, and awakening the fresh and tender flavor of the fish. Pepper and salt strips, fried eel, fried shrimp, wine herbs, mustard greens, shredded pork and tofu soup, hot and sour soup, etc., are mostly home-style local flavors, but the amount of dishes is not as good as before, such as the eel silk of the oil eel is obviously too little, and the white of the fish eyes is even more than the eel itself. Lanting also has some dishes that are not stable in color, such as one of the store's specialties, fermented bean curd water spinach, which is sometimes bland and tasteless, and sometimes too salty; Crab roe is made by stir-frying eggs with crab vinegar, and the seasoning is not smooth enough, and the vinegar taste is choking.

The current Lanting new store opened in 2017, the decoration is still very new, the style is simple and bright, and the charm of the south of the Yangtze River is not lost. The interior space is not spacious, and most of the seats are small tables for four people, and there are only two large tables at the entrance to maximize the use of space. Lanting Restaurant has to wait for a seat almost every day, people are not allowed to sit down, no additional seats can be added after seating, the first round of dining before 11 o'clock in lunch and 17 o'clock in the dinner market does not need to wait for a seat, and the second round of table turning time after that is about 30 minutes later. The restaurant serves the food quickly, turns the table quickly, and the waiters are well-staffed, and if the diners eat for too long, the restaurant will politely chase away the customers.