Dust off your spoons and lock up your black chickens, says Christopher St. Cavish. It’s time to eat soup.

The Golden Week typhoon brought more than just wind and rain. After it tired of Shanghai, it left perfect soup weather. The following list of soups are well-suited to the dropping temperatures of fall; warming without being winter-heavy, and medicinal, to varying degrees.

Sour fish soup at Lao Tan

It’s actually a hot-pot, but this giant, simmering vessel is so good, we’ll bend the rules for it. It’s home is in Guizhou, the province with a population who love spicy, sour flavors. If you haven’t dipped into its cuisine yet, sour fish soup (suantang yu) is the perfect place to start. It’s a tomato-based affair, laced with red chilies and full of bean sprouts. A whole fish cooks in the broth as it bubbles away at the table. In many parts of Guizhou, the acidity comes from the tomatoes, which have been fermented, although in Shanghai it’s just as likely that a splash of vinegar helps it along. Either way, it’s warming and delicious, and when done right, is a deft combination of spice, tartness, vegetables, and fish. Lao Tan does one of the best in the city.
Lao Tan, 2/F, 42 Xingfu Lu, near Fahuazhen Lu, 6283 7843.
老坛，幸福路42号2楼，近法华镇路

Teatree mushroom soup at Tian Yuan Ge

This Jiangxi-style clay pot soup restaurant is in a prime food area. It’s less than a block away from Wujiang Lu, just across Nanjing Xi Lu, and a great alternative to standing in the street as the nights get colder. And it might even make you smarter. The menu boasts that their soups won the highest prize at something called the Einstein International Invention Expo, and they’ve patented them just to be safe. The soup menu is extensive and inexpensive – most of the soups are between ¥6-8 for your own small clay pot, and choices go from cuttlefish with duck to meatball with mushrooms. Through all the variety, the city’s consensus, at least according to Dianping.com, is that their teatree mushroom soup with pork rib (chashugu paigu wei tang) is the stand-out. The evidence seems to support it, but we can’t be sure – by the time we arrived at 8pm, it was sold out.
Tian Yuan Ge, 19 Shimen Er Lu, near Nanjing Xi Lu, 6256 3896.
天缘阁，石门二路19号，近南京西路

Black chicken and ginseng soup at Hengshan Café

Don’t be fooled by the name. This popular Cantonese restaurant is a few steps above a café, in decor, food, and service, and this soup isn’t just another healing black chicken tonic. The dark skinned poultry is in there, along with white chickens for added flavor (it’s a mulitcultural, harmonious cooking process), and a smattering of herbs and roots, including the ginseng. The philosophy says that together, they should replenish energy, and increase the blood flow, and it’s certainly true. Once you’ve had this premier version of chicken soup (yuanshen dun wuji), you’ll find yourself working up the energy to come back over and over again.
Hengshan Café, 308 Hengshan Lu, near Wuxing Lu, 6471 7127.
衡山小馆，衡山路308号，近吴兴路

Medicinal soups at Tang.come

This small, independent Cantonese soup restaurant takes its product very seriously. Notice the pictured walls lined with jars of dried herbs, and the glass tabletop covering a 16-compartment guessing game of more roots, seeds, and animal products. They change their menu seasonally, and for the fall, have added several soups to improve the respiratory system – one is a chicken soup with corn and straight ladybell root (shashen yuzhu bao laoji tang), another is a pig lung soup (luohanguo caigan bao zhufei tang) with an herb called Grosvenor momordica. There’s also a new snake soup, and one full of so much goodness, they can’t list everything in it. It’s simply titled Ten Healthy Ingredients soup.
Tang.come, Unit 4, 303 Maoming Nan Lu, near Nanjing Xi Lu, 6217 1257.
汤.COME，茂名南路303号4单元，近南京西路

Pork and fig soup at Xiang Gang Zai Ma Tou

Another Cantonese restaurant, and no wonder – they’re famous for their soups. At Xiang Gang Zai Ma Tou on Huanghe Lu, they do a mean fig and pork rib soup (wuhuaguo bao paigu tang). The combination is steeped in traditional Chinese medicine. Figs help digestion and respiration, and the pork has a cooling effect. But this is much more than a prescription. The whole, stewed figs add a mild sweetness to the light broth, and help counter the saltiness of the pork, which itself grounds it all with a meaty base.
Xiang Gang Zai Ma Tou, 158 Huanghe Lu, near Beijing Xi Lu, 6327 4415.
香港仔码头，黄河路158号，近北京西路

First Class chicken soup at Grandma’s Kitchen

We’ve never seen a grandmother who substituted fish tanks for windows in her dining room before. But we’ve also never seen such a devoted soup following – expect to wait 15-30 minutes for a table at her Huaihai Lu location. The first class chicken soup (yipin jitang) is what many of them are here for. It’s richness comes from a meaty stock, not grease, and the service staff will remove the meat from the broth, and suggest you dip it in soy sauce.
Grandma’s Kitchen, 438 Huaihai Zhong Lu, near Chongqing Lu, 6386 7071.
屋企汤馆，淮海中路438号，近重庆路

Hot and sour soup at Di Shui Dong

To be fair, no one ever comes here just for the soup. They’re usually more concerned with cumin-scented ribs and sour beans. But they should. Hot and sour soup (suanla tang) is a litmus test for kitchens as it’s easy to cover up a lack of flavor with searing heat and sharp acidity, as several do. Not Di Shui Dong. Their version has the requisite burn-and-pucker, but unlike many joints around town, there’s also a lot of depth in that giant bowl.
Di Shui Dong, 2/F, 56 Maoming Nan Lu, near Changle Lu, 6253 2689.
滴水洞，茂名南路56号，近长乐路 

Chicken and sticky rice soup at Hongdong Korean Restaurant

When we asked around the office for leads on soup, this restaurant on Duolian Lu popped up. “Girls love this soup,” someone said, “because the dates, longans, and Angelica are all nourishing and enrich the blood.” For some reason soup and gender seem to make a natural fit. Another restaurant that was in the running is famous for their “Man Soup” and “Woman Soup.” Feel safe to ignore the boundaries, and tuck into this Korean style bowl of chicken broth, sticky rice, and extras (shenji tang). The rice thickens the soup, the Angelica lends a faint sweetness, and the chicken holds the two together nicely. 
Hongdong Korean Restaurant, 239 Duolun Lu, near Sichuan Bei Lu, 6540 3636.
虹东韩国料理，多伦路239号，近四川北路