Park Hotel Bakery

The Park Hotel on West Nanjing Road is a landmark tower of the 1930s, and its bakery is one of the city's favourite places to buy butterfly crackers, the local version of the French palmier. Designed by László Hudec and opened on 1 December 1934 as the Joint Savings Society Building, the hotel rises 83.8 metres over 22 floors. It was the tallest building in Asia from 1934 until 1963, the tallest in China until 1966 and the tallest in Shanghai until 1983, and it was built as a rival to the Cathay Hotel on the Bund.

The butterfly cracker began life in nineteenth-century France, where its name means palm tree after its shape. It is made from puff pastry folded repeatedly with butter to form many thin layers, then baked with sugar so that the layers caramelise and turn crisp. According to the city government's food guide, the pastry reached Shanghai in the early twentieth century and was first sold at the Red House pastry shops, before bakeries such as Kaisiling and the Park Hotel adopted it and adjusted the recipe to local tastes.

The Park Hotel version is known for a light, airy texture and subtle sweetness rather than a hard crunch. The crackers are sold in bags, which makes them an easy gift to carry home, and they gained renewed attention after the popular television series Blossoms Shanghai. Locals often pick up a bag on the way to or from the Jia Jia Tang Bao dumpling shop on nearby Huanghe Road.

The city's food guide lists the shop's hours as 8am to 10pm, so it is easy to fit around a day at People's Square. This is a takeaway stop rather than a sit-down café, so allow ten minutes, plus time to admire the hotel's facade.

The hotel is close to People's Square station on Lines 1, 2 and 8, and the Shanghai Museum and the start of East Nanjing Road are within walking distance. If you want to compare styles, the Harbin Food Factory at 536 East Nanjing Road, founded in 1936, makes a flatter, firmer cracker using techniques listed as municipal intangible cultural heritage.