It's early in the morning and customers start queuing outside the Deda Western Restaurant. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

 

Lung cancer survivor Ms Chen spends time with friends who visited and encouraged her when she was in hospital. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

It's a Shanghai restaurant that is well-known by locals who have been visiting it since 1897 to dine on Western dishes (with some Chinese characteristics). Almost every Shanghai adult knows the Deda Western Restaurant on Nanjing Road West, where the restaurant was relocated to in the 1990s. Over the years it has become an institution.

Many older Shanghainese still pop in to this restaurant and coffeehouse to catch up with friends and enjoy cups of coffee together.

"When it's warm lots of people begin queuing outside the door before we open at 7:30 am. Passers-by often think they are queuing for items that are very scarce or unavailable elsewhere," Huang Jianying, a waitress who has been working there for more than 30 years, told the Shanghai Morning Post.

A cup of coffee and a newspaper are a good way for these regulars to start the day. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

 

Regulars sit at different tables with their quanzi. Photo: Yang Hui/GT

In Deda there are 13 tables and each table has its regulars who get together at set times. The regulars, who come from a variety of professions and backgrounds, sit at their allocated tables with their own quanzi (circle or group). Even if another table is vacant the members of each group stay round their own table.

One of the regulars, Zhu Guoquan, 55, often sits with a group who talk business and current affairs. When he was young Zhu used to work at the Shanghai Camera Factory and at 17 he was a film ticket scalper. Coming from a wealthy family, Zhu used to live at nearby Jing'an Xincun and had his first cup of coffee at Deda when he was 12. Zhu said in the old days he used to frequent two or three other similar restaurants and coffeehouses. "They were places where people learned to do business and how to become millionaires."

Fresh cups of coffee on the way to tables Photo: Yang Hui/GT

  

Nowadays up to 10 am, a cup of coffee at Deda costs just 10 yuan ($1.59). Even though the establishment does have modern coffee-making equipment, regulars, like Zhu prefer to have their coffee served in the traditional glass coffee pots.

Here each cup of coffee is served with evaporated milk. Manager Lao Jianrong said that in old days customers would drink a little bit of coffee when it was served, before adding a little sugar and drinking more. When there was about a third left in the cup they would add the milk.

Some of Deda's traditional coffee cups Photo: Yang Hui/GT

Though today fancy coffees like cappuccinos and lattes are the rage in other cafes, the regulars at Deda prefer their old-fashioned coffee. It's not a place for high fashion either - people bring their fresh meat and vegetables from the markets with them and some drink their coffee while eating bread rolls. Once they've had their coffee some of the regulars move on to drink tea and the restaurant provides the hot water and glasses for this. After they finish their coffees and chats many of them prepare to head back to new homes in outlying suburbs like Baoshan or Qingpu districts.  

Global Times