VIDEO: That's Shanghai's Lawson's Food Challenge

You see them on every street – Shanghai’s plethora of convenience stores: Family Mart, Kedi, 7 Eleven and Lawson’s. They are the real kings of convenience, supplying to the city’s most carnal needs: hot food, drinks, cheap alcohol, and uh, sex toys/condoms. 

Pride of place at front of store are steel tubs filled with murky looking soup and miscellaneous items on skewers, guan dong zhu  (关东煮, derived from Japanese oden). Immensely popular with locals, they are often unfathomable to outsiders. But maybe we're missing out on something totally delicious? Our intrepid online editor Ryan Kilpatrick, food and drink Editor Betty Richardson and intern Olivia Clarke sampled the lot of them, and here’s their lowdown on the best of the bunch. (VPN on)

YouKu version (VPN off)

Video by Nicky Almasy