Shanshi Description

You may have seen Shanshi’s bizarre outer facade while drunkenly stumbling home from Slow Boat’s Sanlitun taproom, or worse, Hai Di Lao. It’s a wall painted to look like a bookshelf, sandwiched between two grubby fast-food restaurants. The no-real-door gimmick is pretentious when it comes to cocktail bars, but in the case of joints hawking chuan’r, it’s delightfully quirky. And that’s exactly what Shanshi is – a chaotic, odorous purveyor of spicy dips of the highest order. Slide open the ‘bookcase,’ and you’ll enter a world of fiery delights. Pick from all manner of snacks on sticks, including tofu, chicken wings, mushrooms and, of course, innards and offal. Your server will then cook them in the spiciest sauce you’ve ever tasted and then serve them to you, swimming in a large metal bowl of red liquid.