Customers shop at Nanxiang Mantou, a Shanghai restaurant famous for its steamed meat-stuffed buns. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Many catering time-honored brands in Shanghai have been accelerating the research and development of new dishes recently to meet the gradually recovering consumer market.

"Spring bamboo shoots can be glutinous. I only knew the spring bamboo shoots were crisp, but I never thought the glutinous ones could be so delicious," said a customer surnamed Zhou after she tasted a new dish from the 145-year-old old Shanghai Classical Hotel.

Zhu Songtao, the hotel's head chef, said that its team has been planning a new menu for spring since the restaurant restarted operations on March 15.

"The new menu should be based on seasonal ingredients, reflecting the freshness of spring vegetables," Zhu said. "The color should be rich, and the taste should be light. We must highlight the image of spring."

Zhu also invited a group of post-80s and post-90s consumers to act as "trial judges" to rate the color, aroma and taste of the new dishes. "We want to change customers' views of traditional Shanghai cuisine, and attract more younger customers."

Since resuming its dine-in service on March 9, Nanxiang Mantou, a restaurant famous for its steamed meat-stuffed buns, has capped its customer limit at 70 percent of usual capacity and reconfigured its dining hall so that there is now more space between tables.

"Despite the gradual recovery of the dine-in service, the store owners can still interact with customers through our WeChat group, so that they can get to know the new information about us," said You Yumin, the head of the restaurant.

"As soon as we launch a new product, we will promote it on the WeChat group. If the customers' feedback is good, we will launch it the next day."

The restaurant's two new spring products – yanduxian xiaolong (steamed buns stuffed with bamboo shoot soup with fresh and pickled streaky pork) and wenge xiaolong (steamed buns stuffed with clam meat) – were promoted in this way.