CityShop is the largest chain store catering for Expats needs. It has 9 retail branches located in different areas in Shanghai and Beijing.
Personally I think that the store with more variety of products, better service and better storing is the Gubei branch on the Puxi side, and the Yanlord Reverside City branch on the Pudong side.
You can also conveniently shop online through their website.
Smartdirect.cn is an English website for online grocery shopping. It has a quite good variety of imported products. All you need is to register and start selecting the items you want to buy and they will deliver within 3 hours. There may be a delivery fee according to where you live.
Every week there is a different promotion which would make your shopping more convenient. For more information visit their website.
Carrefour is the French grocery chain located everywhere in China. Every branch has a little section for imported products with prices slightly cheaper than CityShop, Pines or Smartdirect.cn. However it is messy, disorganized, crowded and noisy and most likely you won’t be able to find what you are looking for. I would reccomend Carrefour only for non imported items.
If you can speak and read chinese, Taobao is a convenient website where you will be able to buy what you can’t find at the expat grocery stores in town.
All you have to do is open an account connected to your bank account, type in Chinese the item/s you want to buy, contact the seller and just wait home for him to deliver. Delivery fees are generally low, depending from the city the product is being delivered.
If you cannot speak/read Chinese I will be more than happy to help you placing your order, just write me to: expatcucina@gmail.com
If you need to buy cooking accessories there are a bunch of places you can visit.
I personally like the little stores at the Hongqiao flour market, they sell a lot of useful items like measuring cups, waffles pan, blenders, cookie cutters, ext.
Here is a list:
Most popular recipes