Polydish city guide
Best Song gao in Sydney
“A Shanghai steamed cake studded with giant pink azuki beans and filled with red bean paste—loose, tender, deliberately humble.”
What the real thing tastes like
Song gao (Chinese: 鬆糕; pinyin: sōng gāo; lit. 'loose cake'; Shanghainese: Son1-kau1, Wu Chinese pronunciation: [soŋ kɔ]) is a Shanghai snack composed of rice flour, sugar, and water, with azuki beans embedded throughout the cake. Giant pink-colored azuki beans with a diameter of about 1 inch (25 mm) are embedded on top of the cake; conventional sized azuki beans are embedded inside the cake. The cake also has a red bean (azuki) paste filling. This dessert is steamed, as a large round cake and is then partitioned into sections for eating. Soong Mei-ling, who loved to eat song gao, had the Grand Hotel of Taipei to include her version of the cake on the hotel's menu, which the hotel continues to offer to this day.
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Song gao arrives as a round, steamed cake with the pale crumb of rice flour and a distinctly loose, tender crumb structure—the name itself means 'loose cake.' Pink-hued azuki beans, each about an inch across, dot the top like garnish, while smaller beans hide throughout the interior alongside a vein of red bean paste. It's Shanghai comfort: gentle sweetness, the earthy presence of beans, steam-cooked until the rice flour becomes feather-light.
Order it here when it has
- tender crumb structure
- visually distinctive (pink beans)
- traditional Shanghai origin
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Song gao on Polydish →