Restaurant: Shanghai Tang

Location: 373 Huangpi S Rd, XinTianDi, Huangpu Qu, Shanghai Shi, China, 200000. +86 21 6377 3333

Date: August 9, 2018

Cuisine: Shanghai Chinese

Rating: Really fabulous and complex flavors

In Shanghai we met up with a friend who lives in the city and she took us around to all sorts of fabulous places — really showing us the best of the best in the city.

This included the trendy XinTianDi area and a stunning lunch at:

Shanghai Tang.

Which, while we didn’t drink at lunch has a huge cellar of first growth Bordeaux and other trophy wines.

And an elaborate build out, here showing the main room.

And the snazzy corridor to our…

private room.

Drunken shrimp. Fortunately for the kids, we didn’t have to drown or kill them ourselves, this happened out of view. These extremely fresh, pretty much raw shrimp have a touch of alcohol flavor from their “drowning.”

Bean curd with vegetables. Very delicate dish with thin bean curd.

Honey pumpkin. Shanghai cuisine is sweet for Chinese, and this pumpkin was crispy but covered in a light syrup. Delicious actually.

Foie gras with rice crackers.

They cut the foie cubes and put them on the toasts for us. The liver was covered in a red wine reduction jelly and was really quite superlative.

Salad. The rarest of Chinese creatures: the salad!

Shanghai style smoked fish. This kind of almost candied smoked fish is a delicious staple of Shanghai cuisine and this version was the best I’ve ever had. The texture was both crispy and sticky and the flavor complex, sweet, and smoky.

Sea cucumber noodle soup. Sea cucumber is a weird textured (and expensive creature) and really doesn’t have a lot of taste by itself but this dish was amazing.

You add the noodles, like a Tsukemen ramen. The cucumber itself was incredibly soft and tender and the broth was insanely delicious.

Steamed shrimp with vinegar. A simple dish and one of the weaker ones, partially because the small tails were annoying.

Grandmother style braised pork belly and egg. To die for cubes of succulent pork skin, fat, and meat perfectly braised in a very Shanghai-style sweet soy reduction.

Shanghai beef ribs. Another of these reduced sugar-soy dishes, but super tender meat.

Conch soup. In a light and flavorful broth.

Scallops and vegetables.

Shrimp noodles. It’s very Shanghai style to pan fry noodles with soy sauce like this.

Bean cakes. Lovely presentation and texture.

Pan fried Shanghai pork soup dumplings. This is the classic Shanghai pan fried “thick” bun. These were some of the best versions of this I’ve had.

Shanghai Tang was at another level. The decor was amazing, the service refined, the plating elegant, and the food delivered on (mostly) Shanghai classics with a level of depth and sophistication I hadn’t experienced before. Bravo!

For my catalog of Chinese restaurant reviews in China, click here.