This restaurant is located on the first floor of the Jing’an Sports Center. It serves Shanghai cuisine, but with a Western-style ambiance and service.
The Jing’an Sports Center is right behind the Shanghai Centre, and the entrance is easy to find. Upon entering, you are greeted by massive wine cabinets on both sides.
The interior isn’t actually very large; once seated, the environment is quite quiet, and the lighting is reasonably bright.
Alright, now let’s talk about the food:
Smoked fish, one of the signature cold dishes in Shanghai cuisine, wasn’t done particularly well here. It’s far less fresh, tender, and juicy than that at Jing Yi Xuan; theirs was a bit dry.
Smoked Fish
A specialty of this restaurant, Avocado with Salmon. This combination is quite rare. The salmon meat is fresh, rich, and tender, while the avocado is light and refreshing. The sauce adds a subtle touch of umami, but for 68 yuan per serving, the portion size is a bit too small.
Avocado with Salmon
Shrimp Balls. These are made with the highest-quality ingredients I’ve ever had in a shrimp ball dish, and also the most expensive… 168 yuan gets you 6 shrimp balls, but since they use excellent large prawns, butterflied open, both the texture and flavor are superb. The only downside is that the pastry underneath was soft; it would have been better if it were crispy…
Shrimp Balls
Crab Meat Forks, another classic dish. It arrived as four bread rolls like these and a plate of crab meat. The entire plate of crab meat fit perfectly inside the bread. The server moved so fast that before I could even take a photo, it was already stuffed in… So here’s just the finished product… It’s rare to eat crab this way, and taking a bite was incredibly satisfying…
Crab Meat Forks
Braised Beef Shank in Red Wine. Actually, this dish is their true signature, but because it was missed on the order, it was added later and arrived after we were already full. The beef shank was braised until meltingly tender, infused with the aroma of red wine, and not greasy at all…
Braised Beef Shank in Red Wine
Stir-fried Seasonal Mushrooms. The sauce tasted good, though slightly salty.
Stir-fried Seasonal Mushrooms
Shredded Tofu with Chicken and Ham. It looked quite nice, but the taste was mediocre; not recommended.
Shredded Tofu with Chicken and Ham
Soup Dumplings. Actually, these belong to the Cantonese dim sum category, so they aren’t sweet at all. Not my preferred flavor; not recommended.
Soup Dumplings
To sum up, the good dishes were really delicious, and the average ones were truly just average…
So, ordering wisely is important. Also, the portion sizes aren’t as small as rumored; three of us ate all the dishes listed above and were nearly stuffed…
Prices are a bit steep. The eight dishes above plus two glasses of juice totaled over 800 yuan. If you order conservatively, spending 150–200 yuan per person is achievable…
Also, there’s an 88-yuan Cantonese dim sum buffet on weekend afternoons.
Photos in this post taken with a SONY NEX-5R + 35mm f/1.8, post-processed in Lightroom.
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