This Shanghainese restaurant is tucked inside a Best Western Hotel, and this little gem serves elevated homestyle Shanghainese items you'll rarely find at other Shanghai restaurants in town. We started with the Cheung Kong Pork, which is similar to head cheese - slow simmered pork cooked down with bones to make a collagen rich aspic, cooled, cut into slabs and served with red vinegar to give the savory pork a tangy pop. As it was a hot summer day, our second dish was also cold: wild beg with bean curd. I think it's a typo and they meant wild veg, but this dish was an u expected fav of the night. Yes, it's a vegan dish but dont let that scare you. It was a well balanced dish with slight bitterness from the wild veg, slight nuttiness from the bean curd, and a herbaceous note from either the wild veg or a parsley herb added to the minced mixture. Our third cold dish was braised bean curd with Chinese mushrooms. This was an earthy unami packed dish that we enjoyed. We also had the deep fried yellowish which had a light batter with bits of nori added to it that added savoriness to the dish that was fried to perfection. It's not a Shanghainese dinner without ricecake and xiao long bao! We went with pan fried ricecake with shredded pork and salted vegetable - a lighter take vs hr usual ones you see at other venues with pork belly, as this version didnt leave you feeling super bloated after. The xiao long bao were tasty, though we prefer the dough to be paper thin vs medium thickness here. The pan fried pork buns seemed like they were steamed and then had their bottoms pan fried instead if being pan fried from start to finish, but still tasty. We rounded out the meal with some Shanghai spring rolls. Overall, a great place to have some Shanghainese fare. It gets pretty busy, so make sure you make reservations and cut the friendly staff some slack as they try to do 50million things at once
Meal: Leaf wrapped brisket steam in a gravy ontop of taro, Xiao Long Bao (XLB), Shanghainese fried rice cakes, and noodles with gravy meat sauce. **Please note, do not order by pictures cause the captions don't match the pictures**. Atmosphere: It's pretty loud in here, situated in the old breakfast place for Best Western.
Ordering a mix of dim sum and main dishes here definitely made quite an enjoyable lunch for our big party of 10 here. The popular dishes like the Steamed Soup Dumplings and the Chicken and Wonton Soup were pretty solid, but I found the first-time dishes like the Salt and Chilli Pork Hocks and the Fried Eels in Oil a lot more impressive. The service was good with the staff being attentive. If you are looking for a bigger meal, they offer set dinners with 10 courses too, which would cost over $30 per person, but in my opinion, it is totally worth it. I would like to come back here and hopefully have a feasting experience like what I had at the Shanghai Elan Restaurant
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