Four restaurants in Shanghai for enjoying creative east-meets-west cuisine in old-meets-new spaces.
Text: Luo Jingmei
Shanghai is a confluence of cultures with access to rich produce. This shows in the cuisine that is always being challenged, teased and respected by both local and foreign chefs. These restaurants are just the starting point to memorable gastronomic adventures in the Pearl of the Orient.
500 Weihai Road
Shenzhen-based Horizontal Design spent the last few years rejigging a former hotel into Alila Shanghai, now an urban sanctuary marked by a meandering layout and ambient light. 500 Weihai Road is Alila Shanghai’s flagship Chinese restaurant, helmed by Executive Chef Chuck Xing, with Scott Bao as the chef de cuisine. The latter brings experience from several Michelin-starred restaurants, and blends traditional Shanghainese cuisine with modern accents.
The 60-seater restaurant’s name bears the hotel’s address, which it shares with offices in the skyscraper. It is a popular spot with office workers to have lunch meetings over a simple yet nuanced menu where fresh ingredients are allowed to shine. Louvre screens inspired by the neighbouring Zhang Yuan development of traditional shikumen townhouses mark the space.
An appetiser of deep-fried halibut with sweet soy sauce provides a savoury introduction to the meal. Its crunch and savouriness contrast with the sweetness and soft bite of another appetiser – the stewed lotus root. Enhanced with salted osmanthus honey, the tender lotus root comes from the famous lotus root cultivation district of Baoying in Yangzhou.
Experimental dishes are balanced with hearty, traditional ones cooked to perfection, such as the comforting and nourishing bird’s nest fish ball soup, and Shanghai style claypot rice where the use of Sakura shrimp provides a unique texture. Leave space for the small selection of elevated dim sum, including the Shanghai style pan-seared bun with minced Iberico pork that bursts with flavour when one bites into the soft skin, and the cigarette-thin spring roll whose twisted crispy ends of fried flour skin is an added treat. To round off, the traditional Chinese dessert of mango sago soup is given a Western twist with mango chips, jelly and ice cream.
Ortensia Shanghai
Pastry chef Xu Zhengyuan spent some years working at Michelin-starred Ortensia Paris before asking the restaurant’s Japanese executive chef, Terumitsu Saito, to start Ortensia Shanghai with him. It opened on October 2024, with the kitchen led by Chef de cuisine, Hana Zhou.
The restaurant is set in Zhang Yuan, a restored collection of traditional shikumen townhouses in Shanghai’s Jing’An district. This historic architecture provides a textured shell for Ortensia Patisserie & Café on the first storey and the restaurant on the second. New York- and Shanghai-based Chris Shao Studio introduced elements like the bud-like reception counter, inspired by the restaurant’s namesake bloom (the Hortensia or Hydrangea). Venetian plaster, hand-carved wood details, wallpaper, bronze-etched mirrors and draperies with tassels combine Parisian sensibilities with Japanese refinement.
There are three seasonal dinner sets and two lunch set menus. The latter includes a starter of citrusy smoked shima aji. One of the main courses is scampi cooked in two ways – pan-fried and deep-fried. This is served with a sweet pea consommé in a floral bowl to match the restaurant’s theme, and a creamy fregola risotto made with sweet pea as a green base for the scampi duo.
Xu’s flair with desserts comes through with two floral-like desserts that, like the scampi, showcase multifarious sides of an ingredient. For instance, the mille-feuille soy and vanilla creation is a deconstructed ode to soybeans with playful shapes and flavours of silky tofu panna cotta, smooth tofu cream and soymilk ice cream, surrounded with crispy wafer-thin bean curd skin circles.
Blaz
After finishing hotel and restaurant management school, Shanghai beckoned to Frenchman Simon Briens. A few years turned into 17, as he worked as a restaurant manager in several venues before opening up his own ventures – Blaz, RAC (with three locations), and Babar.
Blaz is a ‘canteen and wine bar’ located in the historic Donghu Villa. There are 45 cosy indoor seats tucked under original brick arches but during summer, many customers defer to the outdoor terrace. “The cuisine’s base DNA is French but Chef Helios Choi is allowed to twist some menu items if they can being an interesting kick to the dishes,” shares Briens. The dishes are divided into categories of ‘Hot’, ‘Sides’, ‘Snacks’,‘Cold’, ‘Cheese’ and ‘Dessert’.
Diners can pair the variety of small plates with the extensive alcoholic selection including a great natural wine list. Ingredients and sauces for the dishes are creatively matched. Take for instance the aromatic grilled fresh Kuruma prawns cooked with chicken fat and lemon, and piquant kingfish crudo in coconut ginger sauce. The floating island dessert combines familiar flavours of custard sauce, caramel and popcorn into a heart-warming concoction to end the meal.
102 House
Currently No. 29 on the Asia’s Best 50 Restaurants list and a two Michelin-starred establishment, 102 House is located at the House of Roosevelt on The Bund after moving from its original humble digs in a residential home in Foshan, Guangdong. Chef-owner Xu Jingye opened the restaurant in 2022 together with partner Yao Min, aiming to revive Cantonese traditions through seasonal presentations and fresh insights.
Classics like sweet-and-sour pork trace the seasons, using pineapple in spring, lychee in summer, peach in autumn and strawberry in winter. Chef Xu continually pushes boundaries with collaborations, such as a four hands event with Chef Zor Tan of Singapore’s Restaurant Born in May 2024 that resulted in dishes like tycoon shelter lobster matched with hua diao lard rice.
102 House’s latest summer menu, ‘Yin’, was inspired by Chinese calligraphic art where ink slowly seeps through fibre layers in the paper. Dishes that layer ingredients and flavours include crab and bitter melon soup that uses Duruan bitter melon grown in the nearby mountains, and an aesthetic dessert of four petit treats – a crisp-edged rice dumpling, a jujube miniature turnover, a black sesame roll and an almond jade pudding bowl.