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  • 5
  • A real experience - best in Shanghai by far

Wow, we loved this place. It was truly the culinary highlight of our visit to Shanghai. The ambience inside is other-worldly, like an under-water mermaid's den decorated by a Chinese Buddhist sage from 2000yrs ago.. but with a scent of modernity as well. Service is only in Chinese but thankfully the menu is translated into English. The dishes are graced with the most cryptic and often hilarious names - things like 'The Past, Present and Future', 'I Love You. No discussion.', and 'No Birth No Death Konyaku and Kelp Slices' among others kept smiles on our faces throughout the ordering process. Dishes are prepared with no MSG, minimum oil (although definitely not zero oil), minimum salt and no onions, garlic, etc. But that certainly doesn't mean they are not tasty - kudos to the chef for bringing out the flavours of the ingredients just so. Speaking of the ingredients, many of them are wild harvested from exotic far-off mountains of natural or spiritual significance. This was what did it for us, we are suckers for real food. Fancy a plate full of lightly cooked wild flowers? Or perhaps wild fern, moss, or fungi? This place has it all and more. The teas are similarly intriguing - it took us 10mins to decide which to go with and some were soooo good. And we absolutely loved the wild rice. My husband's comment when trying it was "I feel like I just ate real rice for the first time". And he's Japanese, so has a lot of the stuff under his belt! Don't expect to buy these things cheap - think Western prices and you won't have a heart attack when you see the bill. That said, we always ate everything we wanted and between the two of us we never paid more than about 600 yuan, which is reasonable considering what it is. Some things are expensive, other things are dirt cheap, so they balance each other out to an extent. Try not to think prices too much - go there for a night out and enjoy it :) And if you order too much (as we inevitably did), they do take aways equally as exuberantly - the boxes come out all dressed up in red tulle fabric looking like a Chinese tutu of sorts. We ordered a dish involving 5 types of Chinese medical herbs with handmade fake pig intestines that felt a little too real for me but which my husband really enjoyed.. he took the leftovers home and was eating them for days afterwards - he swore they gave him so much energy he felt fabulous. He even threatened to go back and buy some more to take back to Japan with him. Go figure :)


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