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Shanghai
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In its heyday, the building now housing Shanghai was an eel and pie shop. Yet it’s amazing how the original fixtures, of green and blue tiles and wrought-metal framed mirrors, have all the feel of 20th-century chinoiserie, along with the worn glamour of a Wong Kar-Wai film – we half expected the waitresses to be wearing cheongsams. After you’ve settled into one of the handsome dark wooden booths, a glance at the menu will reveal ‘modern Shanghainese’ dishes (though the offerings include crunchy lotus root sandwiches from Shunde in Guangzhou). A traditional dish of ‘lion heads’ (minced pork balls with baby pak choi and beancurd sheets) was a joy to find, but the meatballs were too dense and salty. ‘Shanghai Lady’, an interesting name for a rice dish mixed with diced vegetables, was unlike anything we’ve ever tried from that city, but was enjoyable in itself with plenty of crunchy greens in the soy-flavoured rice. If you’re looking for Chinese food that is slightly different from the more commonly found Cantonese cooking, Shanghai is worth a try.
Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2009
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Details
- 41 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, E8 2JS
- Area: Dalston
- Tel: 020 7254 2878
- Book online
- Category: Chinese
- Travel: Dalston Kingsland rail/38, 67, 76, 149 bus
- Times: Meals served noon-11pm, dim sum served noon-5pm daily. Dim sum £2.10-£4.30
- Price: Main courses £5.50-£7.80. Set meal £13.80-£22.80 per person (minimum 2)
- Credit cards: MC, V
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kelvinw
Professional man with sense of humour looking for like minded people for fun adventure and new experiances( this means visiting new places etc not...
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We stumbled upon the Shanghai restaurant after a busy morning shopping in the market. We were thrilled with the old fasioned traditional decor and placed ourselves in one of the wooden booths. The food passing our table looked very appealing and there was a good choice on the menu.
We were very pleased with our food. The presentation was impressive, the portions very generous.
The chicken in yellow bean sauce was served in a pretty, lacey basket of fried noodles. The rice was beautifully presented in a box with a container inside and a lid. We were generally impressed as we had thought we were just wandering into a local cafe and the food was so much better than anticipated. The only thing which really let this place down was the staff. The place was quite busy especially in the rear area of the restaurant but that did not explain the rudeness of our waitress. She never smiled or paid any attention to us. When I asked for some wet wipes she literally threw them on the table as she passed without stopping!
A service charge was added to our bill which I did consider deducting. Finally it was a great find in an area where I expected to eat at KFC!
I've never complained in a restaurant before but I used to go to Shanghai a lot and visited for the first time in years last night. The food was not good - limp and tasteless but when they charged me £7.80 (!) for badly cooked seasonal greens with oyster sauce I suggested this was too expensive. This was met by offensive indifference at first and then when I then refused to pay for the dish and the gratuity, the manager agreed to halve the cost of the dish but said that if I came back, he would refuse to serve me (barred from a restaurant?) and that the 'gratuity' was compulsory. He then came back with the adjusted bill and said he hoped that I would find somewhere with more agreeable prices next time in a really unpleasant way.
Maybe the chef was having a bad night but I still don't think it's a good idea to overcharge your customers and then patronise them in front of a full restaurant.
What a fab night we had, it was my hen party, the service and food was great. We were in fancy dress, they were happy to help in any way. Good value for money too.what more could you want !!! Children are very welcome too.