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| - On the account of my friend's recommendation we visited this restaurant today, Dec.27,14 on a Saturday evening. We missed our old buddy Restaurant, 1900 on Spring Mountain Rd which was closed and decided to venture out for a new Shanghainese restaurant. There are 6 of us, 4 adults are all familiar with Shanghainese food like XLB, drunken chicken etc..We are not looking for the delicious Shanghainese cuisine in Shanghai or Taipei, we just want to have a decent meal of Shanghai style.
I was quite impressed by the ambience and all the elaborate and appetising pictures on the manual, but unfortunately that were all they are good at.
The XLB has strong porky odor to it and there was no soup inside the wrapping. All the cold appetizers like jelly fish, drunk chicken, 3-yellow chicken, bean with Tofu paper are completely different in their look compared to that of the pictures, they must have been in the fridge for days. The chicken were chewy, not tender as one would expect. The jelly fish was very salty.
Of the 4 entries, the fish belly in soy sauce was barely deserve a passing score. But it was not belly at all, it was entire fish without the head. All the others were just put together by an amateurish hands. Shanghainese food are known for their harmonious blending of the soy sauce, wine,oil,sugar together with various food content in hot temperature the bring out distinctive flavor and taste, here in our mouths they are completely disintegrated, let alone taste good.
The service was slow and disorganized. One can easily notice the short staff help. And I wondered what might happen in the kitchen. The last dish, the eggplant stew was waited for 15 min after we finished all the food before it appeared on our table. Waiting for the bill to be calculated was another 15 min wait.
All the glasswares pile up on their bar table to be distributed for take out or for serving drinks. That table is supposed for sitting and for show since they do have liquor licence. The bathroom ran out of soap liquid and the hand dryer broke...
I hope they just had a bad day with the chief chef on leave and we just happened to be there on the occasion. I sincerely hope they can improve in the future.
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