Shanghai 1930? Ay-yaaaah, save your money on this one
Written: Dec 08 '00 (Updated Feb 12 '01)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Strong drinks!
Cons: Extremely pricey for the portions you get
The Bottom Line: One of the most overpriced, overhyped "high-concept" restaurants we've been to.
|
|
|
| tanster's Full Review: Shanghai 1930 |
I’m not sure how Shanghai 1930 made it on the San Francisco Chronicle’s “Top 100 San Francisco Bay Area Restaurants” list. Was it the atmosphere? The service? The food? I’m scratching my head on this one.
The quick story
• Chinese food of questionable authenticity.
• Tiny and expensive portions.
• A blasé and uninformed waitstaff.
Cuisine
I would call Shanghai 1930’s cuisine “upscale Chinese-inspired.” The lengthy menu offers more than eighty items — in appetizers, soups, seafood, whole fish, poultry, beef, pork, lamb, rice, and noodles. Red-stamped dishes on the menu are considered the specialties. Vegetarians are offered about half a dozen starters and half a dozen main dishes. Dishes are served “family style,” that is, shared by the entire table. Besides ordering a la carte, there is also a fixed price menu — $45 per person that includes appetizer, soup, main course, rice, and dessert.
Starters
Our meal began with two of the “specialty” appetizers. The first was the minced duck in lettuce petals ($10.50) — minced roast duck with water chestnuts, celery, Kalamata olives and black mushrooms served on chilled lettuce leaves with house-made plum sauce. This dish was rolled out on a long trolley and served tableside. The filling is scooped into eight large lettuce leaves; you then pick up a leaf with your hand to eat. The filling presented a nice balance of meaty and crunchy, but nothing to knock your socks off. (And when did Chinese food include Kalamata olives?!)
The Nanking spring rolls ($6) — crispy fried petite spring rolls stuffed with julienne of fish, sprouts, and chives — were almost laughable. The rolls were tiny, around 2 inches long by Ľ” thick, not much bigger than my index finger! And the filling? — I think you’d need a magnifying glass to see it, much less taste it. The serving sauces were nothing more than standard issue sweet and sour sauce and soy sauce, plain and unimaginative. And at $1 per spring roll? — a downright crime.
Entrees
The entrees were much tastier, although still very much lacking in the way of portion size. In fact, two of the three dishes looked like they were served on dessert plates!
Beau enjoyed the red chili prawns ($14) — whole prawns cooked in spicy sesame fermented red bean chili sauce. More than a dozen meaty crisp-cooked prawns were slathered in a sweet and spicy red sauce, and served on a bed of chopped leaks. Attractive and tasty.
The firecracker chicken ($10) — Sichuan dry-wokked chicken with dried chili peppers, chive buds, and fried garlic — was my favorite of the three. The chunks of chicken were cooked until they were dark and smoky-crisp, then tossed with an abundance of bright green scallion strips and wok-scorched dried chili pepper. Very colorful and spicy, spicy, spicy! My one complaint: there was as many chili pepper slices as there was meat. I’d be surprised if we were served even half a pound of chicken.
Our final entrée was the black pepper steak ($18) — beef tenderloin medallions cooked with three types of mushrooms in a coarse black pepper sauce. Served with sugar snap peas and white, oyster, and shiitake mushrooms, the beef was tender enough to cut with a fork. Still, the thick gravy held surprisingly little taste other than that of standard oyster sauce. You could probably order a comparable dish at a real Chinese restaurant for half the price.
Other entrees include steamed whole fish ($25), garlic eggplant ($9), mushu pork ($12), tea-smoked squab ($13), lion’s head ($15) — jumbo meatballs, Peking duck ($34), and kung pao prawns ($14).
The shortest dessert menu I’ve ever seen
Chinese restaurants are not usually big on desserts, and Shanghai 1930 was no exception: its dessert menu contained exactly three items — a fresh fruit platter ($5), crepes stuffed with red bean paste ($7), and flambé fried bananas with Cointreau a la mode ($6.50).
We opted for the bananas — dramatically flamed tableside in orange liqueur and served with a trio of ice creams: strawberry, green tea, and mango. While the ice cream was a little icy (like it had been stored in the freezer for a long time), it was refreshing, especially the outstanding mango flavor. The bananas, however, were coated with a little too much dough. We didn’t finish the dessert.
Wine and spirits
Shanghai 1930 offers a dozen or so exotic specialty cocktails, including a delicious and potent Shanghaipolitan ($6.50) — Absolut Kurant, Absolut Citron, Cointreau, fresh lime, cranberry and pineapple. The wine list is more than ten pages long, and offers about ten wines by the glass, in the range $6.50-$12. Bottles hail from Napa, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia. A Mondavi 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon goes for $60. The more exclusive cellar list showcases wines in the $75-$2,500 range, primarily from Napa and France.
Service
Our server was a young woman from Chicago (“I moved here, like, to be with my boyfriend”), and appeared highly uninterested in her job. She was friendly enough, just not very helpful. Aside from warning us that the fixed price menu was “a lot of food,” she provided no other menu advice or recommendations. She appeared only once to refill our glasses, and that was toward the end of the meal.
Décor and atmosphere
Shanghai 1930 is located below street level — we descended a red-carpeted staircase to the bar, characterized by dark wood, plush seating, and hushed jazz (live music is played in the bar later in the evening). We walked through the bar area into the dining room, equally as sophisticated with its richly upholstered banquette seating, white tablecloths, intricately carved wood screens, and decorations of Asian pottery and baskets. The staff is donned in Chinese-style high-collared shirts, further evoking an exotic atmosphere.
The one thing that really grossed us out: the chopsticks laid at each place setting. “Are these from the 1930s?” Beau wondered, examining the old, worn, scratched-up stubs.
While we dressed up, most diners were casually attired. On a Saturday night at 7:30pm, the restaurant was half full, and we got the feeling that the clientele were mainly first-time diners (not a good sign). We saw no children.
Cost
Two appetizers, three entrees, one dessert: about $100. I am aghast we paid so much money for so little food! (And alcohol was extra!)
All in all
Shanghai 1930 is the type of place I would be nervous to take my parents, who are the pickiest Chinese food critics I know. They’re not impressed with exotic décor or tableside service; they want to pay for good food, and lots of it. “Ay-yaaaah,” I can hear my mom say disapprovingly.
She would also say that if you go to a Chinese restaurant and don’t see a lot of Chinese people eating there, it’s probably a warning sign. I don’t think I would agree with her in every case, but as far as Shanghai 1930 goes, consider yourself warned. Ź
_________________________________________
Shanghai 1930
133 Steuart St. (down the street from Boulevard)
San Francisco, CA
415-896-5600
Valet parking $9
Reservations: call a week in advance for weekend dining.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
tanster
|
 - Top 500 |
|
Location: Palo Alto, CA
Reviews written: 111
Trusted by: 331 members
About Me:
Happily reviewing cool gadgets and SF Bay Area restaurants since 1999. Pass the gravy, please.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.