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The Shanghai Kitchen serves dumplings, noodles and Shanghai cuisine.
A few weeks ago, we stopped in at The Shanghai Kitchen for a quick dinner before the rest of the evening's events.
We were immediately seated, and offered menus.
We ordered the stir fried shanghai thick noodles, the spicy long beans, and the crispy chicken in shanghai sauce (see photos attached).
The noodles were very good, I'm told they noodles are prepared in house, which is a plus. They were tasty with a rich sauce, with just the right about of firmness (al dente).
The spicy long beans were excellent just the amount of heat we like, and came with a surprisingly generous amount of minced pork.
The chicken was a little disappointing. The chicken itself was prepared well, but the sauce was not what we expected. Where we'd ordered this dish before, the sauce was usually a combination of sweet and salty. This sauce had no perceptible sweetness.
The servers were reasonably attentive and service was quick (by the standard I use to judge chinese restaurants).
Room was clean, simple and elegant,
We went to this restaurant on its first day of operation, there are bound to be some glitches so keep this in mind when reading this review.
We were sat down and given tea immediately. It seemed that other people didn't have so much luck and saw some waiting for over 5 minutes in a half full restaurant. There did seem to be some lack of communication between the staff.
We ordered Shanghai Dumplings, Long Beans and Sweet & Sour Cod. When we received our Cod it had turned into Pork. When querying with the Waitress what dish we had been given, and told her that we had asked for Cod, she told us that item wasn't on the menu. We said it was on the menu so she asked us to prove it, she seemed a little put out by our query, she got the menu and we showed her the item. We were a little put out by the attitude, we decided just to accept the Pork rather than argue with them, the Cod dish was $19.50 which is very expensive so we just tried to view it as having saved $10. The waitress did come back to us a little later to check to see if we had resolved things out with the other staff.
We've had MANY Shanghai Dumplings in our time and I would say this restaurants rate a 5/10, not the best but they were ok. The Long Beans were good and they had reduced the spice to order, however for the price it wasn't good value for money. The sweet and sour Pork was...ok, but we were a little disappointed by the earlier confusion.
During the meal I watched some of the staff struggle with the tables, they hadn't quite figured out how to open them up or close them down.
We did like how they continually refreshed our tea, you don't see that in too many places.
The big question is...would we go there again? Our experience on this first night didn't enthuse us to go back there soon, but maybe one day.
So the big white elephant of Kerrisdale continues..... This spot, between the Avenue Grill and the Bank of Montreal is perhaps the longest running failure vortex on Vancouver's West Side. It's like that success vacuum on Pacific Boulevard down from il Giardino that has switched hands 30 times (dem bones, Japanese, Indian etc...) so we gave the Shanghai a try and even my low expectations were shattered. In the spirit of foodie goodwill, and the hope that someone from this restaurant might be reading this, I'm going to offer suggestions that could enhance everyone's experience and give this black mark a fighting chance.
1) fix the ventilation. The restaurant stinks and our first reaction coming in the door was to turn around and leave. It smells bad. This was also an issue three months ago, when this place was a Japanese restaurant ( that survived a whopping 5 weeks before shuttering)
2) fix your "Peking Duck" spring roll. It is a horror. Grey slimy duck with mushrooms in a hollow roll and plum sauce. Yuck. Try this: take some crispy duck skin, duck breast, spring onions, maybe some cabbage filler and jam pack a roll, fry it and serve with Peking duck sauce.
3) add a few more whites to your wine list and stop skimping on your pours.
4) capitalize on your Mongolian beef. It was the only awesome thing in our order. and if you want to make it in Kerrisdale you have to compete with 2 generations who are ordering from Chonquong on broadway. So make a crispy version of your Ginger Beef, add more mainstream chow meins and veggie dishes and you got yourself a hopping take out business. Trust me on this. Ten restaurants ahead of you at that location prove it.
5) don't ignore me as soon as my dinner is served, don't take forever with the bill and don't get cheeky with the change! Best of luck, you are going to need it.
The restaurant has been opened for about 3 weeks and the owner has got rid the baker who "hand made" the dumpling dough. Apparently the steam dumpling was not good enough to attract any customer interest. There must be some kind of curse in this location because there were four different restaurants changed hand in five years and none of it made it through the first year.
We were there for lunch and I must admit the owner may not have a clue in the restaurant business. he ambiance is less cozy and was quite dark in the interior. It is best described ok and there was a strange odor floating inside the restaurant (definitely not food) and it was unpleasant to smell at. The restaurant was only 1/2 full while we were there but the duty manager walked around and played no role to help filling the tea pots or connect with the customer although the other servers were attentive. The food menu are the typical shanghai cuisine and it should be a no brainer. We ordered the steam dumpling and as the first reviewer pointed out it was not closed to excellent but was eatable. The dough was thick and hardly any broth inside and the meat was dry. For $6.95 we could do better in Lins on Broadway or Shanghai wonderful in Rmd. The "handmade" noodles were ok and again it was not worth to ante $1.50 extra for these "special noodles". The ginger Gai Lan was excellent and the fried noodles were holding good standard except I found it a tag too greasy. S/S ribs were good and so as everyone else. At least they were not gauging and the price fits in this neighborhood nicely.
The shocker when the bill came and they have a "gratuity reference guide" printed on the bill and they SUGGESTED a 15%-25% tip from the customer. The sad part is they use the total amount of the bill including our famous HST as a tip reference. Obviously they don't use their brain and expect the customer to tip on top of the tax amount and I found this practise is very tacky and unethical.
In my opinion, this is bad optic for a brand new establishment and yet the owner is nowhere in sight. Either the owner has a truck load of laundry money to waste or they simply have no passion to run a restaurant business. And I pray I am wrong in this observation!!!!!
| 1. | Modern City (1 m) |  |
| 2. | Avenue Grill, The (5 m) |  |
| 3. | Moore's Bakery (6 m) | |
| 4. | Benton Brothers Fine Cheese (23 m) | |
| 5. | Baan Wasana Thai Restaurant (39 m) | |
| 6. | Sugarcane Vietnamese Cafe (56 m) |  |
| 7. | Cheshire Cheese Inn (65 m) | |
| 8. | My Cup (78 m) | |
| 9. | McDonald's (89 m) | |
| 10. | Bean Brothers (96 m) | |
