Wu Kong has had its reputation -- it was overcrowded, overpriced, underappreciated. The service was bad, the food was awesome/ awful, and the location was dowdy. I was there for a light dinner one night and experienced the best and worst of my dining rollercoaster ride. I wondered if I'm thrilled to look forward coming back and 'swipe the menu' (order everything I haven't tried), or whether I have the guts to do so. Dining here, depending how you view it, certainly is a different experience than you think you're going to get. It all started at the door.
Calling to make a reservation was never a problem. Remember this, if you're reserving dinner. Don't expect sympathy from the hostess. She would not turn a blind eye and let you stay longer to cut the cake, because in suppressed rage she might accidentally cut someone's head off if you are not careful and press her buttons. Don't beg, keep your dignity and ask her nicely if (Date and time) will be available for a party of 3. Wu Kong is one of those places where speaking English or speaking Mandarin will not get you any more privleged than speaking Cantonese. If you speak Shanghainese dialect you may be ahead of everyone else, but that don't seem to work out all that well as I've noticed. Also do remember that when you reserve a table their least concern was when you'll arrive, or if you arrive at all. They just need to make sure if you can leave at a certain tiime, so they can have a second turn. Say yes, or you don't get a table at all.
Now that we've passed the reservation part, let's talk food. Welcoming snacks were fried peanuts (crunchy but not quite inspiring enough) and house-made pickled radishes, which was surprisingly crunchy with a deep soy-flavour throughout. The wine-poached pigeon was SO good, I swore it lifted me up in the air and took me out of this world. Wait...was I drunk?! No, definitely not. The pigeon's meat was thoroughly moist and tender. The taste of wine was prominent but without its unpleasant bitterness at all. The breast side,sliced thin, was still meaty but the gameiness of the smaller bird has diminished.
醃篤鮮 (No English translation here), is a supreme broth made entirely of chicken and Chinese ham. The broth arrived in a small clay pot, releasing, when uncovered, a whiff of meaty aroma so rich I could picture the ingredients used here. The broth was the colour of milky white, with a complex taste to it. In the pot are some supporting ingredients like salted pork (咸肉), knotted soy bean sheets (百頁) and bamboo shoots. The soup and its content had its own weigh to carry when it came to combining all into one dish. I especially enjoyed the slight crunch to the bamboo shoots, and its lightness allowing the ham to deepen the flavour of the soup.
Next came an interactive dish -- Ham cooked in Osmanthus Honey served with bun and crispy bean sheets ($140). A complicated dish to make in the first place, Chinese ham was cut into rectangles, then steamed with rock sugar for several times, with several additional of sugar to remove the ham's saltiness. Then the last steaming's juices will be used to make a sauce with honey and osmanthus to yield a caramel colour sauce. When served, we took a bun, placed the crispy bean sheet on top, and then the ham, and folded the bun lengthwise to create a "wallet". Biting into it was the best textured dish I've had. The pillowy softness of the bun, combined with the crispy bean sheets and a chewy ham all in one bite. On the flavour front, the ham tasted of sweetness from honey, saltiness from the preserving process foiled by floral notes of osmanthus. It certainly was the best dish I've had here.
The Stir-fried 8 Treasures (8 寶辣醬) had more than 8 ingredients in it. The shrimps on the top were lighter then the shrimps we normally have elsewhere as they were of freshwater variety. There were other ingredients -- pork, chicken, bamboo shoots, dried tofu, peanuts, shiitake mushrooms, edamame and a few others in the mix. Quickly fried on high heat to blend with sweet fermented bean paste, one of my favorite condiment in Shanghainese cooking. The product was a dish full of standard cubes but of different textures. The bamboo shoots were crunchy, while the mushrooms and edamame went softer, and then the meats the softest. Each carried out their own flavours but all bound together with the seasoning. Let's not forget a final drizzle of sesame oil rounded out a special aroma of nuttiness to the entire dish.
Tofu Jiaozi (豆腐餃子) was next. I first encountered the dish in "Eat Drink Man Woman", a movie by acclaimed director Ang Lee. One of the characters was making the dish, and in reality, turned out it was made the same way, by horizontally slicing tofu in a thin sheet, fill them and fold them diagonally. Steaming them at the end will "close the gap" to make pockets of tofu filled inside. These dumplings were velvety smooth, as if it would slip down my throat at any given moment. The filling was made with spinach and dried tofu. You may think of the dish as a rather bland one, but you'd realize that after the ham and 8 treasures, this one was the perfect palate cleanser of a dish that cleared out the tastes in the mouth before you move on to something else. Don't underestimate these dumplings either, they could be quite filling as you eat them one by one. The thickened sauce may be a little cloying to begin with, but if you get past that, the dumplings were just about perfect.
We rounded our meal with adzuki bean crepes (豆沙窩餅). They were quite disappointing, as the filling was too runny and too sweet, and the crepe part was too crispy. It felt like a gigantic serving of a poorly executed red-bean-turnover, or one of those at McDonalds these days, whichever looked better. By the time we rounded out our meal the night was still young, and when the hostess spotted we were having desserts already, she sent a waiter with the check for us. We looked at the bill, eyed at her direction. and flip the bill pad close and pushed it aside, enjoying our last bit of crepes with refills of hot tea until our time's up for the night. She looked away, angry, and did not bother us any longer until we left as she scowled at our way out. I wondered if it was us who did something to annoy her. I was reassured by the folks that's about to take our table, that the hostess was a long-standing Shanghai Diva of some sort -- Plenty of attitude but none the 30s popular songstress type.
Calling to make a reservation was never a problem. Remember this, if you're reserving dinner. Don't expect sympathy from the hostess. She would not turn a blind eye and let you stay longer to cut the cake, because in suppressed rage she might accidentally cut someone's head off if you are not careful and press her buttons. Don't beg, keep your dignity and ask her nicely if (Date and time) will be available for a party of 3. Wu Kong is one of those places where speaking English or speaking Mandarin will not get you any more privleged than speaking Cantonese. If you speak Shanghainese dialect you may be ahead of everyone else, but that don't seem to work out all that well as I've noticed. Also do remember that when you reserve a table their least concern was when you'll arrive, or if you arrive at all. They just need to make sure if you can leave at a certain tiime, so they can have a second turn. Say yes, or you don't get a table at all.
Now that we've passed the reservation part, let's talk food. Welcoming snacks were fried peanuts (crunchy but not quite inspiring enough) and house-made pickled radishes, which was surprisingly crunchy with a deep soy-flavour throughout. The wine-poached pigeon was SO good, I swore it lifted me up in the air and took me out of this world. Wait...was I drunk?! No, definitely not. The pigeon's meat was thoroughly moist and tender. The taste of wine was prominent but without its unpleasant bitterness at all. The breast side,sliced thin, was still meaty but the gameiness of the smaller bird has diminished.
醃篤鮮 (No English translation here), is a supreme broth made entirely of chicken and Chinese ham. The broth arrived in a small clay pot, releasing, when uncovered, a whiff of meaty aroma so rich I could picture the ingredients used here. The broth was the colour of milky white, with a complex taste to it. In the pot are some supporting ingredients like salted pork (咸肉), knotted soy bean sheets (百頁) and bamboo shoots. The soup and its content had its own weigh to carry when it came to combining all into one dish. I especially enjoyed the slight crunch to the bamboo shoots, and its lightness allowing the ham to deepen the flavour of the soup.
Next came an interactive dish -- Ham cooked in Osmanthus Honey served with bun and crispy bean sheets ($140). A complicated dish to make in the first place, Chinese ham was cut into rectangles, then steamed with rock sugar for several times, with several additional of sugar to remove the ham's saltiness. Then the last steaming's juices will be used to make a sauce with honey and osmanthus to yield a caramel colour sauce. When served, we took a bun, placed the crispy bean sheet on top, and then the ham, and folded the bun lengthwise to create a "wallet". Biting into it was the best textured dish I've had. The pillowy softness of the bun, combined with the crispy bean sheets and a chewy ham all in one bite. On the flavour front, the ham tasted of sweetness from honey, saltiness from the preserving process foiled by floral notes of osmanthus. It certainly was the best dish I've had here.
The Stir-fried 8 Treasures (8 寶辣醬) had more than 8 ingredients in it. The shrimps on the top were lighter then the shrimps we normally have elsewhere as they were of freshwater variety. There were other ingredients -- pork, chicken, bamboo shoots, dried tofu, peanuts, shiitake mushrooms, edamame and a few others in the mix. Quickly fried on high heat to blend with sweet fermented bean paste, one of my favorite condiment in Shanghainese cooking. The product was a dish full of standard cubes but of different textures. The bamboo shoots were crunchy, while the mushrooms and edamame went softer, and then the meats the softest. Each carried out their own flavours but all bound together with the seasoning. Let's not forget a final drizzle of sesame oil rounded out a special aroma of nuttiness to the entire dish.
Tofu Jiaozi (豆腐餃子) was next. I first encountered the dish in "Eat Drink Man Woman", a movie by acclaimed director Ang Lee. One of the characters was making the dish, and in reality, turned out it was made the same way, by horizontally slicing tofu in a thin sheet, fill them and fold them diagonally. Steaming them at the end will "close the gap" to make pockets of tofu filled inside. These dumplings were velvety smooth, as if it would slip down my throat at any given moment. The filling was made with spinach and dried tofu. You may think of the dish as a rather bland one, but you'd realize that after the ham and 8 treasures, this one was the perfect palate cleanser of a dish that cleared out the tastes in the mouth before you move on to something else. Don't underestimate these dumplings either, they could be quite filling as you eat them one by one. The thickened sauce may be a little cloying to begin with, but if you get past that, the dumplings were just about perfect.
We rounded our meal with adzuki bean crepes (豆沙窩餅). They were quite disappointing, as the filling was too runny and too sweet, and the crepe part was too crispy. It felt like a gigantic serving of a poorly executed red-bean-turnover, or one of those at McDonalds these days, whichever looked better. By the time we rounded out our meal the night was still young, and when the hostess spotted we were having desserts already, she sent a waiter with the check for us. We looked at the bill, eyed at her direction. and flip the bill pad close and pushed it aside, enjoying our last bit of crepes with refills of hot tea until our time's up for the night. She looked away, angry, and did not bother us any longer until we left as she scowled at our way out. I wondered if it was us who did something to annoy her. I was reassured by the folks that's about to take our table, that the hostess was a long-standing Shanghai Diva of some sort -- Plenty of attitude but none the 30s popular songstress type.
Ah, I realized now, what being a Diva could be...
Other Ratings:
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Interesting
Touched
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