Shanghai Min     小南國  

小南國 is a well-known restaurant chain in Hong Kong and Mainland. The menu has plenty of Shanghaiese regional dishes, and also a range of Shanghaiese street food in a more glamorous style. The dning room has an uncluttered simplicity, tidy and neat. The atmosphere is bright and cheerful, the waiters are not very much attention to details but was friendly and helpful to diners.

Cuisine: Shanghaiese
Food rating: 4/10*
Service: 5/10
Ambiance: 6/10
Price: HK$150pax

* Food Rating: 6/10 is equivalent to 1 Michelin star, 8/10 to two Michelin stars, and 9/10 or 10/10 to three Michelin stars

Vegetable & Bean curd Roll (1/10)
The rolls were rather bland, it just taste like bread with veg with no seasoning. Tofu and Century eggs with chillies (3/10)
The tofu was nice, fancy presentation showcased the chef’s knife skills. The sauce was light and the century eggs gave the smooth tofu a complexity.Braised pork belly (4/10)
The braised pork belly is a classic Shanghai dish, but fattening. This pork belly had good texture, soft and tender, and the sauce was fully infused within. 蔥油餅 (4/10)
This version of蔥油餅was rather different than conventional ones. It was crispy outside containing some toasted sesame seeds and the bread was fairly season. If there were more taste of spring onion would be preferable.八寶飯 (4/10)
The rice was pleasant, sweet and delicate, very rich in flavour. The rice was cooked nicely, very al dente, more importantly the sweetness were very balanced. Service, always good in general, better than most of the chain restaurants, just not as attentive as it should have been. This place is a real bargain for the price you and the quality of food you get.

Give me a thumbs up if you like it!

The food was very average, especially the smoked fish (Fun Yu) which is totally unacceptable as it does not match the original recipe. The quality of fish is lousy. This is intended to be a cold dish but it turned out to be an ordinary deep fried fish piece. The tea (for 4 people) was not brewed but simply made by placing a tea bag in the pot, yet its charge was remarkable. The service provided by the waiter/waitress was just good enough to get by. In summary, this restaurant is not worthy of the price it charges! It was not a pleasant dining experience for us, especially when we had a good expectation of its standard based on the recommendation of this blog.

Xiao Lung Bao - that is the question! pretty good i thought, the dumpling maintained their integrity (which is CRUCIAL) and there was an adequate amount of broth within. the skin was delicate, it appears that there has been some general improvement on this front (in HK least - can't say for elsewhere) but perhaps not the best i've had. my only bones with this was i felt the pepper was a bit overdone, i prefer the filling to be quite simple and plain, if any pepper is required it should almost go unnoticed in my opinion.

We had a tray of the fried bun type too - they were very good!

we also had a claypot type concoction with tofu, bak choy and mushrooms, pretty plain (ordinary), but nice because of its simplicity, i guess it depends on your combination of dishes how this would fit, and it was ok for me.

delicate slices of tofu with peitan - this seems to appear in many Chinese restaurants the city over, and again if you like peitan and tofu then as a cold starter this is always a nice teaser - pretty well done but the peitan was poorly prepped on the dish - mushy and unpresentable.

Finally, and certainly by no means least importantly - the noodle dish with fried scallions and seaweed - WOW - this was just awesome - the simplicity of the dish focusing foremostly on the texture of the noodles - this was a TREAT - would go back just to eat this - had something similar in Shanghai at the end of a meal with my sister once and we were both impressed by the simple flavours and delighted in the noodle bite and overall finish the dish brought to the meal - Highly recommended and probably the cheapest thing on the menu - Bonus!

We went to the Shatin shop yesterday for lunch. The restaurant is well decorated. However the services and food are really bad. We have ordered 生煎飽 & 小籠飽., fried rice & fried noodle and other dimsum for 4 persons but the waiter said you just ordered the 飽 & fried noodle, etc. only, why we not order 小菜 impolitely. The waiter also picked up the plate while we haven't finished the food.
The food is bad too. The meat in 小籠飽 is cold & also the size is small & the taste is not good as we have in the TST shop.

The lunch was unpleaseant.

We will not visit the restaurant again.

Just came to this new restaurant at Shatin Plaza for lunch. The restaurant was very busy and we were lucky to have a seat without a long wait. The restaurant has a modern decor and seating is reasonably comfortable. Service is on the weak side, though, as the restaurant is clearly understaffed, so be prepared for delayed / missed orders. And that was exactly what happened to us - we ordered a hot soya bean milk and the drink did not arrive until after we had settled the bill at the end of the meal

Back to the food - regrettably, it was not too special in our opinion. The vegetable roll was ok as a starter - very small in size, though. The 生煎包 was ok as it was hot and juicy, but again it was just like the usual ones served elsewhere (and a far cry from what you could get from places in Shanghai e.g. 小揚). The steamed pork chop with gelatinous rice was also not very good and tasted a bit bland (? maybe they forgot to add the seasonings), but surely the chef did not forget to add cooking oil to it, and it turned out to be quite greasy - not too healthy for consumption la ! The dan dan noodle was the worst dish of the day - the noodle was soggy, not tangy at all, and tasted just like some overcooked instant noodle ; the soup based was hardly spicy at all, just a heavy broth with lots of peanut in it. So, although the price was not too expensive, we probably would not come back again for a long while. This latest experience just re-confirmed my belief that it is indeed quite hard to find a decent restaurant in Shatin Plaza, which is quite a disappointment really ... ...