Shanghai Garden Restaurant     紫玉蘭   (Under Renovation)

Has been a regular at this restaurant and usually it's ok. This time the '咸蛋黄虾球' was terrible. Coating was way thick and the prawn was tasteless. Service was disappointing. We have to raise our hands for a few minutes before some attention. The waitress was just '黑面' and didn't care if the dishes was terrible. I would not come back again.

part 2 - dessert

we ordered lots of dessert this time. We were satisfied with the quality & temperature for each of them. a little bit expensive comparing the portion of main course

part 1 (except dessert)

this time, we have more ppl so able to order lots more dim sum
it's early at weekday & not so crowded

too busy talking so couldn't remember the name of dim sum

overall great except mock goose no longer attractive. portion seems a little bit smaller but still acceptable

one mth later, we went again. this time at dinner time

we were arranged at a smaller table & the path was narrow

we order most delious food last time & tried crab this time
龍井tea
- good

sauteed crab with glutinous rice cakes $168
- rice cake very giood, more like Korean rice cake than shanghai version
- sauce is quick thick but taste good, not too salty as many other restaurants

mock goose
- different from the last time, drier & deep fried. still ok

always made reservation so never really need to wait.

inconvenient location & far from MTR station, we always went to the upper floor. but worth it

enviroment was nice, spacious
service ok, waiting time for dishes were reasonable

food - we liked all of them. Portion were large

at first visit, we ordered too much for 3 ppl & we gave up dessert
人見人愛咕嚕肉 sweet & sour pork $85
- not too sour, 皮薄, rib were juicy

山東銀絲卷 steamed roll $20
- very good, fd said it's 正宗 version

上海煎釀素鵝 Mock Goose $68
- not dry or over-fried, filling was just 冬咕 & carrot

杭州龍井蝦仁 Sauteed shrimps with "lungching" tea-leaves $148
- very good & fresh

My B always wanna take me there as he had quite a it of memories about at this place~~~ the first time we went was 4:30 and found out it was closed...
so we went there again about 3 ish on a sat...

not many people were there at that time... and yet we still have to wait at the door for 5 mins...!?!?

the staff doesn't give a good service and i am surprised as this place seems a little high class...

Anyway... about the dim sum... is just OK... just matched the value...

my fav was the starter plate with nuts, tofu and cumber... have that chili that will make your tongue numb... (MA LA) ^O^

chicken feet is very tasty and it would be better if they make it softer

mushroom roll... too salty... but my B loved it...

prawn dumbing... ok

Chili Won Ton... ok

Pork ribs... ok

Siu Lung Bao~ not bad~ very juicy inside~ nice~

This is not a place for me to come normal Yum Cha... a little pricey~

One sometimes wonders if all Maxim's run Chinese restaurants have a bit of a Cantonese feel to them regardless of the respective cuisine. You could even tell their base stocks and sauces in each of their restaurants whether it be Cantonese, Northern Chinese, Hunan, etc, must somehow all taste simlar and probably transported here via trucks from a centralised location! Despite the pretty cutlery and Chinese porcelain dishes, there was no escaping this couldn't possibly be too authentic to the original 淮揚菜. On top of that, I couldn't help notice how so many of the dishes here are named so funnily. Eg. 人見人愛的咕嚕肉, 信得過椒鹽排骨, 杭州最頂好清燉獅子頭, 不能不試的蘿蔔絲鹹肉. For someone who usually doesn't mind a sense of humour , even I found this to be trying too hard and slightly unprofessional! This meal was many months ago however, so its possible they have updated the menu.

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辣青瓜豆腐乾
This is almost ubiquitously served in most Maxim's Chinese restaurants with very little twist. Having said that it was enjoyable as a starter. 3.5/5

湖南長沙豆酥銀雪魚
I like 豆酥 and I wanted to compare this to a vegetarian dish I'd had before. The cod fish was nicely cooked, on the verge of flakey but not over done, even a bit fatty! Good. The 豆酥 sauce was pretty good but it was not crunchy and too oily moist. Not perfect but enjoyable. 4/5

無錫灌湯小龍包
Again the name of this is hilarious, considering this wasn't a very good Xiao Loong Bao! The skin was slightly thickish, which I can live with, but the pork inside is what really disappoints as it lacks pork sweetness taste and was densely packed. There isn't much soup within either, but the very little there is inside was enjoyable I guess, tasting more like chicken feet stock than the authentic pork stock. 2.8/5

金華密汁火腿
Anyone who knows how to cook this dish will know that Yunnan Ham is to be poached and soaked in a honey-sugary solution first for many hours, before the ham's saltiness becomes reduced, yet the base sauce itself should absorb back some of the ham's unique flavours. Unfortunately, this performed far away from an idealised version. The ham was a bit tough for one. The honeyed sauce meanwhile lacks depth as it was cloying sweet and carried none of above mentioned, soaked yunnan ham flavour. Even the Lotus Seeds were too sugary, not powdery good but just plain hard crunchy! For a 2009 Michelin 1 Star dish, I am sorry to say, I could have cooked this dish better as its not hard to do. In actual fact, I've bought better Instant Versions in groceries in KLN! 2.5/5

四川樟茶鴨
Another disappointing dish. The flavour of Tea Smokiness was nowhere to be seen, and the duck's skin was chewy rather than crispy. A great version of this should carry tea smokiness and duck fat flavour penetrating right back into the bones, making one want to gnaw on them for the whole night from head to neck to bones to the tail. This was not good at all! At least the 鴨仔餅 were fluffy and sweet. Very disappointing rendition of this dish. 2.5/5

江南公子芙蓉醉仙蟹
Another funny name! This had a fair bit of unburnt chinese yellow wine intact, but its obviously not a very good aged yellow wine as it was just straight up alcohol pungent and layerless. This could have benefitted from burning off more of the alcohol first as it wrecked the overall balance or it could have done with a bit more chicken oil to cancel this effect. The version at 英記 in Sai Wan beats here with ease.. even though that's not famous there! The steamed watery-eggs were actually done well, but it didn't really absorb any 花蟹 crab sweetness flavours. Very forgettable dish. 2.5/5.

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There used to be a similar restaurant here in Hutchison House many years ago, probably a 戶江春 or named similar which we used to eat here like 15-20 years ago. So I think this is just an updated version of that by Maxim's? The Food is localised too much, it doesn't serve mostly Shanghainese cuisine either but is made up of a bit of everything Chinese to suit the general market. Nothing wrong with this approach provided the food is any good, unfortunately it isn't. I think Ye Shanghai close-by is equally a little bit modernised but at least that serves much more sophisticated food and one could tell from the cooking methods, the dishes at Ye Shanghai would have taken a lot more time to preparing the dishes! Not sure I would return here in a hurry.

TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, THIS RESTAURANT IS RELATIVELY AFFORDABLE COMPARED TO ITS SHANGHAINESE PEERS.

Went here last night for a bite as had to pull very long hours later.

The quality of the food here seems to be deteriorating. It just doesn't seem to be as good as before.

Ordered the noodles and it came very quickly. It was called Beijing fried noodles and tasted really good. But still it was a bit too oily despite the fact that I told them to cook it with less oil.

Also, we ordered the veggies and they just tasted really weird. Pretty sour and I just didn't like it. Seriously, it didn't taste so bad before. To me, quality must be dropping.

Anyway, service here is always good and efficient and prices here are always high. But the food quality isn't as good as before.

Went there with my fellow colleagues - total number of 15 people. We reserved a big round table almost a week in advance. Service was great.

We ordered tons of food as there were so many of us. The following are the dishes we ordered:

1) 葱爆羊肉
2) 小籠包
3) 鍋貼
4) 酒釀小丸子
5) 北京韮菜拉麵
6) 瑤柱蛋白炒飯
7) 津白
8) 紅燒豆腐
9) 牛腩 (甜)
10) 雲吞湯

Almost every dish was very good. The portions were all pretty big since there was 15 of us. It was a very satisfying lunch.

However, I do think that the 小籠包 can be improved, so can the 北京韮菜拉麵. They weren't of the best standard that day.

We started with diced bean curd with minced preserved vegetables (嶄得來春樁小蔥拌豆腐). It's a refreshing cold starter, but nothing to write home about.

Next up was the main dish for today - the sauteéd crab with glutinous rice cakes and soy sauce paste (上海醬油蟹年糕). This is usually one of my favorite dishes but unfortunately this one fell a little flat. Not that it tasted bad or anything, but it just wasn't exactly authentic. Then I reminded myself that I was dining at a Maxim's outlet - where Cantonese and Sichuan dishes can show up on the menu of a Shanghainese restaurant. What did I expect?

The carp fish and shredded turnip soup (揚子江蘿蔔絲鯽魚湯) was pretty yummy. It's been a while since I've had this type of carp, but somehow mom never made use of this recipe. The milky soup has the classic taste of ginger, spring onions and white pepper along with some rice wine. I had some of the nice shredded turnip, but didn't end up touching the fish itself.

This particular version of stewed "lion head" minced pork balls with vegetables (杭州最頂好清燉獅子頭) wasn't quite to my liking. I have to say that there's nothing wrong with the execution here, only a matter of preference. I grew up with mom pan-frying these giant meatballs until they are golden on the outside, with a just a hint of toasty and burnt flavor. The ones here were stewed in clear broth, and still have the sort of translucent color and texture you find with pork that's been cooked just enough to stay pink. My friends seemed to really like these, though...

We had half a dozen xiaolongbao (小籠包), and somehow I ended up having 3 of these... While these were pretty decent, they fell far short of the ones from Jiajia in Shanghai. The skin was reasonably thin, and they were a bit soupy inside, but somehow the taste of the pork stuffing inside just wasn't quite right...

original blogpost: http://chi-he-wan-le.blogspot.com/2009/09/michelin-star-shanghainese.html

We were a group of 10 and I had the following. As I didn’t look at the menu I cannot give the full names of some of the dishes:

Appetizers (not in order of yummiliciousness, mind you lol):

(1)肴肉 – OK quality, the proportion of meat and jelly was good but the taste wasn’t much.
(2)海蜇 – Quite chewy, ok quality.
(3)烤夫 – cubed, with an ok taste.
(4)素鵝 – Price of carrots must have skyrocketed overnight as there were only mushroom slices that were too sweet. The 腐皮outer was too thin.
(5)熏魚 – Too sweet with syrup on it (!); I definitely preferred my mother’s!

Hot dishes were the following (sort of in order of yummiliciousness, if I must):

(1)魚頭粉皮 – Braised the usual dark sauce with some 麵豉 or even 南乳 I suspect? We asked for some chillis in it and the taste was just right. The fish head was nicely halved but it was a tad contrived, I prefer the hearty whole head intact presentation which was much more satisfying to the eyes and any sadistic desires one night harbour rofl. They were not generous with the 粉皮 which was so so quality. For some reason they decided to put steamed buns on the sides of the dish. The biggest problem with this dish was that it was not only lukewarm. Major let-down. Why can’t they serve it in a 砂窩? Much prefer 蘇浙’s or even 留園雅敍’s to this one.

(2)填鴨 – Succulent with quite some fat, the skin of the wrappers were good. Cucumber slices were dried out though.

(3)海參 – Not my favourite thing to eat, it was laden with quite some 蝦子 but I couldn’t really taste them. Hm......

(4)蝦球 – This must have been some Sichuan style prawns as it had some dried chillis as well as fresh ones, and lots of oil. The prawns were deep fried in a big batter, they were about the size of a golf ball but it was only the pumped-up size of the batter lol. The actual prawn had no taste and was way too crunchy.

Dim sums were these:

(1)窩貼 – OK, it didn’t have the 出前一丁味精粉 taste that it uses to. Could have been from any mediocre Shanghainese resto.
(2)蘿蔔絲酥餅 – OK. Could have been from any mediocre Shanghainese resto.
(3)羊肉水餃 – only a faint lamb taste and worst thing was, the meat tasted too fluffy – too much fat maybe?

I was most disappointed as they’ve forgotten my 阿里巴巴小羊腿, the only thing that I know would be more interesting.

Overall, a disappointing meal that screamed “mediocrity” with no stand-out dish at all. The place was crowded and you can almost smell the smugness and complacency from the Michelin star. Waiters were quite full of it too, although I am not sure why. Maybe I am too old-school, but “modern” Shanghainese cuisine is too pretentious for me and I much prefer the good ol’ stuff from hearty family-style places with either extremely friendly or extremely rude waiters to boot lol. At least they don’t pretend that their food is anything else.

Sad to see a place which used to be quite ok gone downhill.