Dining at Fa Zu Jie is always an adventure no matter how many time you have been. It starts with finding the place which is tucked away in an unnamed building in an obscure (dodgy more like) little lane in the middle of LKF. On my first trip I totally missed the opening to the lane. As I turned around and still couldn't see the lane, Platform 9 3/4 came to mind... Even now, I still love looking at the faces of first-timers as the door opens, I know, childish
The restaurant looks and feels like a friend's dining room with it's compact size, terrace and open kitchen. One side of the room is filled with empty wine bottles, a testament to many a merry time spent there. Corkage is free by the way. The whole place can accommodate 2 dozens or so spread out on different tables.
Back to the food. This is the third time I've been to Fa Zu Jie and just as the previous 2 visits, the food was true to its name: French cooking with Shanghainese cuisine ingredients. Creative but never at the expense of taste. The first course of watermelon with lemongrass and glassy noodles had a refreshing balance of sweetness and tartness. It certainly woke up my taste buds and as Chinese say, stimulated my appetite. Having said that, it was not everyone's cup of tea.
The next course was the "drunken dish" and this time was drunken abalone on udon. The wine flavour was not overpowering but definitely robust enough to mark it as a drunken dish. Fragrance from wine aside, the abalone and udon were very tasty, the kind of dish that you would down every single bit of morsel and drop of soup.
The following dish of yellow croaker (黃花魚) had the 2 thumbs up from everyone. Delicate, succulent, contrasting with the sharpness and saltiness of pickled veg. If licking the plate clean was an option...
As we were devouring the yellow croaker, we could already smell the scallops being cooked in the kitchen. Tantalising. The scallop was cooked just right, sweet and plump. Lovely with the 馬蘭頭 (a kind of quintessential Shanghainese vegetable) and mashed potatoes.
By this time, we were a little full. The fact that we still managed to polish off the Iberico pork on Shanghainese rice with vegetable tells you how good it was. The pork was tender and juicy, and the vegetable rice was made with rice from Niigata in Japan which made it extra special.
Dessert is always, in my opinion, the weakest link here. Big fat strawberries with cream and osmanthus meringue. It wasn't bad at all but certainly lacked the "wow" factor in the other dishes.
Once again, FZJ did not disappoint and just as before, service was prompt and friendly, making it another wonderful experience. Special mention to Chris, one of the partners, who is always patient and obliging in dealing with all sorts of dietary restrictions that I throw at him.
题外话/补充资料：
The restaurant is dimly lit, rendering picture-taking a near impossible task. I have given up this time round which left me free to enjoy the food as soon as it arrived!
(以上食记乃用户个人意见 , 并不代表OpenRice之观点。)
影片
餐牌玩味性重，如看的不明白，上菜時侍者會再詳加解說。
食物
蘆
貝裡‧藏了寶藏的森林
水袖‧農家炭香
軟珮瑪香‧軟米香
紅裳‧白帽
