You wouldn't guess it by the entrance price to the World's Highest Observation Platform or rack rates at the Park Hyatt, The World's Highest Hotel, but there are deals at The World's Largest Bottle Opener, the SWFC. The cheap stuff, or at least, the affordable stuff, is at the bottom. The very, very bottom ¨C Basement Level 2. Y's Table.

The whole shebang is a very modern food court, including a Crystal Jade outlet, Italian from the Salvatore Cuomo people, and a bunch of design-ish people with expensive-looking eyeglasses munching. It's very nice. Nicer because it looks a lot more high-priced than it is.

I like the yakiniku / Korean place.

It's this, here, a contemporary Japanese space that under many other circumstances would scream, "You can't afford me!"



But you can.

It's 188rmb at dinner, with a draft beer, for an unlimited parade of Australian beef and a host of Korean side dishes. There's seafood as well ¨C shrimp, squid, scallops ¨C but it's passable at best, rubbery or powdery at worst. Beef is the thing here, either marinated Korean-style in sugar, soy sauce, ginger, and sesame seeds that brown on the grill; as a simple tartare with julienned apple, spring onion, thick slices of garlic, and a raw egg; or tadaki, the Korean "tataki", a seared piece of Wagyu, sliced like sashimi and served over a bed of raw onions.



It's an all-you-can-eat for grownups. There's an option to bump up the price to 288rmb and drink unlimited beer until you die, but this isn't the place for that. (It's false economy, anyway. Draft beer always seems to be "on special" for 15rmb.) It's classy. On weeknights, at least, there's hardly any other customers. The atmosphere is calm, sedate, business partner-ish. The bibimbap is delicious, and the Korean pancakes, jeon, studded with either kimchi or seafood, come out light and almost grease-less, which is a nice change. There's a lovely peanut dressing on a simple green salad. Did I mention the beef?



There are a couple caveats. The seafood is better left alone. The pork too, sliced so thickly that by the time the generous layer of fat is anywhere close to being browned, the meat has turned into carbon. (Or, conversely, when the meat is cooked, you're left with a nearly raw slab of fat.) On one visit, the service was fantastic, and none of the stalling ("Where's the whatever we ordered an hour ago?") that all-you-can-eat places generally tried to discourage you with. Last week, it looked like the good waiter had been pulled over to the Italian restaurant, replaced by a couple of noobs who struggled to take an order, bring out food in any kind of order, or bother with controlling the flame. The jeon came with the check. There were five other customers, total. The bowl of greens to wrap your beef in, if that's your thing, is pretty weak -- no garlic, even. It's probably a better idea to go during a weeknight, when the chances of them getting flustered and the kitchen being overwhelmed are much slimmer.

Second time around didn't live up to the first. But, it was still nice. The quality of the beef is far ahead of anyone else doing any kind of deal like this, and the atmosphere is first rate. Worth a trip over to Pudong on its own. Check 'em out.



The yakiniku restaurant is in Y's Table, B2/F, Shanghai World Financial Center, 100 Shiji Da Dao, near Dongtai Lu. The 188rmb deal is only on at dinner, from 5-10pm. Click the link for details of Y's Table.

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