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[Radar]:El Patio

El Patio is a mod/traditional Spanish restaurant in a handsome lemon villa. The owners are the guys who used to be behind popular but casual Spanish joint Bonito. They've taken a few steps up in restaurant society with this grand old house, and updated the food, the chef, and the furnishings accordingly. Terraces abound; wine markups don't.
Last updated: 2015-11-09
Area: El Patio's villa is on the west side of Fenyang Lu, as the street swoops down from Huaihai Lu. If you're coming from the north -- Sichuan Citizen, an unaffiliated Spanish restaurant, Dakota, Monkey Lounge -- it'll be on your right hand side, just before the intersection with Taiyuan Lu. If you're coming from the south -- La Creperie, The Camel, Goga, MAO, Paulaner, etc -- it'll be on the your left hand side, just after the intersection with Taiyuan Lu. It's a large yellow villa behind a black gate. Backing up a bit, that's in the French Concession. There are no other Spanish restaurants within 500 meters, which is saying something these days.

What it is: The old couple from Bonito -- Ferran and Alberto -- collecting on a bit of real estate karma. Their former Spanish restaurant suffered the failed Loft development. The dead mall didn't stop them from building a strong customer base for their casual Spanish food and ludicrously low markups on wine, but it wasn't the most inspiring location. Eventually (and allegedly), disputes with the landlord led them to just pull the plug on the whole operation. That was 2009.

And, lo and behold, in 2010 a magnificent villa is dropped into their laps from the highest heights of society. They're now the proud operators of an airy '30s-era mansion with a working fireplace that cuts through all three floors, and a stone patio in which they've planted an orange tree from Sevilla. There are terraces hanging out of this place like the floor is trying to escape: terraces for ten, terraces for twenty, terraces for forty. How's that for a bit of karma?

So, along comes this mansion, which they now have to live up to. Bonito was determinedly casual. Most of it was outdoors. El Patio is more polished. Along with the Sevillan orange tree, they've imported a new young-gun chef from Barcelona, and he's doing upscale Spanish food, modern and traditional. I gather that if you're a Spanish chef with any ambition these days, the egg and potato of a regular tortilla look like a ball and chain. Or, at the very least, they look like the starting point, not the destination.

So, you take that egg and potato, but poach the egg, make a creamy potato puree, cradle the first in the second, and flavor it with truffle (oil). You turn a prawn carpaccio into a sheet of pureed raw shrimp to spread on toast. You make gazpacho with strawberries and shrimp, and you make an apple ice cream for your foie gras. You lay stalks of rosemary along the side of your braised lamb in smoked cheese and suggest people rub the woody herb between their hands to, ahem, evoke the mountains and sea of Spain. (One should still order it.)

It's not all mod-ish floofery. El Patio does the classics as well, so if you prefer your tortilla as a tortilla and your croquetas as croquetas, that's available too. If your idea of gazpacho is Andalusian, not strawberry, you're still covered. The rices are just rices. You can have a simple octopus with paprika -- pulpo a la gallega -- and cod with a red pepper sauce.

One foot in the past, one in the.... well, not future, exactly. One in the past, and the other, let's say, feeling around in a forward direction.

In a city where one of two Spanish words for "the" has become a name brand -- for a restaurant, for a cocktail lounge -- it becomes necessary to mention that El Patio is not related to El Willy or El Coctel.

Atmosphere: Spanish colonial. The first floor is open and airy and done in a neutral palette of tans, creams, and woods, dotted with '30s-style leather couches and dark furniture. A massive fireplace anchors the space. It's straddling the line between a dining room and a lounge. When it's not 400 degrees outside, they'll swing the glass doors open onto the stone patio. The first floor has great date atmosphere.

The upper floors have a more charged atmosphere. It's been stripped back to beams, and the A-frame ceiling is exposed. Both have been painted white, but the walls are deep, deep orange. The second-and-a-half floor is a chilled, walk-in wine room. Take a peek in the VIP room at the back of the second floor if you can. It's the fancy room for big-spending dinners with Chinese-style privacy requirements and it looks positively occult: red, black, candles.

Damage: Wine and booze aside, probably 200-250 per person. Maybe less. Some of the dishes are quite generous. The 48rmb patatas bravas is big enough to kill your dinner, and there's no way only two people, the recommended configuration, are going to finish the 178rmb black rice with cuttlefish and allioli. Eventually, they're also going to institute a Sunday brunch, an anchor of Bonito, but are coming to terms with the pricing right now.

Who's going: You could fit the entire expat Spanish population of Shanghai in this thing (and the Portuguese on the terraces). Expect them all to cycle through here. You're going to get Bonito's loyal crowd as well, and, I'd venture a guess, many, many wine drinkers. Bonito thumbed its nose at wine markups when it opened, and the guys say they're taking that approach at El Patio as well. They want it to be a two-bottle, not a two-glass, kind of place. Borrachos.

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