" Pane E Aweome "

Value for money		Suitable for...
The food		.. a date
The service		.. business dinner
The decor		.. with friends

I so wish that this was restaurant was bad so that I could use such delightful quips as "this place was a Pane-in-my-ass" or how "Pane-full" the service was. Thankfully, the bad jokes stop there as this place is amazing.

Alas, the restaurant is, and has always been, one of my most favorite spots in Shanghai to unwind and eat amazingly solid Italian food. I think of this place as a slightly more expensive, varsity version of DaMarco. Add that to the fact that I am insanely location biased (anything within a 5 min walk of my place gets brownie points), and this place winds up getting a healthy portion of my paycheck every month.

The decor is simple: a slightly cramped, white tablecloth-ed, noisy Italian place that could be mistaken for being in lower Manhattan if you weren't looking outside at the remnants of the once bustling Maoming lu (...a tear). As with any evening we've went, the service last week was exemplary, as we ordered our 3rd helping of free bread (it is great bread...seriously!), the help didn't shoot us an angry look. They were very attentive to all sorts of special requests, and never once gave us any bit of attitude. What? Great service in Shanghai? Yep, and it gets better:

The food was killer. I had the seafood pizza which was a bit unorthodox for me, and immediately after ordering I saw images of pizza hut ads with all sorts of nasty things labeled "seafood" covering a thick piece of bread. To my surprise, it tasted excellent, with clams, shrimp, and calamari in just the right amounts and complementary sauce. We also had the caprese, in which the mozz is plentiful but the dish rather pricey. We split a dessert, a mango panna cotta that made us wish we had ordered a second one. The only complaint that I have about this place (that I have about many places in this fair city) was that there was no bottle of wine under 240 RMB. I mean, would it kill you to have a decent bottle under 200? If I'm going to shell out close to 50 bucks for a bottle of wine, I hope it is great. Sadly, it usually isn't and that is this place's Achilles heel.

Still, this place is well worth a visit. It seems to be packed EVERY night, so it would be best to reserve in advance as we unfortunately learned a few weeks ago.

" Some REAL Italian Dishes "

Value for money		Suitable for...
The food		.. a date
The service		.. business dinner
The decor		.. with friends

One of the few restaurants in Shanghai where there are some REAL Italian dishes, not the typical commercial pizza and tiramisu. Take for example the penne all'amatriciana that I had: I was quite impressed not only for the cooking "al dente", but also for the grated pecorino cheese (a prelibacy that I had not yet found in China). Good setting, prices probably a little too high for what you get, but overall a positive experience. Parola d'italiano!