I visited this "Da Marco" a long time ago so I didn't expect to have to go back there. Unfortunately, this weekend the other restaurants in the area were either full or were serving only partial menus (the worst culprit being the pizza shop a few doors down who took us to our seats, got us comfortable and then announced that there was no pizza today).

We'd had a bad experience at this Da Marco's before, but we hoped that the captain of the good ship Da Marco (Dong Zhu'AnBang Lu), might have steered this wayward vessel safely to shore. As it turns out, this wayward vessel has crashed into the rocks, burst into flames and with any luck it will soon sink.

The buffalo mozzarella was good, although the dressing on the salad was a bit spicy - strange for a salad. The pizza was also good.

I didn't think it was possible, but this place has actually gone down hill since I last visited it. The bread basket contained 3 of those long, thin sesame covered sticks (good), but then the rest of the bread was that horrible brioche rubbish that seems to be everywhere in Shanghai. I ordered a lasagne, which miraculously arrived in only a few minutes, direct from the microwave. One of my friends waited a long time for her dish until the waiter eventually came out of the kitchen and announced "the chef has got it all wrong, he can't make that dish". I don't know what kind of restaurant they think this is. I've never before been told that the chef is incompetent, so please order something else from the menu that he knows how to cook. It seems that the chef's capabilities are limited to microwaving frozen food, making pizza and throwing together a salad. Even I can do that. In fact that is my entire repertoire in the kitchen and I'm certainly not qualified to be a chef.

It seems to be a popular theme in Shanghai that restaurant owners will cut so many corners in order to reduce costs that the end result is very unsatisfying. The same is true of this place. Things like the salad dressing being odd, the cheap Chinese brioche instead of real bread, my starter and main course arriving before the other two even had their starters. It's not necessarily bad by Shanghai western food standards, it's just way off the standards you'd expect from Da Marco.

They have upstairs seating too, but I couldn't see what was going on because the lights were off and it was really dark up there. There were a lot of locals up there, but I can't for the life of me imagine why they would choose to sit in the dark attic instead of by the downstairs windows.

I don't understand the concept of this place. Don't take anyone to this restaurant as a guest for a business lunch, dinner, date, special occasion or anything like that. It's a place for hungry, tolerant, close friends to eat.

Let's get one thing straight. We have been eating at the yuyuan original da Marco since we arrived here 6 years ago. We've always been super impressed, particularly the fact that they have maintained such lofty standards the whole way through. Tis a rare feat in shanghais mercurial restaurant industry.

And so it was that when we moved to our new digs near xujiahui that we were happy to discover we had a branch of the restaurant on our doorstep. We headed down this breezy
summer sundsy, looking forward to a full bread basket, delightful ambiance and the mussels.

Be wwrned, this is da Marco in name only. We found out pretty sharply when we asked for Bing shui. We don't serve water here, only bottled (40rmb per). Somewhat unbelieving, we asked to speak with the manager, who assured us that yes, the owner forbade giving away of water, even to patrons buying 500rmb in food. The owner we were told was never there and his decision caused the staff daily issues. When we explained we had never had this problem in the other da Marco, we were told this wasn't really da Marco. Rather the Chinese owner had just bought the name.

Warning bells rang and were well heard. The tuna salad was the same as the one from boonna, the mussels tiny and overcooked, the soda eater came in a can without ice or lemon. No btead until we asked and then it was stale. Pasta undercooked and lamb ragout a bit like dogfood. Service was insanely slow and ill informed (although they were quite nice in their incompetence). It was a very extraordinarily ordinary experience.

What I don't understand is why da Marco would sell itself to such a poor steward of the brand. It will make us think twice about going to the original, which is a shame, and if that was our first dm experience, I would have been our last.