" Unfortunately Killed By A Non Realistic Wine List... "

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

A new addition to the Shanghai's scene of French ambitious high end bistrot-looking restaurants. Serious money here, location, layout and decor wise... Serious again is the service, maybe one of the most professional to be found in a non-hotel restaurant in town. Decent food, indeed, though lacking a bit of originality and certainly being too ambitious for the actual abilities of the kitchen staff. Highly priced, certainly, to current Shanghai standards. But as we are into French cuisine, you can't reasonably expect not to accompany an evening meal, be it with colleagues or a partner, with a decent wine, especially when the food menu is that ambitious. Unfortunately, La Grange's wine list is certainly among the most OBSCENELY priced I have seen in Shanghai, maybe in my whole life, and I have been drinking, tasting, producing and selling wines in at least 4 continents over the last 15 years... How come a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisse L. Latour, that one can buy around EUR 20 in any shop in Europe, can end up priced over RMB 1,300 there (EUR 120)? Many other shocking examples could be described... Restaurants' very bad habits in France are to sell bottles between 2 and 4 times the buying price, but no one dares going up to 6 times, and it is certainly not the standard here in China. Bringing this in Shanghai is certainly not going to improve the already damaged image of France n China. Even among the best restaurants in town, such as the Jade 36, are by far much more realistic when pricing their bottles. Taxes are not the issue: other restaurants in town deal with it, are profitable and still serve excellent food. Greed and arrogance, surely, are not compatible with being a host, and La Grange is there totally missing the point, even though it claims to enjoy receiving 'guests and friends'...