A steak house with a spectacular view. The decor is ultra cool, the service was great and the steaks are pretty good. The only downside is the price of the meat. These cows ate well before they met their maker..and you're paying for what they dined on.

Would be a very impressive place to bring visitors. Also a very cool bar downstairs. A big thumbs up overall.

A friend of my girlfriend takes us to a new restaurant. (New for me =p)
It's located in a part of Shanghai that I never go: The Cool docks.

The Design of the place is modern and very cozy, good music and good lighting.

We sit just next to the window with a wonderful view on pudong. The staff arrive gives us the menu and some home cook bread and butter, vinegar, olive oil to wait.

We follow the advice of the manager and go for white wine with oyster as starter and one tomahawk for us and my friend take an aged 35 days or something T-bone.

The oysters were ok, the good size for me and the white wine at the good temperature.
At this point we think that we should take more starters but the waiter arrive and ask us to select our knife for the meat (that was funny) there is some from Japan, France etc.
And the meats arrive, we are happy to see that they cook it as we asked.
The meat was just delicious. The side dishes were delicious! The mash potatoes were just wonderful and at the end of our meat in fact we were happy that we didn't order more starters...
The bill was a little more than 2300 so no surprise and worth it.

Char bar & grill thrilled all our senses.
Delicious food. Amazing views. Personalised and slick service.
Relaxed, unpretentious, atmosphere.

The food:
chef julie suggested a tasting menu for us to share and that way we got to try a variety of dishes. perfect and easily sold.
We shared the prawn cocktail, with a modern twist ...delicious. A foie gras to die for (it needs to be noted, i tend to dislike this dish, but the flavours here were amazing and i could not get enough). An amazing seafood tower with a variety of fresh seafood.

For our main course there was a lot to chose from (mainly meat, but that was expected). Again chef suggested a sharing menu and presented us with an amazing tender wagyu steak and an oversized Tomahawk steak on the bone (for the carnivore in us), also a grilled black cod (possibly the best cod i have ever tasted) with an amazing aniseed sauce that you painted onto the fish as you desired and a juicy chicken dish that was the chefs special of the day. Of course we had delectable side dishes of vegetables and salads to accompany the meal.
For dessert i could not get enough of the char banana cheese cake, our table also got to try the chocolate marquis and delicious trifle.

It is worth noting that bedsides the amazing food, the slick service and views ... one of the most memorable parts of the evening was the simple, yet theatrical, part of service that came with almost every dish. the knives, the salts, the jams, the paint brush .... well done team.

I will start off saying that Char is a gorgeous space, the food is fantastic and the view is phenominal. The experience is well designed - I really like selecting a steak knife similarly to selecting a sake cup at a Japanese restaurant and the flight of different salts. I think these touches add to meal and could have come across at kitchy or contrived, but they don't. The service, however, was wonting. I would go as far as to say it was non-existant. We sat with empty wine glasses and dirtly plates. None of the staff was proactive; we needed to get their attention for everything. We ended up moving the wine bottle from the side table to our table and serving ourselves. When we did manage to get the waitstaff's attention, they were professional and polite. I have worked in the service industry for 15 years and my expectations of service directly correlate to the type of establishment I'm at - Hotel Indigo is a 4-5 star hotel and a meal at Char is expensive, they should be able to execute on an experience that reflects that. I've been in China for 10 years and adjusted my service standards accordingly (I know most of the time I need to ask for the glass of water 4 times before I get it and I do so patiently). I can only assume because of CNY Char had the "B" team working. This was not my first time there and I hope my experience doesn't mean they are on the decline.

I've been there with a friend and we were expecting some excellent meat... which is exactly what we got! We tried the Tajima wagyu and it was absolutely brilliant!

We enjoyed our time there and it's a must to have a table with a view, I would recommend to have one with a view on the Bund rather than Pudong, as it is more unique.

Of course, quality does not come for cheap! But sometimes one has to indulge!

I was so so excited to try this place....Unfortunately, what a ridiculous ripoff!

1. I made a reservation TWO months in advance requesting a bund view. Did I get it? Nope. We were there at 7pm and it was basically empty, and still they gave us crappy seats. Were there empty window seats? Yup, lots of them. So thanks for that Char.
2. For 700rmb a ribeye (the ones we each ordered) we were excited to try their supposedly amazing wagyu. Forget it. What a rip. You want amazing wagyu? Go to Mr and Mrs Bund. And it's much cheaper there. For 700rmb, it better have melted in our mouths. Ours tasted like 10usd steaks. Not very tender, no marbling, and thus pretty tasteless.
3. The western female chef went around to the few other occupied tables, asking them how their food was, BUT ours. That's a great way to make guests like us feel pretty un-special. Thanks, chef.
4. Forget the banana cheesecake. Basically the kitchen molded a block of pure cream cheese into a cheese box. There wasn't even a hint of banana in it. One bite, and I left it. Even my husband who will eat any leftovers didn't touch it. Did anyone ask why I didn't finish it? Nope. My husband ordered the cheese board. It had one piece of cheese. Enough said.
5. For 4,700rmb for 3 people, we all left with a pretty bitter tastes in our mouths.

Absent service +over-priced meat +inedible dessert=Char