Closings:
Blue Note has closed. Tiny note to whoever handled the marketing there: if you need to fill 300 seats a night, maybe don't repeatedly turn down offers from a magazine to list your events for free. (And yes, SmartShanghai listsevents free of charge).
Roam, the three-story Hubei bistro / cocktail bar / small club from the Tang people, is taking a pause after this weekend. They've posted that they're rethinking the space and slowing things down a bit. The stated plan: less rushing, more lingering. May they return soon, slightly more sure of themselves. Check out their upcoming festival too.
Boom Boom Bagels closed a few weeks ago. They'd been running a kind of absurd happy hour lately: buy a sandwich, get unlimited free beers. Which, in hindsight, may have been communicating something.
Hunt is closing at the end of the month, taking one more familiar spot out of Shanghai's LGBTQ+ nightlife landscape.
Maolago, the excellent, bohemian-chic Guizhou restaurant from the Oha Group that pretty much started the whole Guizhou food trend in Shanghai, is no more. Instead, Oha Group has reconceptualized the space as something in a much less-crowded genre: Indonesian food – Balinese, specifically. It's called Holy Spice, and it looks good, with tons of plants up on the roof.
Chicken & Egg had its last day on Fumin Lu last Sunday. Apparently, they already have a new spot in Xintiandi next to Il Teatro.
Random News Bits:
San Antonio fried chicken chain Church's Chicken is plotting a China push with Shanghai as a key foothold, joining the long line of U.S. brands trying to crack the market.
Meanwhile, Pizza Hut has gone fully into corporate side-quest mode and opened standalone burger shops in Shanghai, because apparently making pizza was too limiting. Rumors also have Wendy's circling China again, with Shanghai potentially among the first stops.
Penicillin has reopened if Instagram friendly pricey drinks are your thing.
Chef shuffle corner: Jonatan, formerly at Nebula, has landed at Terrakota. Meanwhile, Ocean's Table has brought in Salvatore and Dona Will, the chef couple some of you may recognize from various pop-ups around town. They've also apparently taken over the direction of the restaurant entirely, pushing it toward a more seafood-obsessed identity with a heavy focus on marine biodiversity, fish techniques, and all things ocean-related.
Remember Gordon Ramsay's members-only club in that historic Taikoo Hui mansion? The one with the six-figure membership fee? The building has a new tenant: Club Bâtard, another members-only club, another 100k-ish annual fee, another attempt to convince Shanghai that this is the move. Always worth a second try.
And, proving once again that our app remains an ecosystem rich in bugs, a few users saw the excellent French restaurant Cuivre marked as closed. Cuivre has not closed. Our apologies.
New-ish Openings Around Town
Le Bec Bund
Le Bec's move from its Xinhua Lu villa to the Bund City Hall project is less a relocation and more a scale-up. Nicolas Le Bec has traded the standalone mansion setup for a multi-floor French hospitality compound: downstairs does all-day dining, bakery goods, and terrace traffic; upstairs shifts back toward familiar Le Bec territory with bigger dining rooms, wine spaces, and private rooms. The food sounds reassuringly unchanged — seafood towers, tartares, steaks, truffle pasta, and the usual French comfort-food heavy hitters are all still doing the work. Expect around 500–800rmb per person before wine starts making decisions for you. The biggest change is really the room itself: dark wood, chandeliers, wine caves, and enough French-life philosophy quotes on the walls to either feel charming or vaguely like motivational content for executives. Same Le Bec, much larger ambitions.
Fathom
Another newcomer inside the Bund City Hall complex: Fathom is a Russian seafood-focused fine dining project from the team behind neighboring Russian restaurant Kirillitsa. Early impressions suggest a more modern take on Russian cooking — less borscht and nostalgia, more seafood, tasting menus, and carefully plated dishes. The room comes with rooftop views over the old City Hall buildings and Bund skyline territory, while the food seems to lean rich and unapologetically full-flavored. Consider this one still in the "people are figuring it out" phase, but it already feels like one of the more unusual openings in that increasingly crowded City Hall ecosystem.
The Dome
Over on The Bund, The Dome (5th floor Japanese dining) and Skyline Dome (6th floor lounge and club) are the new spots from the team behind Goodfellas, The Fellas, La Suite, and Captain Bar. It's giving updated 2000s/2010s Bund vibes, with house and disco, and a setup that leans into a full dinner-to-late-night progression: downstairs you've got modern Japanese food, chef-counter omakase and à la carte menus from Chef Bulizo; upstairs shifts into cocktails, yakitori, DJs and rooftop views.
The place seems to be aiming for a bit of theater alongside dinner. There's chef interaction, dishes arriving with some ceremony attached, and a general sense that this wants to be more of an evening than just a meal. The room itself is very Bund-coded too: terraces, skyline views, and that crowd.
Bar Pesce
The former Sage Bistro space next to Cometa has resurfaced as Bar Pesce, a seafood-focused bistro from the same people behind its popular neighbor. It's very much in soft-opening territory right now — there are barely any reviews out in the wild — but early Dianping posts are talking up polished small plates, seafood-heavy dishes, and a low-key riverside atmosphere. One to keep an eye on if you're the sort of person who enjoys getting in before everyone else finds out.
Hanro
Chef Tom Ryu — the guy behind difficult-to-book Korean chef's-table NABI — is opening a new Korean BBQ spot, HANRO. This one swaps tasting menus for high-end charcoal grills and full-service table side cooking. Meats lean local: Qingdao wagyu, Zhejiang black pork and other cuts grilled Korean-style by staff, not you. Soft-opening chatter has already reached "good luck getting a table" territory: Shanghai restaurant people packed opening night, with staff from NABI jumping in to help keep things moving. The setup sounds more party than hushed fine dining too, with a DJ/bar area downstairs and the main dining room upstairs.
TonAri Wine·Cocktail Bistro
New on Wuding Lu, TonAri is a small French-ish wine bistro from the woman behind Purism / Vinism, with a natural wine bent and a menu that leans into East-meets-West small plates. Early reviews keep circling back to the wine program and a surprisingly popular oil-splashed spicy sea bream situation — apparently part Jiangnan fish dish, part wine-bar experiment. The room itself sounds like half neighborhood wine den, half Paris-by-way-of-Shanghai fantasy: cozy, low-lit, and built for lingering over one more bottle than you originally planned.
Noiise
Over at C-Park, there's a restaurant in the long hallway called Noise, and they're serving some totally rad Venezuelan street food and cheap drinks. They cook up chicken and beef on the griddle and serve it three ways: on a giant sub sandwich with about 20 toppings, over fries, or – and this is really wild – as a walking taco, i.e., inside a bag of chips. Never seen that in Shanghai before. However you get it, it's ideal for before or after a night of C-Park chaos.
Urban Stroll
The people behind Dune Kawap are opening a café and brunch spot at Blackstone called Urban Stroll. No skewers this time. Instead: sandwiches, desserts, pilaf, alcohol, and eventually DJs, plus a collaboration with a Korean baking duo doing house-made breads and Korean-style French toast. Feels like one of those places designed for a casual coffee that accidentally becomes several hours. Soft opening starts June 1, with an opening event on June 27 before moving into full operation.
El Paisa
A lot of folks rated El Paisa, the taco bar in La Barra, as the best in town. They closed a few years back, but fortunately, they've respawned in the same location in the heart of Jing'an. For now, they're only open on Sundays, doing all-you-can-eat tacos for 188rmb, with homemade tortillas, their full original menu, plus some new selections. Hell yeah.
Kora by Circle
Shanghai has a new West African spot on Xinhua Lu near Panyu Lu serving dishes like jollof rice, mafé, and yassa. It comes from the Circle people and occupies a surprisingly nice little stretch overlooking the sidewalk — the sort of place that feels built for coffee, brunch, or lingering when the weather cooperates.
The Hai
Pool, darts, and beer spot The Hai closed a few months back, and they're now open again on Gao'an Lu, near Hengshan Lu, with open window seats overlooking the sidewalks.
Turquoise
Full disclosure: this one made the list partly because they actually reached out and submitted themselves, a level of initiative surprisingly rare in the restaurant world (yes, it's free to list a restaurant with us).
Turquoise adds another Turkish option to Gubei, doing wraps, kebabs, and grilled meat platters in a colorful room full of hanging lanterns and patterned tabletops. Dianping reviewers keep mentioning the chicken wrap, praised for a freshly grilled exterior and lighter fillings than your standard shawarma situation. Turkish tea in little tulip glasses also gets plenty of love. Reviews on the food land around solid rather than revelatory, but service gets consistently good marks for warm, attentive staff.
