On The Radar is a weekly SmartShanghai column where we profile 2-3 new venues that you might like to know about. Here are the facts and our first impressions.
***
Sumo Cat Ramen Club
Quick Take: Great, heaving bowls of ramen noodles in a very Japanese-y environment. Moshi moshi!
What It Is: The third venue of Sumo Cat in Shanghai, this one takes the decor to its logical endpoint. The cartoon cat mascot adorns the walls in manga comic book style. Bright colors, neon lights, exaggerated text and cartoonish accents -- it's really something. Dragon Ball Z on an endless loop in the television, a "selfie wall", and EDM/Trap music blaring through the speakers completes the look. It's pretty neat actually. I can dig it.
The chain is comes to us from a Taiwanese restauranteur, and as such has a lot of Taiwanese accents and elements to the full-on ramen noodle assault.
But yes indeed, it is a full on ramen noodle assault.
Tom Yum Kung Seafood ramen 92rmb
Ghost claw ramen 148rmb
Savages ramen 98rmb
Lots of mod-ish fusion ramen dishes on offer with piles of meat and seafood in big bowls, priced betwee 68rmb to 150rmb. They've got several in-house varieties like the three above, but guests can also mix and match broth, noodle, meat and veg variations.
First Impressions: Maybe not an every day thing, but it's pretty amusing to be eating comically large bowls of ramen noodles with Lil John screaming TURN DOWN FOR WHAT in your face. Nice to do a little cultural tourism once in a while to see what the kids are into. I sampled a bunch of different variations of broths, noodles, and meats -- pretty decent. Very filling. Thumbs up. Would re-up.
-Morgan Short
Chez Maurice Bar
Quick Take: Chez Maurice's newly renovated leather-bedecked bar with a decent selection of nibbles and a solid roster of reasonably priced cocktails
What is it: Have you heard of Chez Maurice? They were in the Michelin Guide, you know. It's an upscale French restaurant/wine bar/grill directly above Heyday. They have a third-floor wine and sliced-pieces-of-meat-on-nice-platters bar which they've recently turned in the Chez Maurice Bar. By all accounts, it was pretty nice, but it's not exactly new. It has, however, recently been renovated and rejiggered, so yeah! Two weeks into soft open of its newest version but nearly two years after its parent opened, this baby's getting the OTR treatment.
So, what is it; it's a pretty nice lounge bar. The menu's an octet of signature cocktails that'll rotate out monthly, priced either 68rmb or 78rmb a piece. They've got things like Memory of Geisha (68rmb), which is vodka, kelp and shiso (we didn't try that one), Uptown Girl Smash (68rmb) with gin, cherry brandy, berry shrub and rose, and Jalisco Breeze (78rmb), a slightly less ambitious mixture of tequila, guava, lime and lemongrass.
The fact there's a massive chopping board to the left of the bartender's designated mixology area suggests there's food. There's food. It comes in themed lists, like "Briny" (oysters, marinated sardines, sea urchin avocado with soy rice) "Salty & Umami" (scallops, mac & cheese w/ poached egg), "Fruity" (melon & beet salad, roast suckling pig with grilled pineapple and pickled red onion), and "Spice & Spicy" (Grilled chicken roll with yozu jalapeno cream cheese, roast duck breast in chipotle orange sauce). Mose of this stuff sits between 30-60rmb per plate, except the Jamon, which comes to 188rmb for 80 grams. That's a solid offering of foods that'll probably pair real nicely with the pair of cocktails that are listed directly underneath each category.
Jardin (68rmb)
Mexican Delight (68rmb)
First Impressions: It's a nice bar. I could see people in shirts and clean shoes chilling here. The music was a nice mix of electro-swing and 60's sounding French rock, the seats were comfortable, the space was cozy but not cramped, and the cocktails I tried were good. The Jardin was a floral little number that straddled the line between sweet and tart, while the Mexican Delight was both of those things (drink it before the ice melts too much). I especially liked that Maurice Donkey (78rmb). Refreshing, as most things that come in copper cups are, but without the acrid battery-acid aftertaste you often get with Moscow Mule knock-offs. Even made me want to write like a food editor for once. Chez Maurice Bar; it'll make a "lifestyle journalist" of you.
-Alex Panayotopoulos
Buco
Quick Take: A tiny window, nay, porthole in the side of Gemma on Donghu Lu that serves up Salvatore Naselli's artisinal gelato
What is it: This is where gelato master Salvatore Naselli slings his artisanal gelato. Not him in person, he was there in mid-June, but they continue to stock his hand-made, artisanal gelato. As all gelato masters worth their gelato scoopers do, he controls the process from the fruit groves in Italy to the preservation phase, to the moment where it gets turned into ice-cream. At the moment, they've got 8 flavors available; fig, peach, blueberry, hazelnut, pistachio, bacio (chocolate hazelnut sort of thing), straight chocolate, and stracciatella (vanilla-ish with chocolate chips, and also the single most Italian word in existence). They come in either waffle-cones, cups or brioche buns, for 25rmb per scoop or 40rmb for two. That's it. Simple.
It really is a tiny window. Could've been a ventilation outlet. They've got a wooden board propped open above it like it's the gunport of an 18th century frigate, firing artisanal gelato into the mouths of passersby. Said passersby have to stand on a little box to speak into the gunport, like they're kids chasing the ice-cream van.
First Impressions: It's taken me a while to get on this gelato thing. I typically prefer the blunt, cloying, milky texture of a regular ice cream; the sharp crystalline texture of gelato just kind of makes me think of freezerburn. Buco might've fixed it for me. That, or the muggen fuggen weather. Suddenly, that sharp crystalline texture felt real refreshing. I tried the blueberry and peach flavors in cones. The blueberry's great, highly recommended, the peach was all right. The cones were either melting in the heat and humidity or not cooked or whatever, but they were like soggy tissue paper. Maybe I just drew a bad batch. Anyway, hey, ice cream! People like ice cream, people love gelato, Buco does real good artisanally artisanal gelato out of a tiny hole in the wall.
-Alex Panayotopoulos
Create a new List