Shanghai's restaurant churn continues: a bistro named after your freshman-year existential crisis, a Russian bistro holding down Hengshan Lu, a celebrity chef resurfacing from the archives, a coastal Italian sunbeam landing in Xintiandi...

Also: a banh mi cart that finally stopped roaming long enough to sign a lease.

Yeats

Yeats has already titled half your MFA syllabi -- No Country for Old Men, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. A bistro in Jing'an feels like the logical sequel.

Under chef Curt Evans, Shanghai's Yeats is doing bistro food with "Irish soul," through a French-trained lens, using lots of local/Asian produce. Starters show the intent: Guinness & treacle bread with miso-nori butter (38rmb), a venison croquette with fresh horseradish (98rmb), and rabbit rillettes with Sichuan spice and apricot chutney (148rmb).

Portions skew "polished bistro," meaning small, tidy, borderline adorable; the half pigeon sliced across a large plate looks almost comically proportioned, but the flavors are exactly what you'd expect from upscale Irish cooking: deeply savory and well-seasoned.

Service is brisk and thoughtful. On weekdays it's especially quiet, with guests speaking in near-library voices -- a good spot for early-stage dates or serious conversations. Drinks honor the theme: Irish spirits (served under the glow of a Bushmills altar on one side of the dining room), Guinness on draft, and an extensive classic-to-natural wine list. The space balances neighborhood warmth with just enough fine-dining polish.

Tabani

Tabani bills itself as "a bar and bistro with Babushka's twist." The owner is Russian, though the menu runs between Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, with the occasional detour. The borscht (88rmb), made by a Ukrainian chef, is excellent: a soft, velvety body that's deeply beet-colored, the beetroot-beef balance smoothing out any earthy beet funk. It's served with whole-wheat seeded bread, pickles, and a slice of cured ham. Their Georgian badrijiani (58rmb), fried slices of eggplant rolled with a garlicky walnut paste, also hits the mark.

The bistro's namesake tabani, which are in the blini family (but pliable and a bit thinner), are solid across the board. They have about half a dozen variations here; the smoked salmon and caviar one (68rmb) tends to be a popular pick. There's also stuff like goulash (88rmb), beef-stuffed peppers (88rmb), and some off-theme cameos like baba ghanoush.

Drinks run from the classics (Negroni, Martini, Old Fashioned, 68-88rmb) to showier numbers like a smoky Sazerac (98rmb), yuzu Negroni (88rmb), and a truffle-oil martini served with two tiny spoons of caviar (108rmb). There's also a pickle-infused martini (88rmb) that is genuinely good, if you like pickled things, brine, and loud tartness (I do). It's a date-friendly space with lots of soft lighting, and an outdoor patio with heat lamps and live music on Thursday nights.

Feral Banh Mi

Feral's brick-and-mortar in Jing'an is barely larger than the street cart (run by Yini Jiang) that it evolved from -- there are about five seats max, but delivery is already booming. During lunchtime on a recent weekday, only one table was occupied while about three dozen waimais cycled through the pickup counter.

The baguette (baked by a Vietnamese chef, I was told) is on the lighter, airier side. There wasn't much aroma to it, sadly, but it was good for stability.

The meats are the strong suit: lemongrass chicken and crispy pork are both solid, and the do chua is great -- briny, tart, almost aggressively pickled, thanks to a julienne peeler that shreds the veg thinner than the usual hand-cut version. It also means there's isn't as much of a pickle crunch per bite, though.

Where things drift is the sauce board: between the base sauces and the "flavor sauces" (like butter-fruit chili) there are simply too many pathways to sweetness for a banh mi that doesn't need it. If you know and love the Vietnamese baseline, order it with just liver pâté and butter, and you'll get fairly close. Prices land at 26-65rmb per banh mi, with most sitting in the 30rmb-range (the prawn is the outlier).

They've got a full drinks menu, too, with Vietnamese drip coffee, pandan coconut Americano, citrus-edged sodas, Daobrew's Fu Mo IPA, and even a salted-egg orange Americano (ranging 24-32rmb).

And also...

Capri by Bottega - Bottega Group's latest, in Xintiandi, leaning coastal Italian: lighter, brinier, seafood and citrus-leaning. Capri-style pizza: Neapolitan at heart, but lighter and less overloaded, and a pasta lineup that points more seaside than countryside.

Spago - Wolfgang Puck's first Spago in China, on the rooftop of The St. Regis. California fine dining with hotel polish, some smart nods to Chinese ingredients, and a Bund view priced into every glass of wine.

O'Mills Firewood Alchemy - The sourdough empire that started on Yongjia Lu keeps expanding, and this one's the flex. Kitchen's centered around a French wood-burning oven that gives dough a proper blister and a smoky, rustic edge. At night, they go maximalist: whole fish fillets blistered on sourdough pizza, clay pot rice with Australian wagyu, a pizza wearing a full steak like a winter coat.

La Pomme de Terre - Kind of, not really "new" all-day spot on Yongfu Lu doing French-Canadian bistro food. Maple bacon, potato pancakes and buttermilk stacks early on; after sunset, they've got some of Québec's greatest caloric exports -- poutine, beavertails, and a Captain's-Boil seafood spread.

Kebaba (Yanping Lu) - The original 4-seater Kebaba on Jinxian was basically a döner trapdoor. Sauce down your wrist, eat first, process emotions later. Döner at the new Jing'an location are just as good, and it's got more sides, more drinks, more protein (they've got beef and falafel in addition to chicken), ranging from 33-69rmb.

Bar Leone - The HK export currently sitting at #1 on World's 50 Best Bars just opened in Shanghai, which explains the queue coiling around Sinan Mansions. There's a ticketing system at the door... concert logistics for cocktails. Ground floor is the "spritz and highball" bar: Negronis, Spritzes, highballs, the kind of stuff Italians drink while pretending they're not late. Heavier hitters, like the Olive Oil Sour, Masa Margarita, and Filthy Martini with smoked olive oil brine (118-128rmb), on the second floor.

Opening (Very) Soon...

• Pépite - a seafood bar on Donghu Lu from the team behind Blaz; they've brought over French chef Alexandre Marchon to head the kitchen
• Nono's - the Yaya's trio (Dan Li, Mike Liu, Andrew Moo) have partnered with chef Chris Zhu (Blaz) and wine lead Franklin Chiang (Next Bottle) to push the Italian-Chinese fusion concept a little further into the experimental zone, on Yongfu Lu
• Rambu - opening on Wuding Lu with a team pulled from Sage (Jun Nishiyama and Alice Fan), Ambra, and Bar Choice; menu is Southeast Asian and sounds slightly unhinged, in a good way (like oxtail rendang doughnuts)

What's Closed Down...

Some noteworthy closures (and a relocation). RIP:

After a near-decade run, Celia closed this month -- a real loss for Shanghai's late-night techno faithful. Somewhere, a subwoofer is wondering what it did wrong. Seriously, though. This one stings.

The city has also just lost a trusted panic-cake provider. Awfully Chocolate, the long-running Singaporean brand, hasclosed all of its stores in Shanghai after a licensee fallout.

Mavis on Wuding Lu has closed -- one of the early-2020s "new bistro" hits that spent most weekends fully booked, now part of Shanghai dining history. Indian restaurant Anokhi on Wuxing Lu joins that list.

One of the city's most ambitious (and expensive) tasting-menu operations has also shuttered: EHB, the Nordic fine-dining spot on Dongping Lu.

Finally, Specters' time on Yuyuan Lu is up. Doors closed mid-November, but the bar is resurfacing, a bit bigger, no better behaved, on December 12 atYuyintang CPARK.