Mother's Day is one of the busiest days for restaurants around here. This is one of the old stand-bys for us so I've been here a few times before but it's been long enough to not be stale. Got a tableful of relatives to toast grandma and mom. They restaurant was jam-packed so they put us into a private room but partitioned as small as possible. The walls are a little worn and the paint peeling a bit in the corners, but the lighting is good and everything else is clean and still barely nice enough to appear upscale.
The food is your typical banquet food done in Shanghai style. The cold-cut plate featured Drunken Chicken and a sliced pork terrine held together by the gelatin from the meat juices. The chicken was tender with just a bit of alcoholic bite. And how can you not love meat-jello? The salt-pepper stir-fried prawns were huge, but wasn't particularly special in the way of flavor or preparation. The stewed sea cucumber came whole, sitting in a rich brown sauce which was a bit sweet for my taste. One of those dishes guaranteed to scare off any non-Chinese person screaming into the night. Along those lines, the manager was nice enough to offer up a complimentary order of mapo-style stinky tofu for our eating pleasure. I don't get violently ill at the sight of it or anything like that, but stinky tofu is certainly not my favorite Taiwan specialty. Thankfully the cousins managed to make short work of the dish so it could be taken away quickly and not stink up the room when the more delicate dishes arrived.
The shark-fin soup was basically a nice chicken soup with some smaller pieces of fin, which was fine with me since I'm always down for a good chicken broth. Lack of finnage was alright since it's too much of a moral dilemma when I run into one of the super-fancy huge single-fins where one is suppose to impressed by its sheer extravagance, whether in terms of monetary value or in its uncaring cruelty.
It's a lot easier to appreciate the goodness of good old pork fat, and the star of the show was the thick slab of pork belly gently cooked to a rich mahogany sheen. A slice of meat-fat-skin between a flattened 饅頭 steamed-bun with some fresh scallions to cut the fattiness — perfection. Just in case you're not full yet, they wait until the end to bring out the classic Shanghai 小籠包 soup-dumplings. I wish they'd bring them out as appetizers so we can better appreciate the perfectly steamed little pockets of tight, almost al-dente skin and the burst of rich broth and meaty filling inside. Of course you eat one as it is, and one dipped in the ginger-vinegar for the additional zing. The good thing about sending them out late was that I managed to wait until the dumplings cooled a bit so I didn't scald my tongue on the steaming juices when I stuffed the whole dumpling into my mouth, which you really have to do because if you take a small bite the juices all leak out and what's the point of that?
All in all it was your well-done Chinese banquet, with the addition of a freakin' fantastic Bordeaux red courtesy of uncle's cellar. Portion was just enough to stuff one to the gills without bursting. Even had room for a peach-shaped bean-paste sweet bun in the end. And all for just a bit over NTD1K per person, so pretty good value, too.
悅上海<
台北市大安區敦化南路2段57號
02-27001949