Dinner at YongFoo Elite in Shanghai (spoiler alert: not good)

YongFoo Elite is a private club and restaurant hosted in a beautiful colonial villa in the Former French Concession in Shanghai. The villa once hosted the British Consulate before being taken over by Shanghai clothing designer Wang Xing Zheng and turned into a private club in 2004. The restaurant is now open also to non-members.

I booked a dinner at Yongfoo Elite because it was awarded 2 stars in the 2019 edition of the Shanghai Michelin Guide (and the previous two edition as well) and it was part of my Michelin scramble.

Spoiler alert: it was pretty lame. The Michelin Guide owns me a lot of explanations.

The visit

I went on a Sunday evening in March 2019. In the garden there was a concert going on (with some sophisticated sounds… stuff for members I guess). Because it was dark I was unable to take a decent picture of the colonial three-story building.

I made my reservation through Dining City website where they seem to make available 8 seats for online reservation. So nice of them! Very easy. Weirdly, however, their website seems defunct, so I could not study the menu before my visit.

I was escorted to my table on the second floor. The vintage furniture is very conformable, basically I had a sofa all for myself. There were many pieces of art scattered around the villa.

I ordered one of their set menus (there were two available, mine was the cheaper; a third menu could be pre-ordered, but I was not aware of it).

The appetizer was supposed to be a combination of three types of marinated meat, smoked egg with vegetarian ham, and a potato salad Russian style, plus a seasonal green salad. The meat was pork and duck (not sure if there was a third one), the potato salad did not have anything “Russian” in my opinion. The vegetarian ham may have been interesting but it was just tasteless. And the green salad was just that… a few random leaves of salad with an undistinguished dressing. This appetizer platter was just underwhelming and set the tone for the rest of the dinner.

The appetizer was supplemented by a couple of forgettable snacks, beans and tofu strips.

The second dish was the third in the set menu (second and third dish were swapped) and was a small portion of river shrimps. At least they were pre-cleaned (this was a suggestion of the kind waiter as the dish on the set menu included the shrimps with their shell on…). Quite useless dish, understandable just as an homage to the local tradition.

Then I got the braised sea cucumber with scallion. The cucumber had a good consistency and the sauce was not too invasive. This dish was ok, even if I do not understand the Chinese fascination for sea cucumbers that seem to be quite bland to me.

Then it was the time for what was supposed to be the highlight of the dinner, smoked codfish with Qi Men black tea. Sorry, nothing special about this dish. Give me the smoked cod from Mott 32 anytime.

Next was a soup: bean curb strings in a clam-based stock. Unexpectedly, this soup was quite good. Very nice taste.

Also the next dish was unexpectedly quite tasty, or at least the organic water bamboo was. In the menu it was indicated that there was shrimp roe in the dish… I could not detect it.

Finally, I received the dessert: a sweet soup and two Chinese pastries with green bean and dates.

The check

The 660 RMB price of the set menu was not net and after a hefty service charge I paid 782 RMB (116 USD).

Was it worth it? Absolutely no. This was the first disappointment that I got following the Shanghai Michelin Guide. This was a very regular Chinese meal, there is no way that a 2 star rating can be justified. I had comparable Chinese dinners in very regular restaurants. Some of the dishes, like the appetizer, were a joke. It was also unacceptable for a Michelin grade restaurant to deviate from the set menu order (and I think they changed the ingredients a couple of times too) with no warning. Ok, they had more expensive set menus, but any set menu should be up to standard.

The only thing that I save is the service and the venue. Yes, the venue is nice, it has a vintage vibe going on. And the waitresses were very friendly and approachable.

Also famed diner Andy Thaler visited the restaurant and was very displeased. He also had some weird misunderstanding with the staff that prevented him from taking pictures. At least they did not interfere with my photos (discretely taken with my phone and without any flash).

If you wish to hang out in a colonial era villa, visit Villa Le Bec.

Suggestion for the Michelin Guide: I know that dealing with cognitive dissonance is difficult, but reduce this restaurant to a table or get rid of it, no more stars if you have any respect for your readers.

Where in Shanghai:
200 Yongfu Lu
永福路200号
Nearest metro station: Shanghai Library (line 10).