In October 2018 I set the challenge to visit all the Michelin-starred restaurants in the 2019 edition of the Shanghai Michelin Guide in the following year. I called it the Shanghai Michelin Guide Scramble.
This meant visiting 34 venues. I did visit 33 venues by October 2019; I decided to skip the second venue of Xin Rong Ji because it only accepts groups (since I did visit another Xin Rong Ji on the Michelin list I think I can still claim I completed the challenge). A few venues were visited before setting the challenge. You can see the links to the reviews on this page.
Here’s some of what I learnt.
The Guide is mostly pointing to good restaurants. Of all of the restaurants I visited I was disappointed only by two (YongFoo Elite and Lao Zheng Xing). My experience suggests that the success rate of eating at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Shanghai is around 94%. This is very high, but frankly I would have expected a 100% success rate.
The internal logic of the ratings (one, two, three stars) sometimes does not make much sense. Fine, there is only one three star restaurant in Shanghai and that’s Ultraviolet. I agree with this. Ultraviolet is the epitome of a three star rating: It is a place that deserves a special trip. However, the difference between one and two stars is sometimes a mystery. For example why a pretty standard Cantonese place like Imperial Treasure has two stars and a great Chinese restaurant like Amazing Chinese Cuisine has only one? I just do not know. So do not take the number of stars too seriously.
The Guide seems to have a bias toward hotel restaurants and overseas chains, even better if they are Cantonese. Of 34 restaurants with stars in the 2019 Guide, 19 (56%) falls into the category of hotel restaurants or outposts of overseas groups (Singapore and Hong Kong). I think that the Guide should have been more adventurous and have considered more local gems. The local restaurants included in the list were among the most interesting, like Ji Ping Court and Taian Table (both of which were promoted to two stars in the 2020 edition of the Guide). I am glad that in the 2020 edition of the Guide a crab restaurant was added (Cheng Long Hang). Maybe a hot pot place in the future?
Chinese fine dining still caters to parties. I visited 23 venues of Chinese restaurants and I can say that with very limited exceptions they were all catering to large parties like in traditional Chinese banquet halls. Set menus were often only for a group and most dishes were meant to be shared. I feel that there is something missing here. When I look at the public of the Western starred restaurants in Shanghai I can remember mostly young couples. Chinese restaurants could do more to accommodate this new generation of diners visiting restaurants as a couple and even alone. Also, do not assume that staff will speak English in all of these restaurants. Sometimes making a reservation over the phone will be impossible if you do not speak Chinese.
There seems to be a formula for Chinese Michelin-starred dining. Most of the Michelin-starred restaurants seemed to follow a formula: contemporary dining space (even if this should not count), artistic plating, classic recipes with a few updates here and there, use of international ingredients (wagyu, Alaskan crabs, iberico pork among the fashionable ingredients). This is not necessarily bad. But the level of innovation seemed to be limited.
Western Michelin-starred restaurants seem to ignore to be in Shanghai. There were at least 10 restaurants that I could classify as Westerner (mostly French). With the partial exception of Ultraviolet and Taian Table, which were at the top in terms of culinary creativity, Western restaurants did not play much with local traditions or ingredients. While I am skeptical of fusion dishes per se, there were very few attempts to create something new influenced by the context. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but sapient fusion can lead to great restaurants (I am thinking of Goh in Fukuoka).
Vegetarian cuisine is an important part of Shanghai’s culinary excellence. There were two starred vegetarian restaurants on the 2019 edition of the Guide (confirmed in the 2020 edition): Fu He Hui and Wujie. They were both excellent and I discovered them thanks to the inclusion in the rank of starred restaurants. Great choice!
The Guide does not mean always full in Shanghai. I was able to dine in many of these restaurants with no reservations even at weekends. That would be unheard of in a starred restaurant in Japan or Hong Kong. Clearly, the Guide still has a long way to go in Shanghai.
I have my favorites. There were a few restaurants that stood up and for various reasons I would like to go back in the future. Taian Table and Ultraviolet were amazing in terms of innovation. In my book, they were totally worth the final check for this reason. Yi Long Court served me the best luxury dim sum I had in Shanghai and also the selection of other Chinese dishes was impressive (not sure why they were demoted from two to one star in the 2020 edition of the Guide). By the way, The Peninsula hosting Yi Long Court and Sir Elly was the best hotel for food. Seventh Son and Imperial Treasure were the best for regular dim sum. But when it comes to Cantonese fare, Ji Ping Court was on another level and I am glad it got an additional star in the 2020 edition of the Guide. For more local fare, Moose, Amazing Chinese Cuisine, and Xi Rong Ji were my favorite. I loved Da Dong (not only for its Peking Duck) and I think it is the best Chinese restaurant for someone with a foreign palate. T’ang Court impressed me as the restaurant with the best trained staff (I understand that they were demoted to two stars after having been the only three star restaurant in Mainland China in the first edition of the Guide, but I do not understand why they were demoted to one start in the 2020 edition). Among the Western restaurants, I would prefer some not-starred ones (Racine, Villa Le Bec) over the starred. Sir Elly was the most interesting in terms of innovation among the French bunch. Finally, I will repeat that Fu He Hui and Wujie with their vegetarian set courses are a must-see (even if I do not understand why the Bund location of Wujie got the star and the one in Xuhujui with almost the same menu is a Bib Gourmand).
You can dine in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Shanghai starting at 50 USD if not less, but it will escalate quickly. In the Chinese restaurants outside five-star hotels, it is possible to put together a few dishes for 300-400 RMB. But you need to be careful about what to order. If you start to order fresh seafood and delicacies like bird’s nest, sea cucumber, abalone, the check will reach astronomical figures. However I also discovered that these delicacies command really little flavor to my Western palate, so not much is missed. Madam Goose seemed to be the most affordable in the one star category and Canton 8 among the two star restaurants.
Finally, no more challenges like this… Setting a challenge makes dining become a job. I will not set other challenges like this and in the future I will focus more on going back to the placed I liked.
