After reviewing Ning Hai and Ji Mao Dui Tang, this review is about a third remarkable seafood restaurant in Ningbo. The main location of Shipu Restaurant is in the central district of Haishu (60 Yanyue St.). For this review I visited the branch in Wanda Plaza (Yinzhou district) along with other six people.
The visit
The restaurant is articulated into three levels (2nd, 3th, 4th floor). We headed to the 4th floor for a private room.
As usual for this kind of restaurants, we went to the “seafood room” where we placed our orders picking the fish and shellfish from what was on display.
We ordered a combination of appetizers and seafood dishes. One appetizer was these hot buns with sweet and sour pork for the filling.
A fried fish.
A type of pancakes.
An interesting dish: squid filled with pork meat.
Some rice pancakes with soy sauce.
More cuttlefish.
Scallops with cheese. Too much cheese.
A delicious local dish served braised.
Vegetables.
The check
The total check with a little discount was 880 RMB (125 USD, or less than 18 USD per person). The quality of the food was excellent and the final check made this meal a great value for money.
Where in Ningbo: 999 Middle Siming Road (inside Wanda Plaza, with the entrance from the street side, not inside the mall).
Ning Hai Shi Fu is another of the big names of seafood in Ningbo. Originally from another city called Ning Hai, it has several locations in Ningbo that are usually very busy. I visited their Yinzhou branch with two friends on a weekday and it was jam-packed.
The visit
The restaurant in Yinzhou district I visited boasted a cabinet full of prized Moutai wine, with a lot of bottles from rare years selling for over 1,000 USD each.
My party was given a table in a room with other two small groups.
As usual we went to the room where all kind of seafood and dishes were on display and we placed our orders. All labels were translated into English and prices were clearly indicated. Having a Chinese speaking friend helped a lot, but I think one could manage an order even with no Chinese (if you are not picky about the details of the preparations).
Some watermelon was offered free of charge.
And so were some hot bread filled with sesame paste.
One of the appetizers we chose was preserved cold meat sprinkled with Moutai. I promise you that there was no trace of the prized wine.
Seasonal vegetables.
One of our mains was a tail of a large fish called “rhubarb” that came with purple potato noodles. It looked like a large seabass.
The result was a braised fish in a delicious sauce with noodles. Luckily there was a lot of meat and not many bones.
I insisted on ordering the geoduck (the clam with an overgrown body pictured above on the right).
It came as a sashimi. A large part of the clam was its stomach, which we did not eat.
The stomach was used to give flavor to a soup with rice that we got at the end of the meal.
A very nice dish was rice cakes with squid ink. The rice cakes were soft, like mochi.
We had the restaurant’s home made shrimp cakes that were excellent, with pieces of shrimps discernible in the paste.
We also tried their local abalone (a bit chewy but affordable) in two styles: braised and steamed with a garlic sauce.
The check
The final check was 738 RMB (105 USD or 35 USD per person). We did not pick any super expensive seafood such as king crabs or yellow croaker, but we had more than enough for three people and the final bill was incredibly reasonable. It is another winner if you wish to feast on seafood in Ningbo.
Where in Ningbo: 613 Siming Zhong, Yinzhou. (There are several locations with slightly different menus, this is where we went.) Tip: write “Ninghai Restsaurant” in Didi and double check the resulting address.
Ningbo, a port city in Zheijang province, boasts its own breed of Chinese cuisine and is famous for fresh seafood. There are many great seafood restaurants and the most the famous ones have several branches.
Ji Mao Dui Tang has only two locations and boasts some of the highest quality seafood I have seen in Ningbo and in China generally.
The visit
We were a group of six people and we got a private room without any extra charge. It is pretty normal in Chinese restaurants. I believe there was a minimum spending, but it was so low that it was not even a remote problem.
Like in similar restaurants, in a room there was all the seafood and sample dishes on display. All were clearly priced and an assistant would input our order in a device as I and my friends walked through this room.
There was a lot of prized seafood, including the famous yellow croaker and pomfrets, two of the most sought-after types of fish from the East Chinese Sea.
Peanuts with peppers were complimentary (in Chinese restaurants it is pretty common to be offered a snack free of charge).
We had several appetizers. One was a plate of marinated bamboo shoots.
The restaurant also had a few meat dishes like these sweet and sour spare ribs.
The cuttlefish, soaked in its own ink, was certainly a highlight.
On the vegetables sides, we also had a plate with dried bean curd with black fungus.
Another appetizer was a dish with asparagus and small prawns.
The braised beef was another highlight. It was extremely tender. I believe it was cheek.
Garlic chives with eel was another interesting dish.
The most anticipated main was a pomfret grilled (this kind of fish is caught wild and has a very distinct flavor and the meat is firm).
The tiger prawns with garlic came nicely arranged.
Since it was hairy crab season we had three crabs. I must say that it was a disappointing choice, there is really so little to eat from these crabs.
A type of razor clams came in a nice casserole.
There was a nice roll with read bean paste.
Another revelation was the battered tofu fish. It was extremely soft and delicate and the frying did not kill the flavor.
The mussels were just spectacular, super meaty!
We got some fruit at the end of the meal that was also complimentary.
The check
We spent 2,713 RMB (386 USD or around 64 USD per person). It was a big check, but there was a lot of quality seafood. The two big ticket items were the pomfret (around 100 USD) and the prawns (83 USD per six big prawns). The three crabs cost around 50 USD. The other dishes were quite inexpensive.
I have been back also other times. The place seems to be always busy, even at lunch time. For two people it is possible to dine, for a single diner it may be more challenging to find the right dishes, as they are mostly designed for sharing.
Where in Ningbo: Bai Zhang Dong Lu 909, Nong 1-3 Hao.
Ningbo is a city in Zhejiang, an Eastern Chinese province. It is a manufacturing powerhouse and boasts its own cuisine. In Shanghai Yong Fu restaurant was awarded one star in the 2019 Michelin Guide and serves Ningbo cuisine.
The visit
The restaurant is located on the 12th floor of the historic Jin Jiang hotel (the building on the back in the first picture above). It is a very Chinese restaurant. To make a booking I had to go there and nobody would speak English. Initially they just asked me to leave. Eventually I was able to make a reservation.
As usual, they have a lot of private rooms (“boxes”) and a hall where I had my dinner. Their menu, as you might expect, is focused on Ningbo delicacies. The decor is in line with the vintage atmosphere of the hotel.
I started with a taro and crankling soup that was recommended by the manager (the only person speaking some English) as very typical of Ningbo. It was a very dense soup, very good.
Then I had marinated bamboo shoots that came in a weird bowl inside another bowl with two small fishes happily swimming.
A piece of bamboo fell into the water and one fish seemed to like it.
My main dish was supposed to be yellow croaker in a casserole with soy sauce and some braised pork. Yello coraker is indeed a fish coming from the waters of Zhejiang. However, it turned out to be cuttlefish! The translation on the menu was wrong, but they insisted it was croaker. It was not.
At least it was very tender. Overall a nice dish for two or three people to share.
Finally, I had two glutinous rice balls (Tang Yuan) with a filling made of sesame paste. It is a traditional sweet from Ningbo very popular durinh Spring Festival.
The final dish with seedless grapes was complimentary.
The check
I spent 389 RMB (around 54 USD) for a big dinner. Of course, this kind of Chinese restaurant is best experienced in a group that can order several main dishes. The yellow croaker, for example, could have been split between two people. Of course you could easily spend more if you start to order more expensive seafood.
I must say that all the staff was very professional and friendly and willing to try to explain me things. It is a nice restaurant and if you are looking for something different in terms of Chinese dishes, it is a very good place where to go.
Where in Shanghai: 59 Maoming Road, 12th Floor Jin Jiang Hotel.
