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I have a large gift certificate to Shanghai Terrace at the Penninsula Hotel. Some "safe" choices will be needed for dining companions. All reccomendations will be appreciated. Avenues was part of another package; directing me there will not help.

Thanks
Babaluch

Hmm....the last time I ate at Shanghai Terrace was many years ago. Now I am not the most adventurous eater (please don't bad mouth me -- I do appreciate good food but I think mushrooms are evil) but I remember the service and all the choices that were made, while not necessarily common, were very very good. A very mannered luncheon -- very elegant service and incredibly expensive (i wasn't paying, thank god) but it was tasty. And I think there are enough options to not cause too much distress to those who aren't adventurous.

And it's definitely an experience -- as I recall the servers who hovered over us had white gloves on.

Very chi chi.

Enjoy!

s

You're not an alderman, I hope.

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"The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)

Aaaack!!!!

I'd rather wander the woods foraging for the evil mushrooms than be an alderman.

And most importantly, I believe in the right of all citizens to pursue their happiness with fungus -- just don't make me have any of it.

Few, if any, of the choices at Shanghai Terrace are that challenging. I'm not sure there's a main ingredient that's much more exotic than duck. If people are comfortable in an "Americanized" Chinese restaurant, they'd do fine here.

I don't mean any of this as a knock on Shanghai Terrace, either. They execute everything (food, service, ambience) exceptionally well. It is pricey, especially if you have a mindset that Chinese food should be inexpensive. But I welcome a fine dining Chinese restaurant like this, which are much less common in the US than in Asia.

As far as dishes, I like the Peking duck salad and the five spice duck, and have had a great steamed whole fish there once. I wasn't overwhelmed with the dim sum appetizer offerings.

The teas are exquisite. The rest of my meal, also a few years back, was pretty good but not that memorable. Sorry, I cannot help with specific dishes beyond - enjoy the tea.

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d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

thanks for the help, will report next week.

Babaluch, how was your meal there?

I believe they serve a Peking duck sandwich (lunch only, in the terrace) which is supposed to be outstanding (voted best sandwich in the city by the Trib recently). I hope to get over to try this soon.

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Lacking fins or tail
The Gefilte fish
swims with great difficulty.

Jewish haiku.

Kuhdo,

Pick a day and I'm there!

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Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

I ate at Shanghai Terrace on Saturday evening. I thought it was excellent in every way. The food was delicious, a cut above what you get in even the best conventional Chinese restaurants. For example, one member of our party got the XO lobster, and it was amazingly tender and delicious. The portion size was also astounding, in terms of the amount of huge chunks of lobster in the dish. Other dishes (e.g. wok-fried venison, five-spice duck, wok-fried scallops) were similarly excellent (in both quality and quantity). Desserts were unusual, such as the squash custard (some kind of squash that started with a "p"), the lemon foam, etc, although they were probably the weakest part of the meal and I somewhat regretted not going upstairs to the Chocolate Bar for dessert. Service was also well above what you get in even nice restaurants, with many staff members offering things and making sure we were all happy. There is a price to all of this, of course; with entrees in the mid thirties ($42 for the lobster), you'll probably find, as we did, that you're paying somewhere around $100/person including moderate alcohol, tax, and tip. Obviously this is several times what you would pay at your neighborhood Chinese restaurant. But in terms of food, atmosphere, and service, I consider our dinner experience more comparable to dining at a very nice restaurant like one sixtyblue or Blackbird or North Pond, and it's priced similar to those. If a Chinese dinner in an upscale, luxurious environment fits your needs, and you don't mind paying the price, then Shanghai Terrace is a good choice.

Links:
restaurant website
menu with prices

Thanks for the update, nx. One question - was the whole experience as restrained as it has been in the past? By restrained, I mean it all had a great feeling of propriety and tradition. Nothing out of place, challenging or jarring in any way? Sort of like a perfectly composed still life, beautifully done but with no unexpected elements, or surprising juxtapositions. If so, I need to consider whether I want to go back - one thing I have come to understand about myself is that at that price point, I expect something that will make me say "Wow, that was something I never thought of before." As I said above in this thread, my meal there was quite good, but it was all just so, in its proper place, and the only wow moment was the tea service which had flavor and depth that I still remember fondly.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with perfectly executed renditions of traditional dishes made with wonderful ingredients - actually I have a lot of respect for that. I do question my own search for thrills, if you will, in fine dining experiences - it seems almost childish. But I know myself well enough to know that is what I am looking for and Shanghai Terrace probably will not provide it.

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d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

Where else but LTH
can you find such poetic
meditations on food?

I wouldn't use the word "restrained" in that way, but there was really nothing "challenging or jarring", the way you would find at Moto, Alinea, or upstairs from Shanghai Terrace at Avenues. If that's what you're looking for, then you're probably not going to find it at Shanghai Terrace (or, frankly, most other excellent restaurants in town). They offer very good food and impeccable service in an upscale atmosphere. I guess it's up to you to decide whether or not you are "wowed" by excellent food that is exactly what you are expecting.

Personally, I thought Shanghai Terrace was very good indeed, but I did not leave with the feeling of "Wow, that was incredible! I can't wait to come back!" the way I do every time I return to restaurants I really love (e.g. one sixtyblue, Tallgrass, Oceanique). It was more along the lines of "That was excellent and enjoyable. Now I know what Shanghai Terrace is like, and I can take it off my list of places to try."

I like to think of restaurants in the following terms:

4 stars: Wow, Incredible (worth traveling long distances to dine)
3 stars: Very Good (worth recommending to others)
2 stars: Just Okay (worth visiting if you're in the neighborhood)
1 star: Disappointing, seriously flawed (worth forgetting)
0 stars: Dreadful (worth warning others away)

On this scale, I would rate Shanghai Terrace 3 stars. I tend not to return to places with 3 stars (unless they're extremely close to home), just because there are so many other places to try in the Chicago area.

To answer your question more directly - since you haven't already been dying to go back, then I would suggest not going back. For those who have not already been there, if it sounds like a place you would like to try, try it.

HTH

Thanks. I do understand that it is as close as one can come to traditional, upscale Chinese dining as you can get in Chicago, and I am quite serious that I believe it is as much a flaw in me as ST that it did not make more of an impression.

So I won't go back. But maybe I should go to the Art Institute and spend a couple of hours in front of a Flemish school still life as a form of aesthetic self-improvement. Naw, I think I'll see if I can get to a car race instead.

Thanks to you as well, SC, for the compliment.

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d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

I recommend driving in one, rather than mere spectating.

I had quite a bad meal at S.T. last night. The food was decidedly mediocre. I started with the Rattle Snake Soup, which tasted like the sort of bland hot-and-sour soup you would get at a cheap chinese take out place (except it cost $19). I followed up with a stir-fried beef tenderloin. The beef was tender and nicely cooked, but the dish was again bland, lacking any interesting flavors. The menu included galangal as one of the ingredients, but there was absolutely no flavor of galangal in the dish. The dessert (persimmon and date pudding) was delicious.

The most appalling thing was the ways in which they grab extra money. First, valet parking is $23! Second, when you come in they offer you a glass of champagne. I don't know champagne terribly well, but one of the people I was with reports that the bottle they were pouring sells for about $40 at Sam's. The price per glass: $24. And they come back as you finish and ask, "do you want another glass of champagne," (fortunately I didn't have the first glass and no one at my table went for a second) as though it were some reasonably priced thing that one might want to drink by-the-glass rather than ordering a bottle of something with dinner.

Overall, (with tax, tip, and parking) the dinner was well over $150 per person and I left feeling that I honestly wouldn't go back if it was $30/person.

I have to agree with the previous comment. I found ST nothing special, to say the least. The ingredients are of high quality, but the food is just not interesting. I would love to have a high-end Chinese restaurant doing something more ambitious than what can be found in Chinatown. This place is not it. It's just the same old stuff at higher prices. Kung pao chicken? Really? Why is this on the menu? I had the lobster in xo sauce. They were generous with the lobster, but it was just an ordinary stirfry, nothing interesting about it. Good, but nothing special. At these prices "good" doesn't cut it. My companions had a variety of other dishes, and all turned out be equally boring. The custard dessert was the highlight of the evening; I really enjoyed it.

I could stomach the $23 parking if the food were terrific (I've never complained about paying for parking at Avenues).

So pork-blood cake and conch hot pot, spicy Szechuan beef and maw, rabbit on the bone, ma-la numbing octopus casserole with mushrooms, fried intestines with spicy soup, full-on Peking duck with bao, French-style garlic black pepper butter beef tenderloin, sliced pig ear, tender lamb coated in cumin seeds, smoked pork pancake Northern Style with scallions and homemade hoisin, dry chili turtle, and succulent twice-cooked pork belly down on Cermak aren't doing it for you?

Well, if ST has indeed turned out to be a dud, I think Chicago is missing something. Perhaps it's all a matter of style over substance, but think of the lack as a Chinese version of, say, Japonais.

http://www.japonaischicago.com/main.html

Or something like this:

http://www.laitohheen.com/

Or like this:

http://www.sunsuiwah.com/index.html

_________________
"The fork with two prongs is in use in northern Europe. In England, they’re armed with a steel trident, a fork with three prongs. In France we have a fork with four prongs; it’s the height of civilization." Eugene Briffault (1846)

Don't get me wrong. I like Chinatown, including many of the dishes you mentioned. But I think it would be nice if Chicago had a fine dining Chinese restaurant. Just like I enjoy many spots in Pilsen but still appreciate Topolobampo. There is more to contemporary Chinese cuisine than what's on Cermak.

Thanks for the additional direction, jbw and berry. I keyed into the ambition of Chinatown cuisine as opposed to the ambition of upscale elsewhere cuisine; I see what you mean. I don't have experience with ambitious upscale Chinese in other cities but could see the use of it for special occasions.

If you're ever in Toronto, I can highly recommend Lai To Heen's sister restaurants, Senses Bakery & Lai Wah Heen, at the Metropolitan Hotel. Some of the most astoundingly delish (& expensive) dim sum & pastries I've ever eaten & there's nothing like any of these restaurants (Senses, LTW or LTH) in Chicago. Its what ST could/should have been IMO.

You can see the LWH menus at http://www.metropolitan.com/lwh/menus.asp (& I'm told that the wedding banquets LWH's caters at the Met are phenomenal, though I've never attended one, but I can believe it based on the menus I've seen).

I'm headed to Shanghai Terrace tonight: I will definitely try the tea (on dickson's suggestion) and I'll take the train to avoid the $23 hit for parking.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

Has anyone been lately? I'm going for the first time tomorrow and would love to hear any recommendations!