Osteria
226 Jinxian Lu (???226?)
Shanghai, China
PRICE: ????
RATING:

My girl friend Heidi organised a brunch on a gorgeous, sunny day. I treasure these days, since we’re fast heading into winter now, which is especially miserable in Shanghai and even more so when it rains (hello dirty swirls of freezing water and rubbish all around your feet!). The restaurant of choice was Osteria, a nook of a restaurant serving up a hearty Italian brunch, and is yet another restaurant owned by Eduardo Vargas.

You select from the 2-course, 3-course and 4-course brunch, and then choose each course from a menu – there were so many choices! I love that, a restaurant that offers a ton of selection instead of a set-meal with little/no variability. We actually had an online coupon for 1 for 1 brunch which we were ridiculously excited about.. because it meant that it would be a fabulous deal. When we got there, we showed both the waiter and manager on our phone screen, only to be told “you need it on paper.” WHY? No reason whatsoever! To me, it just seemed like they were purposely trying to be sticky about it, so that we wouldn’t be able to use the coupon and be stuck paying full price. Annoyed at their idiotic behaviour, we promptly went across the road, printed it out (there was an office across the street and the very sweet (and cute!) guy printed it out for us on the office printer… heh), and went back.

This time, they said “Oh, you can only use 1 coupon per table”. We were a table of 10. Ummm these are 1 for 1 coupons and NOWHERE on the coupon does it say “1 per table only”. I REALLY HATE RESTAURANTS THAT GIVE ‘PROMOTIONS’ TO ATTRACT PEOPLE, THEN FRANTICALLY TRY TO PREVENT YOU FROM USING IT ONCE YOU’RE THERE. Finally, they agreed that we could use 2 coupons, but frankly, I thought that was stupid – if we had each come 2 to a table separately, we could’ve used all 5 coupons.

Anyway. I didn’t want to rant and rave too much in front of everyone, so accepted it. Oh, let’s just say the manager of the place was rude and hateful. A bit surprising considering it’s his job to serve customers, but he seemed really angry and resentful about everything – what a terrible attitude. When my friend said “Is Eduardo (the owner) here? Can I speak with him?” the manager got really irate and started talking back to her in a threatening way. Eduardo actually is her friend and she just wanted to say “hi”, but the manager obviously was scared she wanted to complain, and so was even more angry.

Food wise though – their food is pretty good. It was hit and miss, but the hits were great. Fantastic entrees and I especially thought the tenderlion steak was a great deal. My Grilled pork, roasted pumpkin and asparagus, however, was sadly inedible – tough, dry, no flavour at all. Like trying to eat a piece of rubber. I gave up. The other dishes looked and tasted much better though, so perhaps I just lucked out!

I actually think the cosy, inviting restaurant is great for hanging out with friends.. especially since the street outside is nice to wander down afterwards. The menu was also impressive and most of the food was good. The only downside is the horrific management (only the hateful manager though, the waiter was a very sweet guy and very attentive) and ridiculous coupon ‘rules’, made on-the-spot and randomly just to try and prevent people from using them.

Our looong table

A fabulous bread box with, oddly, some cupcakes in it! They were great though

Ice lemon tea with a shotglass of syrup

Calamari, lemon bean toss,

Some bright spark decided to do a DYI Bloody Mary… lol!

Not sure why you’d bother bother eating muesli at a restaurant, heh, but it looked pretty!

Mushroom soup

Antipasti platter, risotto ball, liver pate, bruschetta – how colourful and awesome is it?!

Grilled pork, roasted pumpkin and asparagus

Risotto with crawfish, red pepper pesto, shallots and aragula

8-minutes salmon sous vide, dill, olive oil, roasted baby carrot

Tenderloin steak with asparagus and potatoes