Ye Shanghai
Xintiandi North Block
181 Taicang Lu (???181?)
Shanghai, China
PRICE: ????
RATING:

Feeling a bit la-di-dah and in a “ladies who lunch” mood.. two of my girl friends and I decided to hit up Michelin-star Ye Shanghai for a civilized, dim sum lunch in their renovated “Shikumen” old-style house. They have a 98? special that includes all-you-can-eat dim sum (from an extensive menu) and free-flow choice of Chinese teas. Ye Shanghai has a lovely interior with high ceilings and making you feel like you’re back in (rich) old-Shanghai. They had a pretty full house when we were there on a weekend, presumably because people want to take advantage of the excellent deal. Despite this, we were impressed that they got all our orders right, everything came out swiftly, and they didn’t try and discourage us from our rampant ordering (drives me CRAZY when all-you-can-eat places dawdle when bringing out the food or pretend they forgot your order).

We really enjoyed the food. The quality was definitely there, unlike the sloppily made stuff you get at cheap HK dim sum joints. Beautifully presented on little plates, and we liked virtually every dish. I’ll individually speak to them below, of the photos I managed to capture 🙂

I was really impressed with their service, we had a young man who was very lovely and patient with us, and even joked around. Very un-Chinese service, considering we were in a Chinese restaurant! It was a very pleasant experience and I’m keen to go back.

BBQ pork pastries (dunno the name). Lovely and fluffy and not too overly sweet

The famous Shen Jian bao.. sooo good!

Spring onion pancake. Not as flaky as i’d expected, but a nice flavour

Minced chicken to stuff into those ‘pockets’. I really liked this, a sort of twist on
the usual sang chow bao.

Sweet and sour pork ribs. Only average, barely any meat and it was cold!

Crispy tofu skin with veggies. Uninteresting to me cos I don’t like tofu/veggies 😛

Scallop XO dumplings, and xiao long bao. Both good, so we got another round of ’em

Some sort of crispy fried thing with veggies inside. It was alright but nothing special

Sticky rice, this one was just fab! So moist and satisfying

Dan dan noodles. We loved the texture of the noodles, but it was waaaaay too spicy

Sticky sweet dumpling with black sesame filling, dusted with peanut powder.
Luscious! These lil babies were so easy to pop in our mouths

Fluffy egg white puffs with red bean and banana. Tasted too much like.. err.. egg whites.
Would’ve preferred 3x more of that filling

Coconut milk with sago and fruit. Lovely, light and refreshing. Just needed way
more sago and fruit.

Mango pudding. The pudding was similar to a creamy jelly, I really liked the mango bits though

Ladies who lunch 🙂