Steak King
Hu Bei Road (maybe, can!’t remember)
Shanghai, China
???–

Walking around outside our apartment on the hunt for food, we noticed a little joint tucked away, called Steak King. STEAK?!? We haven’t quite seen any (that wasn’t exorbitantly priced anyway) in Shanghai, so curiousity got the better of us and we went in.

The restaurant’s much larger than it looks outside, partially because it’s recessed into a building and the entrance is covered by a massage tree. It’s lovely, bright and cheery inside.. and looks very clean 😉 After unabashedly checking out what everyone else was eating, we decided that this steak on a hotplate thing was the most popular – almost everyone in the restaurant was ordering it.

So you get a soup + garlic bread + potato salad + tea/coffee + steak & egg & veggies… all for 35? (US$5.00). It is TOTALLY worth the price, but really only because of the steak. The corn soup is… strange, at best. It was quite starchy and didn’t have much taste, and just a few obligatory bits of corn kernels and shaved carrots in there. Not gross, but certainly nothing special. The garlic bread was tres weird – the bread was sweet!! The slather of butter and generous spread of garlic was fantastic, but it was just a bit strange paired with the sweet bread. The potato salad was nice, with lots of bits of veggies. The green tea turned out to be a sweet-ish concoction, rather weird too.

But the steak!! Ooooh! It was a nice, sizeable piece, and a thin slice which I like better than fat slabs of steak (it’s often hit-and-miss in terms of tenderness with those). This steak was really tender, and didn’t need much chewing. It came with “mushroom sauce” which certainly was not a mushroom sauce.. more like a tomato-cream gravy. It was really good! The sizzling hot plate also came with a tumble of onions (delicious), a cracked egg (loved loved this, just went well with the dish), a piece of broccoli and carrot, and a handful of pasta (strange, but still a nice accompaniment). It’s fantastic value and the steak was so good, plus it’s a real treat considering large pieces of meat are hard to come back in Shanghai.

Chris ordered the Gratin rice with pork schnitzel and tomato cream for 25? (US$3.60). It was HUGE! It came in this large deep dish and was absolutely smothered in cheese. I can’t even describe how much cheese there was.. but basically there was still cheese left behind after he was finished. It was so so so so good. The rice was steaming hot and soaked with the tomato cream, with bits of veggies throughout. The pork was also excellent – they gave a very generous portion and it was tender and meaty.

Really impressed with this place and the high quality (and quantity) of the meat. It was 60? (US$8.60) all up for both of us, for a very satisfying meal.

Steak King

Chris ponders the meaning of life whilst waiting for our food

Corn soup

Garlic bread

Potato salad

Sizzling hot plate steak set

Gratin rice with pork schnitzel and tomato cream

Food galore

A satisfied belly