Shang Palace discover the great Chinese gastronomy

As every year, the beginning of the month of January is for us a rather good and pleasant period. Well, yes, because that’s when our birthday is, and as a good foodie we are, it’s every time we get a chance to make some pretty crazy dinners.

This year, we were particularly pleased, first by having a little dinner and wine party at the Frenchie wine bar, and then my darling decided to surprise me by buying me lunch in a big restaurant. But the pitch was that she didn’t tell me which restaurant it was. I got one clue: he’s the only restaurant in his class. So inevitably, I have been thinking for a few days: I thought about sushi restaurants (I think only one has a star in Paris), I put in my head all the starry restaurants that I knew until I had the revelation: the Shang Palace! The only Chinese restaurant with a star in the Michelin Guide in France.

Shang Palace, Paris: our test and opinion

We discovered this restaurant by chance, in fact, one day when we went to drink cocktails at the bar of Shangri-La, the Botanist, during the Cognac Cocktail Connexion. And what’s cool with this restaurant is that it offers authentic Chinese cuisine, cooked by a Chinese chef (Samuel Lee) but with the codes of great Michelin-compatible gastronomy.

Shang Palace: Chinese gastronomy at the edge of refinement

And yes, contrary to what we often think, Chinese cuisine is not a greasy kitchen, full of chips and dipping sauce. It is a refined cuisine, delicate, very often steamed, but especially very multiple, because China contains at least 8 regional culinary traditions with dozens of internal variants. And personally, I had always dreamed of eating in a real Chinese restaurant, gastronomic and refined. Shang Palace was the perfect place. Spot on: the perfect gift.

Shang Palace: the place, the service

Well then obviously, the place looks like what we expect to find in a large Parisian palace like the Shangri-La. It is beautiful and luxurious, the decor is superb, it has this small grandiloquent side that we know well in Chinese culture, with large paintings in jade carved with complex motifs, beautiful tables with etched tablecloths. Not exactly sober, but it does put the mood.

The service is up to expectations in a restaurant of this standing: everyone is taking care of it, the great ballet of the waiters is perfectly synchronized, a glass of wine barely emptied, as soon as it is filled. We find it a little too much, but we are not used to high-class services. But most importantly, the servers are extremely friendly, smiling… They know how to put you at ease, explain the subtleties of Chinese cuisine and will make you spend a great time (thanks Geoffrey for this great lunch).

Shang Palace cuisine: menus, menu and dishes

As for the cuisine, we are still there in the traditional Chinese restaurant, that is to say, a card as long as the arm, representing quite well the diversity of Chinese dishes: hot and cold starters, dim sums, rotisserie, sautéed dishes, meats, fish, vegetables… There must be at least 80 dishes a la carte, from the simplest (Dan Noodles, 22 euros) to the most complex and expensive (Atlantic Lobster fried in Hong Kong-style Bei Feng Tong, 300 euros).

There are also, of course, menus. Two are served at lunch, a simple 48-euro menu that takes a stroll around the chef’s specialities (dim-sums, Cantonese roasted duck, sautéed squid with Chinese pomelos, etc.). The other is a menu a little more exhaustive the menu Discoveries at 78 euros (the one we have chosen, we will describe it in detail). At dinner, there are two other menus, the Jade menu and the Emerald menu (98 and 128 euros) that explore other specialities including lobster, shrimp…

So I’m announcing right now, we fell in love with the kitchen at the Shang Palace. It is served as in China, that is to say in the form of a large dish served in the middle of the table to share, to embellish each of its soy sauce or its chili sauce with shrimp. They are only real Chinese dishes, rather Cantonese and Jiangsu (or Huaiyang) kitchens and everything is absolutely excellent, refined and subtle.

From dims sum vapours of great finesse, Ha Kao with shrimp fleshy as never before, Siu Mai full of flavours with its small mushrooms, raviole of Saint-Jacques and deliciously greedy shrimp, a true texture of Saint-JeanFresh Jacques in its translucent spinach paste case. And above all, the Ginger Bar Raviole, subtly fragrant with its slightly lemony aroma, and the Bao Xiaolong, incredibly tasty and regressive with its hot broth. Probably the best dim sum we’ve ever tasted (and we’ve tasted a lot of it).

Then soups, comforting and warm. A «hot pot» soup with seafood, thick and fragrant, very greedy, and a very fine and tasty broth with wonton ravioli, small cushions swimming in spicy water. Roasting is gourmet: duck roasted in Cantonese, mellow and dignified with a sweet and sour plum sauce. And of course the pluma of Iberian pork lacquered with honey, like a chariot siu, melting flesh to wish, full of flavors.

The fish, then a fried bar with sweet and sour sauce: perfect flesh, and crispy skin, neither fat nor overcooked, just what it takes, with a really excellent pineapple sauce. And to accompany, the chef’s sautéed rice, with dried fish and pork, a kind of improved Cantonese rice, of a rather surprising subtlety for a dish so simple in appearance.

And finally, a very simple dessert, since desserts are not the speciality of Chinese cuisine: a mango pudding, surmounted by a small mango juice with Chinese pomelos and sago pearls. Very simple in appearance, rather fresh and delicate, a good note to finish a meal rich in perfumes.