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2014-05-12
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I love Shanghainese Food. I’ve had a fair amount of excellent Shanghainese food back in Vancouver, so I am always on the lookout for good places to try in Hong Kong. A restaurant I’ve been wanting to try for a while is Shanghai Po Po 336, conveniently located in TST iSquare.Why 336? It sounds like 謝謝儂 in Shanghainese which means ‘Thank You’.The interior is very modern and spacious, which is also part of why I wanted to come in the first placeMy friend and I wanted to try quite a bit of dishes so
Why 336? It sounds like 謝謝儂 in Shanghainese which means ‘Thank You’.
The interior is very modern and spacious, which is also part of why I wanted to come in the first place My friend and I wanted to try quite a bit of dishes so we ordered a bit too much for two people. Turns out we didn’t have to worry – all serving sizes were quite small
To start, a 蒜泥白肉 (Sliced Pork Belly with Garlic) -I loved the presentation of this dish – each piece of pork wrapped around a small chunk of cucumber. Very cute!
-The pork looked artificially pink which scared me a little, but it was fine.
-There was no absence of garlic which was perfect for me ^_^ Sauce was sharp & tangy
鎮江黑醋骨 Spare Ribs in Black Vinegar Sauce -The dish was unexpectedly small for the price
-The pork was okay, quite tender and not too chewy. The onions that was also stir fried in could be cooked a little bit more though
Next was what I came to this restaurant for – 冰鎮醉黃油雞 Frozen Drunken Chicken -The shaved ice on top is actually shaved frozen wine!! How awesome is that!! I have to be honest though this is more gimmicky rather than helpful to the taste of the chicken -Nevertheless the wine taste was pretty heavy which was fine with me
-The chicken was a bit overcooked and tough – not what I expect from Drunken Chicken. I also didn’t find much of that delicious ‘drunken jelly’ underneath the skin layer which is the best part 麻辣小籠包 Mala Spicy Xiao Long Bao -I had a feeling that this place was more about aesthetics than craftsmanship so I didn’t have high expectation for their XLB. However I saw that they had a spicy option which I’ve never seen before so I decided to try it out anyway
-Unfortunately I was right – the XLB was very average. The skin wasn’t thick per se but it wasn’t as impressive as I’d hoped, considering that they have a vast selection of different XLBs on their menu.
-The soup wasn’t really THAT spicy. Actually it tasted kind of artificial – like they simply put a few drops of chilli oil into the soup mix to make it spicy
Here’s a sucky close up shot At this point we realized we weren’t full enough (although I was trying to diet) and ordered another dish of cold noodles – 螺肉涼麵 Cold Noodles with Conch Meat -Hand made noodles are one of their specialties and to give them credit, it was pretty good. Al dente and slightly chewy.
-The conch meat was probably canned product – tasted like fake abalone to me
-The pickled vegetable (榨菜) was super weird – it was sweet!!! That threw me off guard…and no it did not taste good :s kind of ruined the dish for me
The bill for the two of us was around $350 which is quite expensive..
The food here is really very average. I guess it’s a nice place to bring your parents/grandparents to but definitely not a go-to spot for Shanghainese food.
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