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2008-10-03
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With so many choices out in Causeway Bay, it's hard to imagine that the big bosses at WTC decided to furnish the entire building into a round-the-world eatery center where you can find everything from Japanese to American Ribs. The clash of two sushi joints is embarassing for a shopping arcade, but here we were, at Shanghai Mian. The decor is hauntingly textbook -- dark wooden booths with ersatz lantern-life installations that should belong to thrift stores more than a restaurant. The open kitch
The magnified publicity doesn't help either, we sat down to realize that those booths are not that comfortable to begin with. The set lunches are essentially a good deal. For $40 to $55 you will get
1 appetizer/ snack
1 bowl of noodle soup
1 drink (apparently soy milk is the only thing worth drinking there)
The two of us ordered 2 set lunches. For snacks we ordered pork-hock in Chinese wine, only to realized that under the chunk of crunchy skin and fat there is nothing to it. The hock doesn't even taste like something that comes from a pig. The second snack we had was braised bamboo shoots. It looks right, except served so cold I could have asked to return it until it's thawed.
The noodle soups are no matter. Spicy shredded chicken noodles reminds me of Dan-Dan noodles, except with less peanuts and a mixture of flavours that are ample on the heat but not much on anything else. The noodles were so-so, at least not mushy. The broth was flavorful but seemed to have covered up any faint taste of chicken or whatever shreds of meat that's piled up on top of the noodles.
Shanghai Beef Noodle soup could only go downhill from there. Turned out it's only plain beef broth (that tasted lighter than canned consomme) and brisket chunks were as expected, nightmarishly shreddy.The noodles were mushy, good thing that it arrived steamy and warm, otherwise...
But the worse can only be anticipated later, when White-cut Pork in Garlic sauce arrived. Neatly arranged slices on top of green bean starch noodles. The sauce, consisted of black vinegar, sugar, sesame oil and a little garlic is flavorful throughout, but it failed to rescue the cardboard-status the pork was in. Sliced ever so thinly the pork only looked nice from afar, and I mean only afar.
Sweet dumplings with osmanthus were up to par, and the soy milk is thicker and tasted nice, at least something tasted right. Shanghai Mian is truly egregious when it comes to authenticity, however ways they claim themselves to be. It has pulled a nice trick to fool some who don't care much about food, especially good food that exist anywhere else... Really, just anywhere else but here.
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