Rose Garden @ Shanghai

This is the second Rose Garden that I went to in Shanghai and coincidentally, this lunch was treated by a business associate.

Decked out in Art Deco chic, Rose Shanghai serves traditional Shanghainese cuisine. They have a branch right below our office in Raffles City Changning, but this one is housed in an old villa in the English concession of Shanghai. Our hosts ordered a variety of Shanghai classic for lunch.

老卤糟香浸四宝 Wine Lee Marinated Four Treasures

I enjoy wine lee marinated food and Shanghai is the culinary capital for this art of enhancing and altering the flavours of food with wine lee. For example, pig stomach, duck web, edamame and shrimps were all transformed to another level umami with marinade.

老上海土豆沙拉 Old Shanghai Potato Salad

This old-style potato salad was decked out with lots of sweet mayonnaise. I am sure the kids would love it a lot.

白切农场走地鸡 Steamed Free Range Chicken

I find this cold dish a bit dry to my liking even though the chicken tasted, well, like chicken. There were many cases where steamed chicken did not taste like one.

咸肉蒸白水鱼 Steam Whitefish with Bacon

These silvery, small-mouthed, freshwater fish are in the family Salmonidae. Though related to salmon and trout, they have pure-white meat and are traditionally the species used for fish paste because they can be quite boney.

If you worked through the bones however, you would be rewarded with a really fine and tender flesh. The salted pork belly added the salt and animal fat for the fish, which elevated the freshness of the fish surprisingly.

红烧肉炒笋丁 Stir-fried diced bamboo shoots with braised pork

Braised pork belly, dried bamboo shoots and bean curd knots – these three items were combined in a red braise 红烧 typical of Shanghainese and Jiangzhe cooking. This version was quite sweet, you need a lot of steamed rice for it.

鸡毛菜圈子 Sautéed Baby Kailan with Big Intestines

Big intestines of the pig were cooked with red sauce and combined with sautéed baby kailan with a dash of Chinese wine. A Shanghai classic, not for the easily squeamish.

响油鳝糊 River Eels in Heavy Sauce

This is my favourite Shanghai dish, and even if I was full, I would still try it. The eels were filleted and deboned. They were then cooked in Chinese wine and heavy soy sauce. And just before serving, a ladle of boiling oil was poured onto minced garlic placed on top of the sautéed eel. The sizzling sound made when hot oil met with the garlic gave the dish the name “the noisy oil on eel”.

古法甲鱼酸辣汤 Traditional Sweet & Sour Soup with Turtle

This was a very rare and traditional way of cooking turtle soup. We are all familiar with sweet & sour soup, and we know double boiled turtle soup. But combining the two together in one, this was what this soup was all about. You can taste the best of both worlds at once, just like chocolate and peanut butter. And just like Reese, not everybody like it.

阿娘传统炒饭 Mom’s Traditional Fried Rice

It could be anyone’s mom. The fried rice had a bit of everything, and looked like leftover fried rice with black soy sauce, exactly like how Mom did it.

Restaurant Rose Shanghai

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The Rose Hall was once the residence of one of the four shipping magnates of Hong Kong. It was a single-family Baroque-style villa on Xingguo Road. After years of change, it has now become a Shanghainese restaurant with French bourgeois charms.

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The halls of the mansion have been converted to open dining halls, while the rooms have been changed to private dining parlours.

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In the main dining hall, one can appreciate the old architecture of the original mansion. The columns and pillars have been exposed to give it a rustic look.

Service was really good here, and the food was delicious. And the garden would be available for dining al fresco if not for the pouring rain when we were there.

Rose Garden Shanghainese Restaurant 玫瑰厅上海菜(兴国路店)
上海长宁区兴国路372弄1号近武康路
Tel : +86 (021)62805078

Date Visited : Jul 2021