Bao Dining Room Sims 3
Shanghai OneUnit C – 1872 Merivale Rd., 613-686-1380, shanghaione.caOpen: Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.Prices: best capital dishes $12.95 to $18.95, added for melancholia and choice seafood Access: no accomplish to advanced aperture or washrooms
We entered Shanghai One, a huge restaurant in a capital at Hunt Club and Merivale roads, cerebration that it looked actual familiar. The menu, however, was dotted with mysteries.
Previously in this 6,000-square-foot amplitude there had been addition Chinese restaurant alleged Bashu. It had been attainable for beneath than two years, confined seafood, Sichuan and Cantonese fare, dim sum and added in a amplitude that was as arrant and big-box as some Somerset Street West Asian restaurants are down-at-heels and hole-in-the-wall.
Shanghai One, which opened this fall, has retained the abundant attending of Bashu as if it took over in turnkey fashion. Strikingly modern, boastful chandeliers adhere aloft the ablaze dining allowance arranged with atramentous tables and narrow, cloth-covered chairs. At the aback of the room, a ample mural assuming Shanghai’s skyline is new. The best affidavit that Shanghai One is not artlessly a rebranded Bashu is in the menu, which specializes in dishes from Shanghai, China’s better city, buttressed by beneath abstruse Cantonese and Northern Chinese dishes, as able-bodied as dim sum staples.
There is, of course, a longstanding restaurant in Chinatown alleged the Shanghai, but its book includes crowd-pleasing Chinese-Canadian and Asian admixture dishes. At Shanghai One, adventuresome diners and Chinese expats can burrow into added adumbrative and akin alarming dishes in which eels, sea cucumber and Dungeness backtalk (in Shanghai. the bounded bearded crabs are prized) are the stars.
When I’ve visited Shanghai One and looked about to see which dishes the added abreast eaters had ordered, I’ve most about apparent bamboo steamer baskets abounding with brim hot dumplings on the tables. These were what the card refers to as “Shanghai dank meat dumplings,” contrarily accepted as “soup dumplings” or xiao continued bao. Central anniversary dumpling’s attenuate yet athletic bark was a ground-pork bushing alloyed with gelatinized pork stock. The accepted ambush for bistro these treats is to abode a dumpling in one’s soup spoon, chaw off its top, absorb out some of the soup and afresh bless the blow with a bit of atramentous alkali afore downing it. At Shanghai One, the xiao continued bao were a highlight, and the best I’ve had in Ottawa, acceptation not alone the tastiest, but additionally the atomic acceptable to aperture their liquids.
Xiao continued bao soup dumplings at Shanghai One
Those dumplings addled me as easy-to-like appetizers for old easily at Shanghainese bistro and novices alike. Additionally accessible, if beneath tasty, were the overgrown, aflame “lion’s-head” pork meatballs in borsch ($3.95 each). Added arduous were Shanghai-style smoked angle ($10.50), a white-fish accessory to hot-smoked salmon, but soy-flavoured, added close of arrangement and riddled with little bones, and Shanghai-style sautéed shrimps ($10.95), which came with shells and active on, their brittle exteriors acquiescently flavoured, the shrimp meat central beneath so.
Lions-head aflame pork meatball at Shanghai One
Smoked angle appetizer at Shanghai One
Shanghai-style sauteed shrimps at Shanghai One
Other Shanghainese dishes that we approved accurate the generalization that the city’s cuisine tends to the oily, candied and salty. A server recommended broiled pork cubes and tofu bark in amber booze ($15.95), which consisted of morsels of affable abdomen meat and enjoyably chewy tofu bark in a predominantly candied sauce. Mindful of Shanghai’s adulation of eels, we approved a bowlful of eel meat, admitting its abrupt bulk ($28.95), and begin that the rich, flavourful angle stood up to its sweet-salty sauce.
Pork cubes with tofu bark in amber booze at Shanghai One
Sauteed eel at Shanghai One
To account all of that protein, we autonomous for the artlessness and aloof aftertaste of noodles with begrimed scallions, oil and soy ($10.95), and garlicky snow pea leaves ($13.95), a basin of which was massively portioned and abundantly sauced.
Noodles with scallion, oil and soy at Shanghai One
Dishes at Shanghai One pix by Peter Hum
We had hoped to try Shanghai-flavour accolade eggs, afterwards actuality told that the bowl somehow mimics the aftertaste of crab, but afresh we were after told that the bowl wasn’t available, conceivably because the baker who could accomplish it wasn’t in the kitchen. We ability accept autonomous to try a sea cucumber dish, but we were told anon that the kitchen was out of that delicacy.
I’ve approved a few Sichuan dishes to see if there would be a circuit on them at Shanghai One. Ma po tofu (the archetypal ambrosial mix of bright tofu and arena pork, $11.95) fatigued the creep of Sichuan peppers, but was beneath angled and savoury in flavour and beneath adhesive and added adipose in texture. Fish-flavoured eggplant ($11.95) supplied antagonistic flavours and its candied agenda was clear.
Ma po tofu at Shanghai One
Fish-flavoured eggplant at Shanghai One
General Tao’s craven ($12.95) was not acceptable — too clammy and arch and added candied than spicy. An adjustment of Cantonese absurd noodles ($12.95) was massively sized, but pedestrian.
General Tao’s Craven at Shanghai One
As for a la carte dim sum here, the dumplings and rolls that we had one Saturday for cafeteria were about not that refined, and included hits and misses. Deep-fried squid and added deep-fried items were decidedly good, as were some adorable pork ribs, but aflame dumplings were beneath consistent, and the affliction of them were banal and already afraid to the basal of the steamer. A absurd scallion block was apish and oily, The dim sum dishes were additionally a little cher for what we got.
Fried squid at Shanghai One
Salt and pepper ribs at Shanghai One
Rice rolls at Shanghai One
Barbecue pork buns at Shanghai One
Green onion pancakes at Shanghai One
Service actuality has assorted from affable to brusque, although the about-face in demeanour may accept assorted with the bulk of English the server spoke. Dishes about accustomed bound from the kitchen.
The restaurant is licensed. Except for the egg tarts in the dim sum section, there seemed to be no desserts.
Egg tarts at Shanghai One
On its website and signage, Shanghai One touts itself as a fine-dining destination. That’s overstating things, I think, or at atomic account its adornment over its dishes. I’m animated for its acumen — sweetness, oiliness, and all — and there are dishes and dumplings I would appropriately eat again. However, those are in the minority.
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