PRICE:
Frommer's Highly Recommended

It's Matisse meets Shanghai when you dine in this cozy, somewhat ramshackle art salon lodged in a French Concession storefront. Paintings and art works by contemporary Chinese artists adorn the colorful walls, while mismatched traditional Chinese chairs and tables cram every available nook and cranny, but no matter, the overall effect is one of idiosyncratic charm. The fairly extensive Chinese-only menu bulges with some excellent homemade local specialties. Happily, the brothers who own the place speak excellent English and can translate or make the appropriate recommendations. You can't go wrong with many of the dishes, but worth mentioning are the pidan doufu (preserved eggs with tofu), the fresh cucumbers with garlic appetizer, hongshao huangyu (braised yellow croaker), and their very own Shaoxing-influenced meigan cai shao rou (braised pork with preserved mustard greens). Service is best described as deliberate, as the owners seem to place a premium on a leisurely appreciation of both the food and the art. Patrons are, of course, free to purchase anything that catches their eye, from the chopsticks in their hands and the chairs beneath them to the art on the walls.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Shanghai, 5th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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