The Shang Palace is a flagship property of the Shangri-La group, with 39 around the world, some awarded with Michelin stars. The restaurant does authentic flavours of Sichuan, Cantonese and Yunnan. It’s a treat for the adventurous diner. If you like a sense of familiarity, opt for the dim sum lunch served through the week (₹1,500 per head excluding taxes).
I visited the restaurant for a tasting session from the new menu, which retains a large part of the original. The popular prawn cheung fun dumpling is now also available in a mushroom avatar, for example. The two big additions are crab and grouper fish—flown in fresh especially for the restaurant from the tip of Tamil Nadu’s coast.
I recommend one of the big round tables, just because the dishes are numerous and you’d want your time to linger over them. We began with an array of dimsums—lobster and water chestnut dumpling with beluga caviar (sinful); baked chicken and eggplant puffs (crunchy and satisfying), mushroom and pork cheung funs (a favourite), chicken bao (a mouthfull), and steamed spicy pork wantons. The last are soup dumplings served beautifully in a soup spoon. Gagandeep Sawhney, the affable head chef tells us, “The broth is simmered and reduced for a whole day, then frozen into blocks overnight. It’s packed into dumplings and steamed for serving the next day.”
Lobster
Chinese barbecue is another Shang Palace speciality, and we sampled chilli-rubbed chicken wings with Yunnan spices (welcome to my spice-scoured Delhi tongue) and Yunnan-style lamb chops which just fell off the bone. Sautéed vegetables with Sichuan pepper and nuts helped clean the palate between each course. Take this chance to sample the restaurant’s specialty cocktails. I especially recommend the ‘Ni Hao’—with vodka, ginger, kaffir lime and lemon grass—a big hit with our table.
The servers set up a station at your table to put the finishing touches to the hot stone pot rice with crispy potatoes. The stir-fried minced pork with beans and preserved vegetables, and chicken with back fungus were expectedly excellent and piquant, but the star of the show was the new talent—mud crab in pixan chilli sauce. It’s a whole ceremony, deserving of the one-and-half-kilo crustacean, steamed and slathered in chilli spices. After all that, there’s there’s also dessert.
Meal for 2: ₹5,000; at Shangri-La's - Eros Hotel, 19, Ashoka Road, New Delhi ; wheelchair-accessible
