A savvy 3-year-old

Shanghai's Hakkasan is a relative newcomer to the city's competitive dining scene, but it enjoys a big boost from a corporate parent that knows how to deliver an elegant experience, Mike Peters reports.

At first glance, Hakkasan seems like what many of my Chinese friends would dismiss as "Chinese food for foreigners". It's a global chain that began in London in 2001, with Michelin-starred locations around the world. It's nestled in the glitzy Bund, a fine-dining magnet for tourists and affluent Chinese. Dishes like "salad of Australian Wagyu rib-eye beef with black truffle" and "Sesame prawn toast with foie gras" leap off the first page of the menu.

But when I visit the popular restaurant in Shanghai with local friends, they find a lot to like. The menu, created by the Hakkasan Group's much-lauded head chef Tong Chee Hwee, boasts "a strong Chinese identity" and a reverence for local ingredients rather than a pure underpinning of traditionalism.

The result here - and at the group's Michelin-starred hub in London - is beautifully presented dishes steeped in Cantonese tradition if not completely wedded to it.  

Our favorite dishes included pork ribs smoked with jasmine tea, a stir-fried lobster with baby bamboo in spicy black-bean sauce, an asparagus-studded vegetarian stir-fry in Sichuan sauce, and a sanpei chicken claypot with sweet basil, chili and spring onion.

The Shanghai restaurant recently celebrated its third birthday, and chef Tong flew in to help make it a special occasion. Tong's anniversary menu included several dishes that will linger through the spring-summer season, including a delicious boiled chicken soup.

The idea of drinking boiling soup in summer is as deeply rooted in Cantonese culture as chilled gazpacho is in Spain. The logic: The intake of fluids replenishes what you sweat out. For Tong, the trick is to give the soup the appeal of ice cream of frozen yogurt. First he boils the soup for eight hours, then simmers it for another four. He serves the rich result in a hollowed aromatic coconut - a Thailand variety that is more juicy and fragrant than the common type, with fish maw, yam, wolfberry, lotus seed and ham. Its savory-sweet taste makes it more like a lukewarm dessert than a soup course.

Like all Hakkasan restaurants, the Shanghai outlet boasts an elegant yet comfortable decor with Chinese-red highlights. The main dining room is defined by lattice woodwork that makes the space intimate, and if that's not cozy enough, there are five luxe private dining rooms on the periphery. There is an acclaimed wine cellar, and smart mixology helmed by British cocktail guru Matthew Hall, who goes far beyond dropping a Sichuan pepper into the odd drink and declaring it Chinese. His Shanghai-only specialties include a durian martini, the Laurel Tching (Four Pillars Rare gin, cardamom-infused vermouth, cherry liqueur, orange and lemon) and the Mayhai Dragon (Ketel vodka, litchi, dragon fruit, lime, jasmine and peach bitters).

Hakkasan Group is a rapidly expanding international hospitality company with outlets in North America, Europe and Asia, including 11 Hakkasan restaurants and several other brands including Ling Ling, HKK and Sake No Hana. Its most recently announced expansion plans: A deal to open five restaurants in Saudi Arabia in the next five years.

Many of the company's North American venues are in Las Vegas, where it's developed a sense of showmanship that has spawned nightclub and other entertainment venues beyond restaurants. In Shanghai, the food is the show, and once you make your reservation, you're on the clock: Late arrivals will find their table given away if more than 15 minutes late, and you meal will be paced - in a very polite and polished way - to finish within two hours, to make room for the next reservation. The show, as they say, must go on.

Xu Junqian contributed to this article.

Contact the writer at michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn

Seasonal HKK menu highlights solar calendar

The Chinese calendar is often thought of as a lunar calendar, in part because the Chinese New Year is a lunar-determined date. But the yearly cycle is actually calibrated by the sun as well as the moon, and 24 "solar terms" are based on the sun's position in the zodiac and play an important role in Chinese culture and cuisine.

Hakkasan Group's fine-dining restaurant HKK in London is offering a series of menus, refreshed every two months, which reflect seasonality and the appropriate solar terms.

The current tasting menu, offered through May 6, focuses on the solar terms chun fen, or Vernal Equinox, and gu yu meaning "grain rain", marking the beginning of warmer weather and longer days. During this time there is emphasis on eating nourishing, replenishing foods, with a focus on revitalizing the body's energy and spirit. The solar term of chun fen heralds the approach of spring as temperatures across China's vastness rise considerably, welcoming new life, flourishing flowers and greenery.

Soups play an integral part in Chinese cuisine during the early part of the year. As temperatures rise the air can sometimes become dry, causing people health problems. HKK has a chrysanthemum fish maw soup on the menu as it is believed that soups containing coconut and chrysanthemum nourish yang, combatting these issues.

Seafood is said to be at its best during the spring months, when fishing in shallow water is very effective as the temperature increases. The HKK menu features an array of different seafood such as the Yin Yang dim sum platter containing three dumplings: abalone and cuttlefish, lobster and water chestnut and king crab and prawn. Alongside there is a steamed wild sea-bass dish highlighting the delicate flavors of the fish with spring onion and ginger.