Restaurant: Modern Shanghai (北馥樓)

If your idea of eating Shanghai-style is to sit in a crowded space amidst a cacophony of voices, with people constantly shouting "bottoms up!" then you're a bit behind the times. United Hotel's Modern Shanghai offers a chic and relaxed space for you to enjoy the traditional tastes of Shanghai without the noise and greasy floors.

United Hotel caters to the chic urban crowd and puts a premium on design, with cool, linear forms and spaces. In Modern Shanghai this is accomplished by black tables, French windows, spacious rooms and comfy chairs.

Modern Shanghai puts as much thought into its food as it does its design. The hotel's chef, Ku Lai-wen (古來文), has won gold medals at cooking competitions in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and, of course, Shanghai. He is known among Shanghai cooking masters for his fast stir-frying skills as well as for his innovative use of color and new ingredients.

One dish that comes highly recommended is hairy crab, a must-try during the autumn season. It will be available for another month, so for those who have not yet tried these big and tasty crabs, Modern Shanghai may be a good choice.

Apart from steaming, the traditional method of preparing hairy crab, chef Ku has his own innovative way of stir-frying the crab in a spicy sauce, called hot and spicy hairy crab (上海香辣大閘蟹). Another outstanding version is crab in red bean paste (醬爆青蟹). The red bean paste is made of glutinous rice liqueur, soybean sauce and rice wine and is spicy, sweet and rich.

A special crab set menu, with eight dishes including different crab entrees and shark fin soup, is priced from NT$1,600 to NT$1,800, serving four people.

Smoked spare-ribs (凍頂薰玉排) is a traditional Shanghai dish made with expensive ingredients. Pork ribs are first smoked in oolong tea leaves, and then stewed for several hours. The tea leaves add a unique fragrance to the tender ribs which lingers in the mouth.

Deep fried yam balls (金毛獅王) is another of Ku's inventions. For this dish he uses mountain yams and fresh scallops to make a stuffing which is wrapped in a spring-roll skin, giving this dish a crispy outside and a soft inside. The restaurant also has a selection of traditional Shanghai soups, of which its old duck soup (火同老鴨湯) stands out.

Most of the dishes at Modern Shanghai are served in portions for one person, adding a Western touch to the Chinese fare.