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 (
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIIMES
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 (
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 (
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 (
Most of the dishes at Modern Shanghai are served in portions for one person, adding a Western touch to the Chinese fare.
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