One of the treats in my life in the last few days (actually, in the last few months) was to go to Jean Georges Vongerichten's restaurant here in Shanghai - when the great chef was in town.
Jean Georges, as the restaurant is called, is consistently spoken of as one of Shanghai's best places to eat, and I am not going to disagree.
While there is a lot of debate about whether acclaimed chefs can successfully roll out a fine dining concept around the world, Vongterichten has, in Shanghai at least, proved you can.
The chef has a collection of enough restaurants in his adopted city New York (nine), as well three or four others dotted across the US, a few in the Bahamas, one in Paris, two at at 50 St James's in London, and this one here.
Not all of them are fine dining, and he has several different concepts, but it testament to his skill and business brain that he can make it all work. In fact it was just after I'd read an article about Gordon Ramsay's teething problems in NY, that I was sitting down to Jean Georges in Shanghai, about to have one of the best meals in recent memory.
The food is heavy on the Asian influence that has typified much of Vongerichten's cooking. There was picked crab with a mango foam, king fish sashimi with frozen wasabi balls, a more provencale-inspired with fish placed over jerusalem artichoke hearts and tomato, but still ablaze with scents of spice, and a chocolate dessert flavoured with cardomom.
Excuse the delay in posting this latest entry. I've had my mum and one of my sisters to visit. They arrived at the weekend and have been cooing and gawping their way round the city since. That tall building syndrome thing again. For these two however the skyscrapers have really gone to their heads - or at least the gins and tonics and white Russians served within the skyscrapers. Whereas most people go on pub crawls, these two have made it a personal mission to visit every sky-high bar in town.