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.
It was also fish focused, with only one beef fillet dish following the five sea creatures that had gone before. The flavours were sophisticated and the cooking undoubtedly complex. But on the plate it appeared simple: on this tasting menu at least Vongerichten sticks to the rule of three elements in each dish.
It made me wonder why Vong (somewhere I never ate at) failed in London. It was, of course, at that time when anything in the UK tagged as "fusion" suffered against the backlash surrounding chefs who tried to mix influences.
Maybe it was just wrong for London; in Shanghai, where the cliche East meets West actually rings true, the borrowing of so many different flavours seems at home. Also, in his executive chef here Eric Johnson, he has a super talented cook. And that may be the secret of the restaurant's success.
The tasting menu, seven courses plus treats, cost around £50, which felt like a steal. And you know that when a chef has charged some of the highest prices in Shanghai and still made you leave his restaurant tapping your wallet with a smile rather than a frown, he has succeeded.
The only slight gripe was a couple of service mishaps, unfortunately very much the norm in China - at least when you walk into a western restaurant expecting western standards. But considering the super cool interior, all dark lighting and decadent banquettes, a wine list of some 5,000 bins, plus a hand shake from the man himself, and I can count it as one of my most satisfying feeds in a long time.
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