Shanghai House Restaurant – Won’t Be Coming Back
I think for me the most important quality is whether the food was worth the price. I’d gladly pay top dollars for amazingly fresh seafood. However, I get super cranky when I have to pay average to expensive prices for low quality food. Which is the case of this restaurant here.
I went to Shanghai House Restaurant in Richmond for Mother’s Day. Having heard multiple good reviews, I was pretty stoked to finally be trying it out.
First came our Marinated Jelly Fish ($8.98) appetizer. I think the chef that day had a heavy hand because every dish we had was over salted. This jelly fish was pretty good aside from the overbearing saltiness. Not worth 9 bucks in my opinion.
These Chinese Donuts ($2.98) were done pretty well and would be good with a bowl of congee.
Maybe my expectations were too high after trying the Beef Roll ($5.28) from Peaceful Restaurant, but this in comparison was a complete fail. There was no flakiness in the roti/pancake, it was poorly assembled, and the whole thing tasted like mush.
I enjoyed the Shanghai Wontons in Soup ($6.98). It was over salted though.
Another disappointing dish. We ordered the Wontons in Spicy Sauce ($4.98) which is a traditional Sichuan dish. Normally, the wontons should be soaked in a bed of spicy tangy chili oil sauce but the spicy sauce (as indicated in the name) was nowhere to be found.
This is what ‘Wontons in Spicy Sauce’ is supposed to look like.
Their Steamed Shanghai Dumplings ($4.98) aka Xiao Long Baos were pretty good with a decent amount of soup in them. Had a funky taste to it but it could have been just me.
Although the Rice Cake with Pork Chop ($6.58) was also quite salty, it was our saving grace. This was the only dish that we deemed acceptable in the entire lineup of dishes we ordered. The rice cakes were soft and drenched in the gooey sauce which made for great comfort food, and the pork chop was fried nicely.
All in all, I cannot foresee myself coming back again to give this restaurant another try. It saddens me because I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was an off day for the chef or maybe our family just ordered the wrong items. Although… every item on their menu SHOULD be good enough to be served… so I don’t truly believe that.
What do you think? How was your experience at this restaurant? Let me know in the comments below.
Service Rating: 2.5/5
Food Rating: 1.5/5
Price: $$
Overall Rating: 1.5/5
Happy Eating!
courtesy of http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/gordon-ramsay-jokes-memes_n_2935189.html
