Tuesday 1 April 2008

Lynn restaurant

(OMG The Blogger firewall has been turned off! Woohoo!)

"Lynn", a brand new landmark in Shanghai's restaurant industry. To enjoy delicacies in a modern atmosphere will certainly make you relaxed and happy.

Lynn Restaurant, located in the intersection of Nanjing Road West and XiKang Road. The six feet high ceiling gives extensive vision to the restaurant, the two rows of floor-type wine cabinet at the entrance collect not only vintage wines from all over the world, but also Lynn's home-made top-grade wine. The huge tangerine fresco transmits warmth to every guest. Elegant pieces of antiquity furniture and beautiful ikebana set off low profile but luxurious atmosphere. The semi-closed separate rooms ensure you to enjoy the elegant environment of the restaurant as well as adequate
privacy.

Lynn restaurant tries to create new Shanghai Cuisines. Here, Chinese cuisines are prepared in a western way and western foods are enjoyed in a Chinese way. It's wine flavored French goose liver, Italy jellyfish with vinegar and red wine, Heilongjiang smoked egg with roe, golden pomfret, Belgium chicory and arugula salad, eight treasure hot sauce mixed with butter bean curd, smoked pomfret with jasmine flower and salad juice, all these dishes are perfect integration of both Chinese and Western foods whether in terms of ingredients or in preparation. The "Five Flavor" cold dish integrates all tastes in one dish and the seafood crispy rice with abalone juice treated in Korea-type stone wok makes you intoxicated till the last bite.

The lunch dishes are custom-made for the white collars, healthy and tasteful. Varieties of fresh fruit juices with delicate cold dishes and Shanghai and Hong Kong snacks are not only healthy but value added.

...

Lynn is busy and big and a comforting din all but drowns the contemporary lounge music. There's a film set, New York slickness to the overall effect.

As prospective diners enter and climb some cool marble steps, a decent wine selection lining the walls, greeters welcome at the top of the short flight.

Guided round a partition wall diners are presented with a grand dining hall that looks somehow familiar and immediately aesthetically gratifying. Perhaps it's the dimensions, deep and with a high ceiling. The coloring is dramatic black and white with bold reds and light woods. There's a mixture of stand-alone tables and booths all classically set and during both of Shanghai Daily's lunchtime visits it has been packed.

Lynn is the Shanghainese-style restaurant that the busy Shanghai Center's environ deserves and, with hindsight, is long overdue. Let's face it going to Italy and eating Chinese food would just be plain daft.

The menu comprises many of those favorite dishes found in the earlier mentioned establishments, various dumplings, duck, minced chicken with pine nuts, soups and the usual suspects of seasonally-priced seafood. Lunchtime has set menus on offer with the 70 yuan (US$9.05) deal being the one to go for.

It affords four courses with the likes of a mixed platter: Smoked egg and caviar, fried fish, cold chicken; soup, double-boiled meatballs with freshwater crab; vegetables; fried rice and fruit. The Lynn drink, a stimulating combination of apple, grapefruit, grape and celery, is well worth the 20 yuan. Service is effortlessly accomplished.

On arriving in this fair city I was bemused, no startled, by the notion of re nao - bustling with noise and excitement - and how the Chinese valued this, above all else, in their restaurants. I bemoaned the lack of ambience but now I stand converted.

For the full effect of Lynn get there not long after midday but book ahead. Certainly don't leave it till 1.30pm when lunch is virtually over. After all, this is China.

Link



It all started on 7 August last year when we saw this place. We didn't end up going (went to TMSK in Plaza 66 instead) but went back on 24 September when the inlaws were visiting. It cost about 490 for the 4 of us, including drinks. We were all blown away by the food. It was really tasty and amazing. My photos don't do it justice though!



Kiwifruit juice



Something I can't remember...



Thai-style fish with pinenuts





On Saturday I met up with a bunch of lovely ladies (I met through Facebook) for a all-you-can-eat dimsum (that's yumcha for you Aussies) brunch at a bargain price of 78 RMB per head. There were about 50 different dishes to choose from and it felt like we had all of them at one point! The quality and selection was really good. Unfortunately we spent so long chit-chatting and getting to know one another that before we knew it it was already 3pm and they were packing up the food and practically ushering us out the door, so the dessert was really really rushed. Still, I have no hesitation in recommending Lynn to anyone! especially if you are not used to the typical Shanghainese style of Chinese cooking. This is almost but not quite the more common and westernized Hong Kong style.




Vegetarian dish - my ayi has made this and it's one of my faves even though it's not much to look at (bean curd, bamboo and 'wood ear fungus')



Egg



Not sure since I didn't get around to tasting this - oops!



Chicken's feet and dimsums



Dim sims



Tiny little parcels wrapped in a tofu kind of skin. Nice.






Chinese-style green onion pancakes


BBQ pork buns




Lynn
99-1 Xikang Lu (near Nanjing Xi Lu, next to Plaza 66)
Phone: 6247 0101
Daily 11.30am - 2.30pm and 6.00pm - 10.00pm

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh wow, that dimsum place looks far nicer than the one I go to that's approximately 24 RMB for each dish...

S said...

I can't rave about this place enough. The food is really good. The only thing that would make it better would be if they made it non-smoking!