Apr/100
sunny brunch in shanghai: downstairs at urbn
what used to be room28 (run by the wagas group) at the urbn hotel on jiaozhou lu near beijing lu is now downstairs with david laris (he of laris and, *cough* the barbie cafe).
with a sunny sunny saturday and my friend zafar in town from the states, we chose a perfect brunching day to go try out the still-under-soft opening restaurant. and its good that its still a soft opening because they have a bunch of kinks they need to work out – or actually one big one.
but first, let’s start with the good. the space was perfect for a nice sunny day. a little urban (or urbn) oasis in the sun, away from the jing’an traffic. keeping with the carbon neutral theme of the hotel, much of the produce and ingredients are locally sourced, organic and free-range. the prices that one is paying here for all of this goodness? well they’re well in line (or under!) lots of western oriented brunch places in town – with dishes ranging from 50-120 rmb. so, yeah, not lanzhou la mien cheap, but not overwhelming wallet draining either.
how’s the food? well, it was decent, if not exactly super memorable. it wasn’t exactly a typical brunch menu – oh sure, they had brunchy things like eggs benedict, the coddled eggs over toast – which were all pretty good, but they were also some items like spaghetti and meatballs which deviated from the traditional brunch fare. one standout dish was the macaroni and cheese with black truffles – assuming they used yunnan truffles to keep with the sustainability and locally sourced product theme. the mac and cheese was both parts creamy and earthy with the delicious truffles. its the high end mac and cheese i’ve lusted for ever since tiffany put it on her menu during the very first season of top chef – which was, what, like 2006? the prices were good and the food was good and surroundings were outstanding – what wasn’t to like?
well, i’ll tell you. we were the second table seated and ordered at 11:50pm, with one additional order coming at around 12:05. From then until 1pm, our food came out sporadically, in 20 minute intervals. randomly. until we were finally all served (some had finished obviously) at 12:55pm. That’s an hour and 5 minutes. Fine, they have a slow kitchen or a small kitchen right? Well, during that time, at least 7 other tables sat down, ordered, were served and many FINISHED their meals – including several who had ordered the same things as us before our dishes were served.
i’m not a particularly demanding customer – having worked in the service industry, or just having worked in general, i understand mistakes get made. hell, i won’t get mad. just let us know – “sorry, we forgot to place the order” or “we’re in the weeds, your stuff will be out in 10 minutes” something. give me an update. but all they could tell us was “it will be out immediately” – then it was another 15 minute wait. or only one dish would come out.
the manager came to apologize after our lawyer friend left, but he gave us some run-around about how 2 and 4 tops could be served quicker than 6 tops and how having a split order (since one of my friends showed up late) was causing havoc in the kitchen, but i don’t buy it. why did one spaghetti come out 25 minutes before the other one? if you were waiting to fire the entire 6-top together, why did our dishes come out a such long intervals – and everyone elses’ came out together? just admit it was a screw up, give us a discount (he did buy us a round of drinks and offered to re-fire the cold eggs which my friend andrew got, but that actually got me more aggrieved because it took them 5 minutes to bring out a fresh set of coddled eggs. why did it take that long in the first place?
the food was decent to good, the patio was perfect for the breezy summer – i really wanted this restaurant to work. heck, they even serve the cheapest bottle of voss water i’ve ever seen (45 rmb for the big bottle!) i think they’ll fix their service problems soon – i realize i violated the rule about not going to a restaurant within 2 weeks of the opening (which is what it was) but the issue isn’t about the mistakes it was the way it was handled. i really couldn’t care less about the delivery of the food (well, not that’s not quite true), but please just be honest and upfront about it. that’s all i ask as a customer. i will be returning, but perhaps not until the middle of summer when they fix their service issues.
downstairs at urbn
160 jiaozhou lu near beijing lu
brunch: 75-200 rmb (depending on how many bloody marys you down)
@ urbn by [Terence], on Flickr”>
@ urbn” />
