Shanghai Blues

Housed in a Grade II-listed former library, this opulent restaurant & bar is a serious player in the haute Chinese, dim sum & fancy cocktail game (a la Hakkasan). It’s an alluring space decorated with dark furniture, rich silk & fancy lanterns, with a split-level bar & restaurant to the left, & the more sedate dining room to the right. The popular dim sum lands somewhere between conventional & fusion (prawn & pork shu mai with Alaskan crab, seafood rolls with mango), while substantial a la carte dishes include noodles with lobster, ginger & spring onion & diced fillet steak with Shanghai herbs & peppercorn. It doesn’t come cheap, & with a fairly expensive wine list, some feel it’s ‘overpriced & overrated’. But the majority of visitors can’t praise Shanghai Blues highly enough, especially the no-table-turning policy & jazz on Friday & Saturday evenings.