Delicious seafood and a belly pork and bamboo shoot pyramid that takes a day to assemble [provided to China Daily]

Shanghai

While there is no lack of high-end dining in Xintiandi, the Ming Court at the Langham Xintiandi stands out with its excellent pairing of elegant Chinese cuisine and the best local wines.

The restaurant is on the fifth floor of the hotel and overlooks the Xintiandi complex, Taiping Lake and the hotel's outdoor terrace, offering a bright and open vista. Still, the dining space can be intimate, with nine private dining rooms that can cater to between four and 10 guests in each, and a main dining area with 24 seats.

There is a lot of attention to detail. For example, each private dining room is named after native flora such as Ginkgo, Willow and Cypress. As a welcome drink, guests are offered regional teas such as Anji white tea served in the dining room named Bamboo, since Anji county of Zhejiang province is known as the "home of bamboo".

The restaurant's two executive chefs execute a menu that features both Cantonese and Shanghai cuisines. Chef Kwong Wai-keung is from the Langham Hotel Group's corporate office in Hong Kong and chef Tony Su, a local Shanghainese, arrives with 19 years' experience.

Our meal started with dim sum, the little Cantonese snacks that "touch the heart", including shrimp dumpling with bamboo, baked barbecued pork in puff pastry and steamed rice rolls with assorted mushrooms and bamboo pith. Traditional dishes often test the chef's skills, and the dim sum in Ming Court more than met our expectations for authentic Cantonese cuisine.

For the hot dishes, we had deep-fried prawns with wasabi mayonnaise, fried Wagyu beef with garlic and black pepper, bamboo piths and asparagus stewed with crab meat and the restaurant's signature sliced pork with dried bamboo shoots in soy sauce, served with chestnut pancakes.

The last dish really amazes. Belly pork is sliced very thin and mounted into a pyramid with dried bamboo shoots hidden inside. We were loath to break it up because the presentation was so delicate.

Chef Su says the dish takes a whole day to prepare although the restaurant uses a tailor-made mould for the pyramid.

The meat may seem a bit greasy but in fact, it is soft and creamy, the fat having been rendered by slow stewing. The thin pork slices absorbed the soy-based seasoning and were a perfect match for the bamboo shoots when eaten together with the chestnut pancakes.

The fried Wagyu beef is also highly recommendable, because in other restaurants, chefs just don't use such a premier ingredient.

The restaurant's well qualified sommelier, Benjamin Zhong, is also on hand to select wines from the cellar of 300 wines, according to the guests' preferences as well as the choice of dishes.

Zhong is especially keen to recommend top Chinese wines, as he says the slight herbal bouquets cut through the richness and are best suited for Chinese food.

A substantial meal at the Ming Court will cost about 400 yuan ($63) per person. The dim sum menu is only available for lunch.

You can contact the writer at yangyijun@chinadaily.com.cn.