Our final entry on Shanghai is on…French food. Ferguson Lane is a mini square with expat boutiques/cafe/winebar tucked in the French Concession area. The historic buildings are reserved from the concession period. The surrounding area is quiet, upscale and pretty.
One of the restaurants there is Franck, an authentic French bistro (with a bar/lounge at the back) my friend who lived/work in Shanghai for few months strongly recommended. We didn’t make reservation, thinking it might be alright as most restaurants in Shanghai during dinner time was empty…boy were we wrong. The place was full house on a Tuesday night (filled up immediately after I snapped the photo below).
The french owner did manage to squeeze us to a table. They brought over the menu, which is all handwritten on a chalkboard and was in French only. The wine menu was extensive as well.
Vegetable terrain. Light and healthy tasting.
Lamb Chop. Classic, good quality and very satisfying.
Joan was feeling sick so she tried to stay light with a vegetable meal: Jumbo Asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, Egg, and Bacon. The friendly waiter gave us complimentary Macaron for free!
Mont Blanc. Autumn is the chestnut season so this is a seasonal item~ Delicious, fresh chestnut flavor and the cream was fresh and light but a little runny, not as rich as the ones I’ve had in Paris. Though it gets a bit sweet toward the end. (btw it still boggles my mind that I can’t find Mont Blanc in Los Angeles at non Asian-owned French bakeries/restaurants, what’s up with that?).
Good wine (got a bit drunk at the end), good food, good vibe and friendly waiters, it’s a nice meal to end our Shanghai trip even though it was quite expensive ($20-30 per entree range). We had a chat with our waiter (a young French guy), he told us that we should have come to Shanghai during the National Holiday, which was just a week before we went. The city was actually empty, quiet and peaceful, much less crazy traffics and you could enjoy the city a lot better.
This concludes our trip to Shanghai. Next up: Hong Kong!
Franck
Ferguson Lane, 376 Wukang Lu, French Concession (near Hunan Lu)
French in Shanghai! Who knew?
There’s even good French food in Shanghai? Right that’s it! I’m moving there!! XD
But hang on….$20-30 per entree….not that much different from Tokyo!! 0_o
And you mean they don’t have a menu in Chinese?
You know it annoys me that some snobby restaurants in Soho(where foreigners hang out in HK) don’t have menu in Chinese or don’t have staff who can speak Cantonese.
so sorry you were feeling sick, Joan!
how’d you have the energy to do all the walking?? ^0^;;
how were you guys able to understand French?
you guys have very good language ability~~(＾∀＾◎)
I read your recent posts,
so jealous you got 2 artworks at the gallery! (☆。☆）
that’s like, the BEST souvenir ever!!
weezermonkey, I think whenever a city starts to prosper and gentrified, the French food/Wine bar would start to pop up. 😉
Seat, Shanghai isn’t cheap at all really (only the local food). Yeah there was no Chinese menu, though there was one Chinese waiter there who might be in charge of Chinese customers? We were greet with English anyway as they could tell we’re not local? I’m sure the language usage defined their target audience, they must be doing good enough already with business with expats and foreigner alone.
Ah those snobby places in Soho are using language to define their clientele, I’m surprise they can still do this now though. There’re still a lot of westerners in HK but seems like there’s even more Mainland tourists now (who spent big money), so having Chinese/mandarin should be priority? Maybe Mainlanders aren’t into Central’s western fine dining yet.
Tomoko, I can still remember the French vocab (food only) I memorize when we went to Paris. ^0^;; Yup picking up artworks is the best memories of any trip. We also got a very cute “Peasant Painting” at a gallery.