Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Horrible dinner at Wan Hao Xuan 萬豪軒, JW Marriott Shanghai

Due to my good impression of The Pearl of Marriott City Wall Beijing, I thought the Chinese restaurants of this JW Marriott shouldn't be missed. The answer is "so wrong"! This one is double worse than Wan Hao of JW Marriott HK and BKK.
First the drunken chicken - it's not either with any wine or chicken flavour. So I asked the waitress "is it a drunken chicken?". I pointed out it's not with any wine and chicken flavour. Then she replied "our drunken chicken is in a special cooking style that light taste is the main point.". I kept on telling her "this is Shanghai and this dish is a symbolic dish of Shanghai cuisine. This is not about the cooking style. It's about the essence of this renowned dish...etc.". Then she handed me a comment form to fill in. At first, I did write down what I feel. However, after the other dishes, I crossed out my comments and decided this restaurant doesn't deserve a single word of comments. The pork terrine is too hard and yet a strong smell of fridge. The soup is average. Another horrible dish is the stir fried beef. Check how small the portion is. Besides, the thickening is in a wrong step not even a beginner chef should make this mistake. See how those thickening be in bits and pieces. That means the chef didn't stir in well.
As I left the restaurant, I found out it got a best restaurant. Really amazing!










13 comments:

Arnold said...

Never trust that Tatler Award, its sister Bangkok Tatler awarded Baan Khanitha best restaurant, these ppl either don't understand Asian cuisine or hv a taste buds deficiency disease!

Stella said...

Sounds like worse than the Shanghai dishes here in LA.
At least in here our portion is big and the chicken is really drunken.
It seems that Marriott has "consistent" food quality cross the board among HK, BKK and Shanghai.
I was told the restaurants in Shanghai are more expensive than HK provided that HK's high end restaurants are usually tasty and worth the money. But in Shanghai for sure expensive and not necessary tasty. We are comparing high end to high end cross the board.

in the sea said...

Correct, next time we should read more those Tatler books so that we can avoid those on the list. :)
Stella, I also found the same and shared it with my Taiwanese friends that in the old time quite many skillful professionals left for either Taiwan & HK. Turned out Shanghai restaurants in Taiwan and HK are even better than those in Shanghai. :)

Mickey Mouse said...

JW Marriott's CN restaurants in Asia really has a transmitted bad cooking disease syndrome ..

on top of the Tatler, we shall also read that piggy Wu guide too, for where we shouldn't go to eat ..

Stella said...

Yes Sea.
HK has good chefs from all over the world.

in the sea said...

I guess it may be thanks to what kind of master chefs they hire. :) The one of Marriott Beijing City Wall is totally another different story.

in the sea said...

Or more corresponding examples - remember how we forgot China House, but we still enjoy Fei Ya.

Mickey Mouse said...

non-authentic China House under such a chop-suey chef and poor-manner restaurant host, soon i will also put MO-BKK totally in history, as BKK is not short of good hotels now, and counting ..

Fei Ya, yes, there a good chef who cooks real Chinese food worth our support ..

in the sea said...

OK, MO's poisoned syndrome patients, wake up please. We can't stop MO to become one of the common hotels which treat customers as customers. Things are changing and we should keep going. Let go of it. Way up onto our journey to explore more.

Stella said...

China House is not that bad after all either food or service. It is just little over priced that is all.
MO-BKK is still very unique in terms of service, environment, restaurants, pool, breakfast no matter what.
MO is the best. There are many good hotels but MO is different.
If you don't believe me please ask Mr. Trainer, Pixmation and his trip mate.

in the sea said...

The junior service staff of MO BKK still keep up half of their legacy services. The senior management is now at zero. So we can predict under such a senior management, what would we expect. :) Sorry 忠言逆耳. The only thing I would still like to stay at MO BKK is just their room only.

Mickey Mouse said...

Sea, next time when u book MO-BKK, it is really 'room only' .. hahaha

Stella, the food cost at China House is reasonable, in term of the hotel's legendary status, it is indeed rather cheap; just the food quality keep drop, drop and drop, and the service (that imported restaurant host) is 'cheap' ..

in the sea said...

Their breakfast is very nice too. So can be "room only with ABF". After all, some of our old friends from front desk and restaurants would be what I wanna visit. Actually, now that it really saves a lot of my time on commenting to their senior management. So I should be thankful for that. Stella, maybe you haven't dealt with their senior management. It's natural that you still have a good picture of the MO BKK of the then-2009. Sorry again for my being so blunt.