Jean-Georges's Mercato, on the Shanghai Bund
On the Monday of the May holiday staycation, I visited the excellent Tadao Ando exhibit at the Fosun Foundation at the Bund Financial Center. They even recreated parts of two chapels!
Since I’m rarely out by the Bund, i decided to take a 15 minute walk up the Bund and treat myself to Mercato, a Jean-Georges restaurant that has kept popping up on my radar, but had never managed to visit. (The Bund was absolutely crowded with tourists by the way, many I think just hanging out, waiting for the evening light show.)
The restaurant is located on the sixth floor of Three on the Bund (the building on the left in the photo below), directly facing the river, although the entrance itself is on the Guandong Road cross street.
I didn’t have a reservation, but I showed up at 6pm, and they said I could have a seat as long as I finished by 7:30pm. (Based on this, I expected things to be much more crowded, but the bar seating around the pizza oven was entirely empty when I left just after 7pm).
Mercato is kind of a “casual” restaurant with an Italian menu. The feeling is pretty relaxed, with a buzzy atmosphere and rather loud music playing the whole time. The crowd was a mix of international and Chinese, and a diverse mix of family gatherings, girls night out, friend groups, and mother-daughter dates.
A big selling point are the views, and they are quite spectacular. On one side of the dining room, you have Pudong, with the Pearl Oriental Tower in view.
And on another side, you have the Puxi side, the historic Bund itself curving around.
After ordering, a complimentary bread plate was brought out, with focaccia, a brown bread, one breadstick, and some olive oil.
I went to the bathroom, and almost immediately upon my return, an amuse bouche was brought out.
An arancini! Quite nice.
Just about the same time - I was a bit taken aback by the speed - came the lobster and shrimp ravioli. The fragrance of dill actually made me feel nostalgic for last summer in San Diego, cooking with dill. I’ve missed this herb so!
The raviolis were lightly kissed with a buttery lemony sauce, complementing the freshness of the herbs. The raviolis themselves were tasty, but I was expecting something better. The filling was rather dense - very minced and packed in a bouncy meatball like a run-of-the-mill Chinese dumpling, whereas I was expecting something looser or with more discernible chunks or shreds of lobster.
I also ordered the he signature dish which everyone raves about, the truffle pizza. It’s a pizza fired up in the wood-fire oven, blanked with shaved truffles, and then topped with three cheeses and then an egg.
This was indeed delicious. The crust was nice and chewy, the cheeses unctuous (was one of them a very creamy mozzarella or even a smooth ricotta?), and the egg yolk still runny. I added some of this vinegar with red pepper slices that they put on the table as a condiment (not sure what it was for).
So the food was good, but I’m not sure I’d return. There are just so many excellent restaurants to try in Shanghai, it’s hard to make a case for repeating any single restaurant actually. But here, I did have a few quibbles:
I had higher expectations for the ravioli as mentioned above
The service was a bit odd, in that they took away my plate while they served the ravioli and pizza at about the same time, expecting me to eat directly from those plates. I had a two-seat table, so I wasn’t exactly lacking in space.
I couldn’t finish the pizza or the bread, so I asked to pack them up. To my surprise, the waiter refused to pack up the three pieces of bread that were left, saying that it was a complimentary service so it couldn’t be taken home. This seems illogical: it’s not like I got a refill of the bread in order to take home; this was from the first service. Plus the government has an anti-food waste campaign going on, and this seems highly antithetical to that. Will they re-use the bread?
And the value was just so so. The raviolis were 158 RMB (yes, US$24 or US$6 PER ravioli), and the truffle pizza was 218 RMB (US$33.72). Then they charged mandatory 10% service fee, so total bill was 414 RMB (US$64). I suppose the pizza was worth it, but the raviolis should have been much better.
In conclusion, I’m glad I finally tried Mercato, and their famous truffle pizza. I’d gladly go back if someone invited me. But there are so many places yet to explore in Shanghai, that I can’t imagine choosing to come back.
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Mercato
Three on the Bund
Shanghai
