Shanghai has many ‘fine dining’ restaurants but most of them are quite expensive. If you had always wanted to try some of Shanghai’s best restaurants such as for example Kathleen’s 5, Danieli’s, T8, M1NT, or Sir Elly’s, the Shanghai Restaurant Week may be your chance.
Organized by the team behind DiningCity Shanghai, Dutch entrepreneurs Onno Schreurs and Siem Bierman, this year’s Restaurant Week will take place from 7-13 March. During this week top restaurants will serve a special 3-course lunch or dinner for an amazing price. In the A-level category a 3-course lunch is RMB 118 per person and a 3-course dinner is RMB 248, at the other restaurants the lunch is priced at just RMB 78 and dinner for only RMB 168.
You can’t book directly at the restaurant, but you will have to book online through www.shanghairestaurantweek.com. Bookings will be directly in the reservation system of the restaurant. The website will open Tuesday February 22 at 10 AM. If you want to secure a table at the best restaurants better set your alarm because last year those seats were sold out in no time.
In total there will be about 50 participating restaurants in this Restaurant Week, representing cusines from all over the world. I got a sneak peek already and I saw among others French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Cantonese and Shanghainese restaurants on the list.
I tried Restaurant Week last year and was pleasantly surprised by the dinner that I had. Some people assume that for this kind of prices you will get smaller portions, but that’s not the case: the restaurants give you full portions and of the highest quality. It’s a great way of advertising for them for new customers. I am inspired to try out a few new restaurants myself, and like last year I will surely visit those places again outside of Restaurant Week if I like them. Don’t miss the opportunity to try out some of Shanghai’s greatest restaurants!
Online booking: www.shanghairestaurantweek.com. The site opens February 22, 2010 at 10 AM sharp.
Sounds like a great idea, but I think with the deals of the GroupOn-clones we are having nowadays, there is less appeal for these offers. Here in Shenzhen several good restaurants have offered deals on QQTuanGou/Lashou. It has allowed us to visit some of the more expensive restaurants for a very reasonable price (below 200 RMB for 2 person dinner). I wonder if the restaurant week will survive till next year?
I think they are different concepts and can live next to each other. So far I haven’t seen the top Chinese restaurants using Groupon-clone deals, it’s a different kind of public using them and the deals are different. The Groupons normally offer a ton of food for a low price (which is great!), restaurant week is more for the chefs to show off their skills in a more ‘normal portion’ menu. Also the convenience of the online reservation for the restaurant week makes a difference, no need to call the restaurant to make a reservation 2 days in advance etc. I think restaurant week will only grow further, and the same for the top Groupon clones.