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Seats filling fast at Shanghai Restaurant Week
Two days after reservations open, several top-notch Shanghai restaurants are already fully booked
Booking for Shanghai Restaurant Week is in full swing. It's a chance for locals to experience fine dining -- at discounted prices.This summer's Shanghai Restaurant Week opened for booking via its website this Wednesday and we have been told that seats in some of the city’s finest restaurants have already been filled.
“Seats at Sir Elly's at The Peninsula, T8 Restaurant & Bar and Nougatine at Jean Georges were booked out immediately after reservations began,” says Nicole Yan, operation manager of Diningcity.com, the organizer of the week.
Shanghai Restaurant Week will be held on September 5-11, and organizers have bumped up the number of participating restaurants from 55 to 80. According to Yan, 30 percent of them are Chinese restaurants with the rest serving Western cuisine.
“Among all the participating Chinese restaurants, 10 percent are hotel restaurants and the rest are high-class Chinese establishments, such as The Chinoise Story and Maggie and Gloria,” says Yan.
The prices are the same as the last restaurant week, but the restaurants can choose to join two groups.
Group A, which includes the higher-end restaurants, costs RMB 118 for lunch or RMB 248 for dinner. Group B restaurants, such as Alfie's by KEE and Naam Thai, are priced at RMB 78 for lunch and RMB 168 for dinner.
Three locations from this year's Shanghai Restaurant Week are sister brands of Michelin-star restaurants in Hong Kong: Tang Court at The Langham Yangtze Boutique, Sir Elly's at The Peninsula and XTD Elevated at The Langham Xintiand, reported Xinmin Evening News.
More on CNNGo: Winners of Shanghai Best Eats 2010
Restaurant Week is one of the biggest culinary events in the world, featuring dining deals offered by mid and high-end restaurants, and is held in countries such as the Netherlands, Austria, United States, Belgium and Singapore.
The concept first started in Shanghai in March in 2010 and has been tweaked into an opportunity for locals to dine in top-notch restaurants. Although the organizer has tried cutting prices in the past, they are still considered “quite expensive” for the average Shanghainese.
According to Yan, the last Shanghai Restaurant Week, held on March 7-13, attracted more than 8,000 online bookings and the number of local Chinese diners rose to 50 percent of the total.
Check out the full list of participating restaurants of the summer edition of Shanghai Restaurant Week 2011.
