Third Time Lucky

After two nights of great Japanese dining, I didn't think there would be a third. Friend of mine told me about this great Japanese hole-in-the-wall place serving fresh seafood for a reasonable price. Well, he described it as 'hole-in-the-wall' anyway. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I've eaten at a few high end Japanese restaurants in Shanghai over the course of my trips, but never a local dive, so this sounded like an exciting proposition. So what's to worry? A minor case of food poisoning?

We arrived at Rong Ri Japanese Restaurant at 427 Huashan Road, and yes, my friend was right about the hole-in-the-wall description, and not in a Shintori sort of way. But hey, I'm just here for the food. So we made our way up the tiny flight of stairs to the second floor, and walked into the cozy and brightly lit dining room. Imagine a typical Japanese family-run restaurant in one of the back alleys of Tokyo, and you'll have a good idea of how Rong Ri looks like. The crammed room had at least 6 tables and a long sushi bar, with lots of daily specials written in Japanese on slips of paper above the bar counter. One end of the wall was covered with business cards from patrons, and actually gave the whole restaurant a very homely and friendly ambience. This was no fancy high end Japanese restaurant, but judging by the mostly Japanese clientele that night, it seemed like it enjoyed a healthy following within the local Japanese community.

We informed the waitress we wanted the ala carte buffet, and she promptly gave us a picture menu to order. First round - sashimi combo, asparagus rolls wrapped in bacon, fermented bean and egg sushi. I was skeptical about the freshness of the fish but my fears were unfounded. The sashimi portions were generous and overall pretty decent. Second round - chicken yakitori, uni nigiri, another round of sashimi combo and salad. Yum. And we were still going strong. We ordered sake as well, but that wasn't as good as expected, yet still drinkable. This was the only grade of sake included in the buffet, so that explained the quality. Third round - miso soup, more sushi, cold ramen with seafood. We were stuffed. Round four was not going to happen. As we gazed around the room feeling rather contented and bloated, we saw two Japanese salarymen next to us having an uproariously good time teasing the very friendly waitresses and getting smashed. One of them actually spoke very fluent Mandarin. Ah, it sure felt like Tokyo.





The best part of the evening was getting the check and finding out the whole meal only cost us RMB298. That's a lot of good food for very little. I'll definitely be back for more very soon.