3 Restaurant Openings - Beca! Review

BECA opened recently and suitably impressed our usually-hard-to-impress Snippets. Hopefully they can keep it up.

************
Snippets

Beca! Surprisingly good restaurant! We enjoyed a wonderful dinner at a newer restaurant called "BECA" last night. It is located in Red Town, not terribly far from Xujiahui and Hongqiao.

It is a beautifully decorated 2-story building with exposed brick walls, exposed wood beams, beveled glass windows with crushed black velvet curtains, hardwood floors, candles... it is really beautiful and we really felt like we had left China!

When you enter, you are greeted by a nice, well stocked bar and several smaller tables where you can relax and enjoy drinks. If you are dining in, you are escorted upstairs to a very comfortable and relaxed dining room.

They have daily lunch specials which change everyday, priced at 65 rmb for 2 courses. One example would be something like: Mushroom Cappuccino Soup or Caesar Salad, Grilled Veal Fillet with Mashed Potatoes, Country Vegetables, Sauce and Bread.

Happy Hour - actually they have 2. One is 5-7pm and you get free flow Tiger Draft Beer or Margarita's for ~45-48rmb. That's 48rmb ALL YOU CAN DRINK. From 7pm onwards, you get 50% off house spirits and 2-for-1 house wine - Baroncourt.

The menu is great - it's perfectly balanced and has a lot of nice changes without the standard stuff always found at too many Western restaurants. I wish I would have remembered more to share with all of you... let me tell you what we had.

For starters, we had deep fried mozzarella cheese sticks, a magnificent Normandie crepes - sauted chicken breast, carrots, green beans, and button mushrooms, with a dijon-mustard sauce. It was served with a concasse of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers tossed in a wonderfully spiced vinaigrette. It was a perfect marriage of contrasting flavors and textures.

Then we shared a caprese salad - fresh sliced rounds of buffalo mozzarella cheese set on a bed of arugala and sun dried tomatoes and drizzled with fresh basil olive oil and tossed in a magnificently tart, citrus-y garlic vinaigrette. Yet another wonderful course.

For the mains, we had the same thing. 3 bundles of thin sliced beef tenderloin wrapped around grilled red onions, tomatoes, red bell peppers, carrots and sharp cheddar cheese, set atop fresh creamy mashed potatoes, dressed with a burgundy grape sauce and served with a side of mixed vegetables. Yet again, truly wonderful.

To finish, we shared Crepe's Suzette - orange confit with grand marnier and sugar atop 4 crepes. While the flavor was nice, the crepes were a bit too eggy and became mushy as they were drowned in the much too watery sauce. However, the flavor was nice and it was an enjoyable finish as we were able to not think of it as a crepe.

With our job, we get to enjoy places like Jean George's at Three on the Bund, etc and Becca was far superior.

I still cannot get over how beautifully the place was decorated and amazed at the food.

I met Robert, one of the partners and made him promise not to become like so many other restaurants that start off good but then go to crap. He promised, so we'll have to see.

If you have an Enjoy card, you can dine there until the end of the month, after 6pm, and receive 50% of ALL food. Great deal. The above only cost us 256rmb!

Link to the original forum post here:
Beca! Surprisingly good restaurant!

Beca Café & Bar
Unit C-6, No.570 West HuaiHai Rd.
淮海西路570号C-6,
Shanghai, China
TEL: 62807232

Back to 3 Openings Intro Page