Late Lunching at Sasha’s

Food reporter Shau-Ru visits a veritable Shanghai institution, Sasha’s, and wonders if the place can match its interesting history. Check it out over Golden Week and decide for yourself. 

Until this Friday, I’d never managed to go to Sasha’s to do anything other than borrow their restroom. However, since I was going to be in the area for business reasons, I figured I might as well meet up with Tom for a late lunch first and we settled on Sasha’s. After all, the place is an institution and I felt so very un-Shanghai to not have at least tried the food once.
I got there first and stood around awkwardly for a while before I finally approached the wait staff myself and requested a seat outside. They then ushered me outside, where presumably another hostess was supposed to greet me. But again, I had to proactively seek someone out. I asked whether I could sit anywhere and she said yes, but then began to usher me toward a table. Seated at last, I sat and waited for Tom.
While I waited, I browsed the menu. Prices were reasonable with appetizers ranging between 38 RMB and 108 RMB (mostly falling around 68 RMB) and 58 RMB and up for main courses. Fare was pretty standard: sandwiches, burgers, pizza and pasta with a few wild cards like Beijing Duck thrown in. Infinitely more interesting than the food, was the story behind the villa’s history and its ties to the Soong family, printed across the pages of the beverage catalogue.

When Tom arrived, he was hungover and I was starving, so we both decided on the burger with fries (68 RMB). We figured ordering the same thing would save the kitchen time so that our food would come out faster. However, we still threw in an order for the cold cuts (78 RMB), which, since they required no cooking, should have come out quickly enough to tide us over.
We chatted, enjoyed the patio, mulled over the blue color of Zapata’s and waited for what seemed like an eternity, before I grabbed a waitress and asked when we could expect our order. She responded by saying she would go check on it, then returned five minutes later to say that their machine was broken and they never placed the ticket. I’m sorry – I didn’t realize there was no other way to communicate an order to the kitchen…
They did seem to figure out shortly after that that cold cuts did not require any cooking, so that platter was brought out. The cheese was yummy and the meat wasn’t bad. Plus, the roasted peppers on the side were a nice touch. The only downside to the dish was that everything felt oddly oily, which could either have been the influence of Shanghai, or the sun, which was blazing down on us and perhaps causing the fat in the meat to soften. At long last (around 3:30), we finally got our burgers and fries.

The burger pretty much confirmed what I had heard over and over about Sasha’s, which is that you don’t go there for the food. There was nothing bad about it, but nor was there anything notably good. The whole thing, quality of the ground beef included, was just average. If I wanted a burger for the masses, I would have gotten more flavor at Malone’s or Blue Frog. At least theirs come with plenty of topping options that spice things up.

Ah French Concession restaurants…it seems they have such heavily trafficked locations and often such wonderful interiors or exteriors, that they have no need to rely on food or service to bring people in. I would love to see them put in a bit more effort however. Sasha’s is such a lovely place, it seems like a waste to pay such little attention to the food. Plus, with the place doing a bit of renovating, the ambiance may not be good enough to make up for lackluster performance elsewhere. I say hand the kitchen over to someone with passion and let them turn this place from an institution into a legend. Otherwise, this place’s history will always far outshine its future potential.
Sasha’s Restaurant and Bar 萨莎: 11 Dongping Road (near Hengshan Road)/东平路11号近衡山路. Book Sasha’s now at Dining Secretary.

Shau-Ru is the manager of Dining Secretary's English department and one of the writers of the Shanghai food blog, Dumplings to Donuts. For more food-related adventures, check out www.diningsecretary.com/blog.