Shanghai 1814 Restaurant — Restaurant in Southampton

My wife and I found ourselves on a mini staycation in Southampton last month. As we are a couple of real foodies. Eating out experiences factor heavily on leisure time. I did a certain amount of research before our trip, so had an idea of where we may like to go. This restaurant not only looked good. But came with some impressive reviews. We decided to book a table for dinner. This was a midweek reservation. I booked us online, and was immediately hit by the need to input credit card details in order to be charged if you are a no show. Now, to clarify, this does not mean you cannot cancel, just can’t not turn up. I personally have no issue with this. If anything it demonstrates that these people have respect for their own business.

Our booking was for 1930hrs. We arrived outside an impressive looking Victorian era building. Not what you would expect of a Chinese restaurant. On entering through the big glass and brass double doors you feel that you have been transported to somewhere else.

There is an impressive bar / lounge area. However due to Covid restrictions at the time, this couldn’t be used. The restaurant makes ample use of dark colours, subtle lighting and lots of cherry blossom to set the stage for the meal.

We were soon shown to our table by a very polite waiter who gave us menus,  and took an order for drinks.

Drink service was pretty quick. I had a beer, and my wife a Drunken Concubine cocktail, this proved to be an interesting infusion of Lychee Liqueur, and Prosecco. She liked it so much she had a second go.

After a perusal of the menu, and timely discussion. We were able to order. Starters, Dim Sum Platter for me, Vegetarian Dim Sum Platter for her, and we also shared  some Pan Fried Pork Dumplings. All of these dishes were very well presented, and looked authentic. The Dim Sum was hot, and moist, a good mix of flavours. The Dumplings were my favourite. Good amount of filling, and although pan fried were tender, and juicy. We asked for a twenty minute break before moving on to our main course. Given the break we took the opportunity to order a bottle of red wine. My wife ordered a bottle of Portillo Malbec. Although not a standard accompaniment to Chinese food, it was a lovely full bodied wine, and at a fair price.

Our main course arrived. Roasted Duck with Black Truffle Sauce. An incredible dish of sliced meat off the bone, crispy duck skin with succulent perfectly cooked meat underneath. The sauce was light but with a surprising depth of flavour due to the truffle. Our second dish was Slow Cook Pork Belly in Cognac sauce. The pork was sliced, and cooked to be melt in the mouth tender, a few heads of baby Pak Choy swimming in  a medium thickness cognac sauce, this imparted all the flavour enhancing qualities of cognac without tasting boozy. A colourful, and tasty accompaniment side dish of Stir fry Mixed vegetables, and Egg Fried Rice rounded out the meal.

All round presentation was stunning and everything looked so appetizing. Colours, and flavours complimenting, and bouncing off each other.

Service was quick, polite, and efficient. Our waiter was never far away if we required anything but didn’t make his presence felt in an intrusive way. Table was comfortable. Tableware was spotlessly clean, as were the glasses.  The ambiance was amazing. Even sitting in an open part of the restaurant it felt private, and intimate. Toilets were also very clean, and not taken as an afterthought.

Thank you to all the staff for a memorable night out. We are already booked for our next visit. Our daughters birthday in November....

We ate here for the first time yesterday (27th August 2023). The food was good, the staff were friendly, the surroundings nice but unfortunately they really spoiled it by rushing us. We ordered one of the set menus comprising several dishes brought out in courses and also bought drinks (one bottle of wine and a beer each). There was quite a lot of food to get through then when we got to the end of the meal, the waiter asked us if we wanted a dessert. I replied that we didn't, however we would like to order some drinks (as is our usual routine when eating out we wanted to rest and let our food settle with a digestif from the cocktails and spirits menu). To our great surprise the waiter at this point said that we couldn't stay at the table any longer as he needed to turn it around. He said we could have drinks at the 'nice seating area' near the door/bar (I think he gave it a name, but I can't recall it) and asked if we would like to order the drinks and then go over there. I said no, we wanted to check it out before ordering anything to drink. I'm glad we did as it was just a miniscule area with couple of little sofas just inside the door, which is actually the small holding area where they put people they are waiting to seat. Surprise surprise, it was full of customers waiting to be seated! This would have been utterly ridiculous situation for us to find ourselves in, like having a cocktail at a bus stop and I was very offended that they would have happily taken money from us for the drinks first then put us in such a substandard seating area like that, jammed in with the customers still waiting to be seated. Did they think we are morons? So we declined the offer, paid the bill and went out into the night to find somewhere else to have our post-meal drink. We checked our booking when we got home and discovered that it had stipulated in the booking that 'Your table will be booked for 1 hour 45 minutes for parties of up to 4; and 2 hours for parties of 5+.' We had obviously missed that important T&C when we made the booking online. Even so it simply doesn't make any sense to impose that on people when you are serving a large set menu of several courses, which takes time to eat and enjoy. That is really dumb. There doesn't seem to be anywhere in the restaurant that you can relax and have a drink after your meal, they just don't cater for that. Unless of course you are prepared to trough your food down like a pig, in which case you might perhaps find you have a few minutes left at your table at the end, to neck your cocktail or brandy as fast as you possibly can and still meet the hard deadline. However, to all intents and purposes, although there are drinks on the menu, be warned that you quite possibly won't be able to have any at the end of your meal, so if you want them you'd better get them all lined up right at the start and then enjoy your cocktail and brandy at the same time as your food and wine! It really spoiled the experience and left us feeling short changed. The general vibe we got is that they just want you in, take your money and get you out as quickly as possible, so it all seems a bit fake and disrespectful. That is definitely not what we want when we go out to eat. Good food alone doesn't necessarily make for a...

This place is ok. We had the lunch menu which is £21 plus 12.5% service charge which will be added to your bill. The service is pretty standard Chinese - not great. The restaurant is aiming to look like a darkened bar or something. It's pleasant enough. For the lunch menu you get starter + main + noodle/rice. Chinese tea is about £3.50 or more for fancier teas. This is quite expensive. I wanted to order a pint of beer (£5), but they said the taps were being cleaned. IDK how long this takes but they never repaired them. Instead I was offered a small bottle of Tsing Tao for £5.50. No thanks. The starter options were only very boring takeaway-type options namely sweetcorn or sour soup, prawn toast, veg spring rolls, or ribs with either BBQ or sweet sour sauce. We had one of the BBQ and one sweet sour sauce. The BBQ sauce is the Chinese-style BBQ not American (thankfully!), the sweet sour was very sweet, not to my taste. The ribs themselves didn't really taste of anything, like they were not exactly dry but not moist and sort of grilled. Not unpleasant in any way, but nothing yummy. The main course they had a few more options such as stir fried morning glory (really a side dish), kung pao prawns/chicken or cumin beef. We had the kung pao prawns and the cumin beef. The kung pao prawns were unfortunately again a quite Americanised version - sweet sour breaded prawns with some chilis. They were not bad if you like sweet sour but I dislike it. The side dish of egg fried rice and noodles were both quite good in fact, the noodles had some reasonable wok hei and the egg fried rice was tasty. The beef was quite tasty. Overall I would not go back to this restaurant because there is nothing that blew me away and there is nothing really interesting on the lunch menu and the a la carte is more expensive than the best Chinese restaurants in London, which cannot be justified by the cooking. There are lots of great Chinese restaurants around Southampton where you can get delicious food for under £10. I have lived in Asia for a number of years and I would judge the food here is bowdlerised. If you are looking for an inoffensive restaurant with a sort of darkened cocktail bar-type environment and don't mind paying over the top, it might meet your needs, but it...