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155 Enterprise Road
Chisipite
04 443263/443264

Shangri-La A taste of Eden? 2012

For me part of the enjoyment of eating at a Chinese restaurant is the opportunity to sample as many dishes as possible.  It is definitely a case of “the more the merrier” and so on a recent visit to Shangri-La there were five of us spanning three generations.

Shangri-La is a fictional utopia, from the novel “Lost Horizons” by James Hilton, set in the Himalayas, an earthly paradise, a permanently happy place, isolated from the outside world and where one’s aging is arrested.  Closer to home, it is a very popular Chinese eatery on the Enterprise Road!  You are spoilt for choice with seating options, which include the main dining room, private rooms, the gazebo and the front veranda, which is where we sat on a hot afternoon – it overlooks the garden with a meandering stream, and provides an excellent vantage point to observe the comings and goings of the patrons and is also conveniently close to a very well-stocked bar.

Drinks to hand we started to peruse the menu.  The choice is immense and somewhat daunting.  Suffice to say that there is all that one would expect to find at a Chinese restaurant and more, including dishes from other Eastern cuisines.  To aid in selection the most popular dishes are helpfully indicated with a heart and those dishes with more heat are indicated with a chilli.  For those “in the know” there is a second menu, the ‘Chinese’ one, which contains more traditional cuisine and illustrations of the dishes.  The waiters are useful sources of information as to ingredients and cooking methods.

Our starters comprised wonton soup with dumplings, a generous serving that would be adequate as a meal for one, chicken and vegetable spring rolls and beef satay.  The soup was good but I found the spring rolls somewhat bland and unfortunately the beef satay was overcooked, however it was replaced, without too much fuss, with a less overdone offering and the peanut and chilli dipping sauce that accompanied it was delicious.

Our feast of main courses looked overwhelming when arranged on the table - the servings are large and each main would comfortably serve two.  We had beef and black beans with green pepper in oyster sauce, which for me was the star of the performance.  The crispy duck was very good but needed a dipping sauce of its own, whilst the chicken and cashew nuts were a tried and tested favourite which did not disappoint.  The garlic prawns, although tasty, had not been properly cleaned and it was a messy business de-shelling them and removing the veins.  My choice of vegetable, steamed pak choi or “Chinese cabbage”, was not a success with our table – the children pronouncing it as worse than spinach!  I however find it a pleasant foil to the fattiness of the food.  As accompaniments we had plain noodles, egg fried rice and a type of pumpkin fritter from the alternative menu.  These fritters, when hot, are crispy and sweet air-filled balls, more suited as a dessert to our palates, and although delicious, they do become more chewy when they cool.

I would recommend that the restaurant employs the use of spirit lamps to keep the food hot.  The very nature of a meal of this sort leads to protracted eating as one samples the various dishes in different combinations and the food tends to cool quite quickly, losing its appeal in the process.

We did justice to our meal and were more than comfortably satisfied, with sufficient left-over’s to fill a few doggy bags too!  Too full to contemplate any further eating we declined pudding and ended the meal with a pot of Chinese, or green, tea.  This is a refreshing beverage which greatly aids digestion and can, in fact should, be drunk during the meal.

So our visit to this particular Shangri-La....................It did provide respite from the real world for a few hours and it did involve some happiness.  I am not sure that it did anything to prolong our lives or halt the aging process.  The food was generally good, with a few small disappointments and the service was less attentive than it should have been.  That said, it is a pleasant place to enjoy an inexpensive meal in the company of family and friends, I do however believe that Shangri-La could raise the bar a little to differentiate itself from other Chinese establishments in Harare.

Speciality Restaurant
3 Plates
Expect to spend $15 to $25 per head
155 Enterprise Road Chisipite Harare

 

 

 

Shangri-la - authentically Chinese, great value 2011
Shangri-la is a mythical place of happiness, perhaps even the Garden of Eden, based in reality on the remote Himalayan kingdom of Hunza which incidentally I visited many years ago.  I remember that people were indeed happy there and most were over 100 years old (the youth presumably fled to the less happy but also less remote and much more comfortable urban areas) and lived on a vegetarian diet!

Anyhow back to the present and our Shangri-la, a highly decorated (as in Red Lanterns rather than Michelin stars!) restaurant on the Enterprise Road.  Sunday evening and the restaurant was full so I was glad that I had booked a table.  Even though it was a cold evening people were eating at tables on the verandah, inside people were waiting for their take-aways, sitting at the bar and the vast restaurant, complete with large flat-screen televisions on the wall at both ends, was buzzing.  Very encouraging was the fact that most of the diners were from the Far East (I hesitate to state that they were Chinese) and were concentrating on their food with singular attention!

The menu, presented to us by our non-Chinese waiter, is vast, but help is at hand in the form of the most popular dishes being marked.  Every kind of meat is offered, including Lamb which I don’t normally associate with Chinese cuisine, similarly a selection of fish and vegetarian dishes all designated by numbers, so I can report that there were 292 dishes in total!  In addition the menu featured “specials” – a selection of lunch dishes at $8 and $12 which seemed excellent value to me. Thankfully the wine list was not as comprehensive, in fact there wasn’t one - and we chose a white wine (Nederburg Chardonnay) from a selection of three shown to us at our table.

It was definitely a case of stabbing a finger at the menu and this proved an excellent strategy as my starter of “deep fried mushrooms with oyster sauce” was superb – the mushrooms were the small button variety and had a strong flavour which was not overpowered by the frying and a hint of piquancy from the sauce to make them interesting.  My companion chose the chicken satay which was disappointingly dry (always a risk with poultry) and not served with the traditional thick peanut sauce but a poor thin imitation with no discernable flavour.  

Undaunted by the substantial size of our starters we moved onto our main courses – crispy duck for me, and crispy prawns for my friend, accompanied by noodles chow mein and egg-fried rice.  Although well-flavoured my duck lacked the crispy skin I was so looking forward to and I suspect was a breast rather than carved from the full bird.  The prawns however were large, juicy and perfectly cooked in a light tempura-style batter. The noodles liberally interspersed with vegetables were a meal in themselves and would have been more than enough for two – it slowly dawned on me why so many people were leaving with “doggy-bags”! Unfortunately none of the dishes were heated and our food rapidly became unappetisingly cold.  I’m sorry to report that we were defeated when it came to sweets, and opted for the very un-Chinese drink of coffee, which was very acceptable filter.

This is definitely a restaurant to return to, if only to finger-stab at a different page of the vast menu.  Dishes, especially considering the large portions, are very reasonably priced and it would be possible to economise by sharing a dish without leaving hungry.  The décor is traditionally Chinese with lots of Red Lanterns hanging from the ceiling and minimal table settings.  Even the television screens which normally would be a big irritation seemed acceptable in this relaxed family environment!  Open every day except Monday.
4 Plates
Expect to spend $20 to $30 per head
155 Enterprise Road Chisipite Harare

 

 

Shangri-la 2010
Shangri-la is a mystical, harmonious valley, that has become synonymous with an earthly paradise but particularly a mythical Himalayan utopia — a permanently happy land.  Shangri-la is often used in a similar context to "The Garden of Eden” to represent a paradise on earth.  In the good old stories Shangri-la was supposed to be situated somewhere on the border between China and Tibet, so we are extremely lucky to have our very own Shangri-la right here in Harare just along the Enterprise Road! 

Our local Zimbabwean version of Shangri-la is a fittingly handsome venue.  The roofs of the restaurant have been trimmed with red ceramic tiles in the traditional Chinese concave shape.  There is a beautiful open pavilion in the garden as well as extensive seating on the verandah for diners who prefer to eat outside.  The gardens are delightfully landscaped complete with a small flowing water feature which diners have to cross over on a small wooden bridge.  The tables are laid with bright yellow silky tablecloths and tomato red overlays and the chairs have crisp white loose covers on them.  Apart from being very attractive, red is traditionally the colour signifying good fortune and celebration – particularly apt for this setting.  Huge red Chinese lanterns and outdoor lights in the garden complete the alluring and inviting facade.

Menus and our drinks were served promptly on arrival.  We decided to go to our table immediately, although there is a small bar area inside for pre-prandial drinks, should you so desire.  The menu is absolutely enormous and a bit overwhelming for us uneducated Westerners.  There were two full pages of soups on offer as well as two pages of starters and for main courses diners can chose from a variety of beef, chicken, lamb, pork or duck.  There is also a selection of tofu dishes (a kind of bean curd which has a cheese like texture) and vegetarian dishes.  A big selection of different flavoured rice and noodle accompaniments was also listed.  I felt a bit rushed by our waiter as we didn’t really have enough time to look through the menu thoroughly before ordering.  Although our waiter was friendly and polite and extremely efficient I felt that he could have given us some advice or some recommendations to help us decide what to order, for example, I ordered a plate of spicy rice to accompany my main course and my partner ordered a plate of noodles.  Portions are so generous that either one of the dishes would be more than enough for two. 

I decided on the won ton soup with dumplings to start and my partner ordered vegetable spring rolls – both fairly safe and unadventurous choices but both very good.  My only complaint was that both dishes were served at very hot temperatures, so much so that I scorched my mouth on the soup.  Main courses included several Sichuan dishes as well as numerous curried or very spicy dishes.  Some stories put Shangri-la in the Sichuan province of southwest China.  Sichuan cuisine is famed for bold flavours, particularly the pungency and spiciness resulting from liberal use of garlic, ginger and chili peppers and is known for its balance of the five fundamental taste senses in each dish or the overall meal: hot (spicy), sour, sweet, salty, and (optional) bitter. 

My partner ordered the stir-fried sizzling beef and onions for his main course and I, bravely, opted for a green curry prawn dish.  The beef was served literally sizzling – extremely hot, in temperature rather than taste.  The salty beef with the slightly sweet almost caramelized onions was very tender and tasty.  My prawn curry was delicious but VERY spicy.  The prawns were cooked with carrots and broccoli which made it a little less hot.  Together with the spicy rice it certainly had a very fiery flavour. Main courses are served with a complementary dish of chopped red chilies, should your tastes veer towards the positively masochistic.  My Chinese recipe book tells me that “common preparation techniques in Sichuan cuisine include stir frying, steaming and braising, but a complete list would include more than 20 distinct techniques. Beef is somewhat more common in Sichuan cuisine than it is in other Chinese cuisines, perhaps due to the prevalence of oxen in the region”.

Although there is no formal wine list several local and South African wines are available.  The bar is also fully stocked with spirits, beers and soft drinks, although, disappointingly there didn’t seem to be any sake available.  Perhaps it is just kept for special guests.

Other diners included several tables of guests of Chinese or Indian descent, surely a good recommendation for an exotic themed restaurant.  Quite a few tables also had children accompanying their parents.  The kids had a great time playing in the garden and floating “boats” down the water feature and under the bridge.  Presumably their parents ordered the less spicy dishes for them.  I noticed that most groups of diners left with large doggy-bags because the portions are so generous.  My advice would be for patrons to order a number of different starters each, rather than the main courses, so that everyone could sample a little of the delights on offer.  Also remember that one dish of rice or noodles is more than adequate for two people.

Desserts on offer include deep fried bananas or apples with cream or ice cream, as well as the ubiquitous ice cream and chocolate sauce, and of course Chinese bow ties.  I had the bananas and ice cream, which helped to soothe my tingling taste buds, and we finished off with a pot of traditional Chinese green tea served without milk or sugar.

We both thoroughly enjoyed our meals although the almost military speed with which the food was served made us feel a little pressurised and rushed. The restaurant is deservedly very popular and very busy, so pre-booking is advised.  In terms of quantity, taste and variety it is definitely great value for money and an excitingly exotic eating experience which I would highly recommend.   
Speciality Restaurant
4 plates
Expect to spend $ 20 to $ 30 per head