Eat Your Heart Out in Shenzhen

With daily low-cost flights to Shenzhen, we wanted to find out if stopping there on your way to Hong Kong is worth it. A plethora of restaurants have sprung up in this fairly new city to soothe the homesick bellies of its mostly immigrant population. As a result, you can savor even rarer Chinese cuisines than just the ubiquitous urban dishes of Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. And in the mix are some fine-dining restaurants serving top-notch food from out of China.

Xibei Youmian (Noodle Village)

This enormous restaurant with hanging chili peppers as a design element features the rural cuisine of China’s great northwest. A flask of earthy buckwheat tea and bowls of boiled peanuts, roasted sunflower seeds and quail eggs sit on every table. The specialty here is youmian, a noodle made out of baked oats, cute little spindles of dough squeezed and twisted by an assembly line of women. The shape and feel of the pasta will be exotic for southerners, but totally nostalgic for workers from that region. Mutton ribs come with pickled garlic, chili sauce and cumin salt for you to brush on. Also worth trying is the fusion-y culinary oddity—a plate of shanyao (Chinese yam) medallions drizzled with a blueberry sauce—is it an appetizer or a dessert?
Inside Xiangmihu, Futian District, (86-755) 8345-9999. Near Xiangmihu metro station.

Miao Dong

This slightly hard-to-find restaurant serves the rustic cuisine of the Miao ethnic groups. The signature dish here is a plate of Xiangba Island “little lobsters” (Chinese crayfish), great with a bottle of Tsingtao. If you’re not too scared of fish bones, try the perfectly deep-fried “Three Gorges-style” whole fish, topped with a fragrant hot mess of chilies and garlic. There are also spicy soups and hotpots, and a whole chicken wrapped in foil and cooked in its juices, and slippery noodles of konjac jelly (devil’s tongue) stir-fried with tart pickled turnip.
109 Zhen Xing Lu, Futian District, (86-755) 8320-3455.

Zhong Fa Yuan Muslim Restaurant

With Sino-Arabesque patterns on the tablecloths and a quasi-minaret right outside the window, this no-frills restaurant serves the Islamic and Uighur cuisine of Xinjiang and China’s western regions. You can try sorts of buns, rolls, savory cakes and pasta of all shapes and sizes made from flour and more exotic starches, like an oblong noodle made from Tibetan green barley served cold, with a spicy sauce, or orecchiete and trofie-like noodles in a hearty bean soup. Fans of lamb will enjoy their mutton in all forms—kebabs, cubes on toothpicks, slices and stir-fried on iron skillets, drenched in chili oil, or dusted with spices. If you like brains and odd bits of sheep crackling, order the whole head, it comes with the skull. Charming.
Opposite Mouye Baihuo Department Store, Dongmen Zhonglu, Luohu District, (86-755) 8222-4871, (86-755) 8220-3997.

Belle Epoque

Near Gucci and right next to Club Monaco in The MixC, the sprawling luxury-brand mall (“Shenzhen Festival Walk”), lies Belle Epoque, a grand French restaurant all done up in 19th-century art nouveau style. With stunningly spacious bar, lounge and dining areas, the elegant Parisian salon’s interiors (courtesy of famed architect and designer Peter Lynch) are highly stylized, decked out with curvilinear sculptural forms, flowing furniture, with an oh-so in vogue contemporary geometric lozenge wall and bar, plus a petit wine cellar in the corner. Enjoy thoroughly French aperitifs like a perroquet (pastis with mint syrup) or a tomate (with grenadine) for USD5 and relax over a chanson and French fado after a shopping spree, or have a four-course lunch for USD16-USD22 with offerings like cream of taro with duck comfit, oven-baked garoupa, braised lamb shank with thyme, puff pastries and French cheesecake for dessert.
Shop 289, The MixC, 1881 Baoan Nan Rd., Luohu District, (86-755) 8266-8880.

Belle-Vue

Located on the 37th floor of the Grand Hyatt, this Western restaurant has brought the tradition of fine dining and à-la-minute cooking by the table to the Chinese city. Just like the Western restaurants in its sister properties, Hugo’s in Hong Kong and The Vue in Shanghai, cooking stations are located in the dining, where the chef will make the final touch to each dish in front of you. With ceiling-to-floor windows throughout the whole venue, one can get a breathtaking view of the city while dining. The sommelier is also on hand to give recommendations from both the Old and New World wine selection. The hotel told us that Belle-Vue is not the kind of restaurant that imposes Western-style fine dining on the mainland crowd. Instead they want to get mainlanders familiar with this dining concept so the vibe tends to be a lot more casual than other fine dining places that might scare some people off. A dinner is around USD75 a person.
37/F, Grand Hyatt Shenzhen, 1881 Baoan Nan Rd., Luohu District, (86-755) 8266-1234.

A Hard Day’s Night

There is no need to go to scary, dodgy “clubs” for a drink anymore thanks to all the posh new hotels which offer swanky bars with great views. Here are our picks.

The Penthouse
38/F, Grand Hyatt Shenzhen, 1881 Baoan Nan Rd., Luohu District, (86-755) 8266-1234.

Grange Grill
25/F, The Westin Shenzhen Nanshan, 9028-2 Shennan Rd., Nanshan District, (86-755) 2698-8888.

360° Bar, Restaurant & Lounge
31/F, Shangri-la Shenzhen, 1002 Jianshe Rd., Luohu District, (86-755) 8396-1380.

Also: Let us recommend the best hotels here as well as guide you to all the must-visit spots here.