梓桐堂 (Gitone)

From the classmates, I heard about art gallery Gitone (梓桐堂). They also offer pottery and painting classes. I was already enrolled with another workshop, so I didn't need theirs, but what I was interested in, was Gitone's food, private kitchen style. They're active on facebook and update their lunch menu often. For dinner, they usually require a minimum of six persons before they could do it. So if you're a party of two, you might have to wait a bit before getting confirmation from the gallery that dinner is happening.

We made reservations for dinner. Selected the dinner menu that held least number of dishes. It was just A and I. We couldn't eat that much. None of us had any interest in crabs, so that special Shanghai hairy crab menu was bypassed. The wine menu was non-existent. There was only a choice of red or white, table wine, really. We picked a bottle of red, some Chilean merlot. Gitone's private kitchen serves Shanghai style food. A rather elegant interpretation. In the menu we chose, the dishes didn't hold pork as a meat except for the soup and in the broth.

Portions were manageable and well presented. Loved all the plates the dishes arrived on. The 'hand-shredded smoked chicken with black and white pepper' didn't exactly get my attention till the girlfriend squealed, "Try the pepper! It's awesome!" So I did. It was good! The black and white pepper had bits of garlic, basil and spring onions in there too. Piquant. LOVED IT. I ate up the pepper dip; by way of assuaging the cravings for spices. The 'pine nut on sweet and sour giant garouper slices' was light on the palate, however, I could discern Sichuan pepper in there, although it was skilfully done in probably a very light sprinkling. I asked the server and he said yes, there was some done for the oomph. Didn't mind it too much. But the tongue tingled uncomfortably till the next course of 'bamboo fungus and Chinese cabbage in supreme broth'. The desserts, I didn't care for. I dislike desserts like these. UGH. Hot, some more. The girlfriend declared that they were good and proceeded to polish off everything in spite of her groaning about the over-stuffed tummy.