New Shanghai Legend @ The Intermark

New Shanghai Legend @ The Intermark, opened since May 2013, serves a wide array of sumptuous Chinese cuisine in a classy environment.

When you step into the restaurant, you're greeted with an appealing interior of dark timber wood paneling, flooring and tables.  The plush red velvety chairs and sofas (menu as well) oozes a distinctive feel of stylish elegance and sophistication.  The decor of old oriental art posters gives it the old Shanghai feel...lovely!

Their extensive menu ranges from canapés (or starters) to double-boiled soups to dried seafood treasures (like Buddha Jumps Over The Wall and shark's fin soup) to steamboat to fried rice/noodles to desserts and even premium Chinese tea selection.  There's also a long list of chef recommended dishes that you can rely on if you don't know what to order.
 

As soon as we were seated, they served us an Appetiser (of thin strips of unripened mango marinated with bits of sour plum) @ RM8 to stimulate our tastebuds.  It was refreshing and (surprisingly) not overly sour.  We're off to a good start!

We started off (from the canapés menu) with the Dragon Fruit Seafood Salad Boat @ RM12.  In this 'boat', you'd find a piece of baby octopus, scallop, prawn and crab stick with cubes of dragon fruit at the bottom.  It was (probably) dressed in Japanese mayo with bits of ebiko on top.  It was ok...simple but not spectacular!

Our next starter was the Whitebait Fish With Salted Egg @ RM15.  It was coated in batter and salted egg yolk with some slithers of kaffir lime leaves and bird's eye chilli thrown in for added flavour.  It was deep fried till super crunchy and was a delight to eat, though a tad on the salty side.  It would have been better eaten with rice (to lessen the saltiness).
 

I ordered a chef recommended dish of Deep Fried Shrimp Ball & Shimeji Mushrooms @ RM45 which came with just 4 measly fried shrimp balls sitting on top a piece of Japanese cucumber with a fair amount of battered shimeji mushrooms.  This was another ok dish.
 

Another chef's recommendation was the Deep Fried Star Garoupa with Pomelo & Lemon Sauce @ RM88 with a beautiful presentation (but not as pretty as the picture in the menu though).  The monstrosity of the thing standing at the back is the carcass of the garoupa which has been deep fried.  Although there were some remnants of fish flesh on it, it was overly fried to the extent of being dry, so if you have thoughts of devouring the fish carcass (coz that's what the Chinese like to do), you can forget it because it was inedible.

This is the flesh of the garoupa which were sliced, battered lightly and deep fried.  The fish slices had a slight crisp but were still delicate.  They were served with pomelo sacs, sliced shallots and fried cuttlefish bits in a slightly sourish lemon sauce....it was full of zesty flavours.   I enjoyed this dish the most as it had the freshness (of the pomelo), crispiness (of the cuttlefish) and tartness (of the lemon) to whet your appetite.
 

Our next dish was the Fried Rice with Crab Meat @ RM28.  This simple fried rice, with bits of egg and crab meat, was rather tasty except they had to spoil it with the addition of "daun sup" (some kind of parsley which has a strong resemblance to Chinese parsley...don't know what it's called in English, perhaps celery leaves?)  As much as I love the taste of Chinese parsley, the taste of "daun sup" is more intense (even I dislike it)....who puts "daun sup" in fried rice anyway?  [#Tip: Children would definitely not like this, so it's best to order some other type of fried rice.]

Our final order was the Double-Boiled Shark's Fin Soup with Bamboo Fungus @ RM68 (for one pax) from the dried seafood treasures section of the menu.  This was ordered so that I could finish off the value in my vouchers but I would soon regret my choice.  It was a big letdown in terms of taste and price!  [#Note: As the pricing here is pretty upmarket, I was able to sample the menu by relying on discount vouchers offered by a group buying site.]

The soup base was highly flavoured with pepper....it was a bit like drinking "chee tow tong" (peppered pig's stomach soup) though not as peppery hot.  I did find one piece of bamboo fungus (or bamboo pith) and some (small) pieces of shark's fin.  Don't know what the finely shredded stuff was because it tasted dry and bland (my guess it's crab though it didn't taste like fresh crabmeat at all...it was more like the poor quality shredded crabmeat we buy off the shelf).  It tasted like what's left of the meat after every drop of its liquid or flavour had been squeezed out of it.
 

Surprisingly, the drinks were reasonably cheap in comparison.  You can get an Orange Juice @ RM6 or an Iced Lemon Tea for the same price.

My Personal Opinion

Overall, I would say that there were some 'hits' and some 'misses' as well.  The prices are not exactly 'wallet-friendly' as a meal here can easily cost you RM100 - RM150 per person.  At these prices (somewhat similar to hotel-type Chinese restaurants), I would expect premium ingredients but, sadly, it came up short.

Would I return?  Hmm, I'm not so sure (the jury is still out on this one).  I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying the quality did not match the price.  If I do return, it would be for the not-so-premium items (as the menu did contain a considerable amount of fairly priced dishes between RM20 - RM30 that turned out quite ok).

A promising start that came to a disappointing end!  If you want to give this place a try, I would suggest you stick with the non-premium dishes which I feel are better value-for-money and better tasting as well.

Likes:  The Whitebait with Salted Egg and Deep Fried Star Garoupa with Pomelo & Lemon Sauce.

Didn't like at all:  Definitely the Double-Boiled Shark's Fin Soup with Bamboo Fungus!  At RM68 a bowl, it didn't wow me...I expected a lot more.  Hey, I would take a (lesser quality but tastes better) RM15 bowl of Shark's Fin & Crabmeat Soup (from one of my 'go to' steakhouses) anytime over this one.  Luckily, I only paid half price for this (because of the discount vouchers), otherwise I would be really pissed (even at half price, I'm still pissed)!!

New Shanghai Legend

Lot G-12 Intermark Mall
The Intermark
348 Jalan Tun Razak
50400 Kuala Lumpur
Tel: 03-2181 2731