Michelin Publishes Its First Guide to Mainland China in Shanghai

The Michelin Guide announced its first selection for Shanghai on 21 September 2016. It was the guide’s first edition in mainland China, after Hong Kong and Macau in 2008, and it awarded 35 stars to 26 restaurants.

The selection

One restaurant received three stars: T’ang Court, the Cantonese restaurant of The Langham hotel in Xintiandi. The choice surprised many local diners, who did not consider it the best table in the city, but it was consistent with the guide’s record in Hong Kong, where the restaurant of the same name also held three stars.

Seven restaurants received two stars. Three were European: 8½ Otto e Mezzo Bombana, L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon and Ultraviolet, Paul Pairet’s single-table restaurant with projections and sound for each course. Four were Chinese: Canton 8, Imperial Treasure Fine Chinese Cuisine, Yi Long Court at The Peninsula Shanghai and Yong Foo Elite, in a former consulate villa. Canton 8, a modest Cantonese restaurant with dim sum at everyday prices, was described at the time as the least expensive two-star restaurant in the world.

Among the 18 one-star restaurants were Fu He Hui, the vegetarian restaurant of chef Tony Lu; Lao Zheng Xing, a Shanghainese institution founded more than 140 years earlier; and Taian Table, the counter restaurant of the German chef Stefan Stiller. A further 25 restaurants received the Bib Gourmand.

The reaction

The guide was criticised in Shanghai for the weight it gave to Cantonese cooking over the city’s own cuisine and those of neighbouring Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Of the eight restaurants with two or three stars, five were Cantonese or Cantonese-led. The day after the announcement, Taian Table was closed by the authorities for operating without the correct licence in a residential building; it later reopened at a new address and kept its star.

Ten years on

The subsequent history gave both the critics and the guide some satisfaction. Ultraviolet reached three stars the following year. Taian Table followed and is today the only three-star restaurant in the region. And in 2026 Michelin merged its Shanghai and Hangzhou guides into a single edition for Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, giving the cooking of the Yangtze Delta the space that the first edition was accused of denying it.