Madame Shanghai is the newest addition to the Lotus Dining Group (Lotus Galeries, Lotus Barangaroo, Lotus Dumpling Bar Walsh Bay, Papa Bo Min), and it’s one with a big emphasis on the bar program, group bar operations manager Kate McGraw tells us.
The venue is a 60-seater eatery and 30-seater bar serving up yum cha and Shanghai street food, and the decor mines a 1930’s Shanghai kind of aesthetic.
But it’s the drinks that we took notice of — specifically the ’76 Negroni, which could be Sydney’s most expensive cocktail right now — and the list has been put together by McGraw. She’s taken the opulence of the venue and applied that to some of the cocktails: the vintage spirits in the ’76 Negroni make one luxurious example; the Ninth Rite (Koval Millet, tarragon mirin, apple, bamboo, pepperberry) employs Asian flavours and includes Chicago-based distillery Koval’s millet spirit (millet being a popular spirit base in Nepal, apparently); or you could order a Poets & Artists (buttered cognac, saline, mustard seed, liquorice root), simply because those are flavour combos you’re unlikely find to elsewhere (they had us at ‘buttered cognac.’)
Madame Shanghai (www.lotusdining.com.au/restaurant/madame-shanghai) is found at 18 College Street, Darlinghurst, and is open six days a week from Tuesday to Sunday.
