Restaurant Review: Sabor

By Betty Richardson

The Place
Shanghai has its fair share of celebrity chef endorsements these days – chefs who put their name on a restaurant and hire a head chef to run it in their image. Jason Atherton's Commune Social and Table No.1, the Jean Georges restaurants at Three on the Bund, Paul Pairet's Mr & Mrs Bund (and soon to be Unico), Joël Robuchon's L'Atelier, Umberto Bombana's Otto e Mezzo and now even two newly opened Alvin Leung concepts. It's a lucrative business, all the more since the Shanghai Michelin Guide is set to be unveiled this fall.

Joining this bunch is Diego Guerrero, a Spanish chef whose restaurant Dstage in Madrid currently holds one Michelin Star, was described by the New York Times as "provocative but never gimmicky, and consistently delectable." If only his Shanghai output, Sabor, were the same.

The Food
A restaurant with no menu so to speak, guests choose between three choices, priced RMB300, 400 and 500 for eight, nine, or eleven courses. In the kitchen full-time is Chef Gonzalo Sainz, who formerly worked with Guerrero at Dstage, though we are told the dishes are designed by Guerrero himself.

As with Dstage, Sabor shoots for provocative fine dining. Convention is thrown to the wind, almond cake and coffee paired with eel, black garlic with meringue, foie gras with hoisin sauce. The menu is described as flexible, but over two visits spaced nearly two months apart trying the RMB500 and 300 menus, what we got was virtually the same, with the more expensive menu longer.
For the sake of clarity, we'll state that our first visit to Sabor was disastrous to the point that it felt cruel to write about it. And while the second visit, detailed below, wasn't great either, some of the flavors had improved.

Sabor starts with off promisingly with seafood amuse bouche, served on a bewitchingly beautiful dry ice box with seaweed draped over across it. It's a fantastic-looking effect that conjures images of a cold, misty ocean, though at odds with the warm oysters inside it.
Next comes 'Pekin Duck Foie Gras,' which attempts to recreate the experience of Beijing roast duck – that luxurious sensation of biting through crisp yet delicate duck skin – with spring roll pastry and foie gras mousse laced with hoisin sauce.
Mr. Guerrero needs to book himself on a flight to Beijing to try the real thing ASAP, because it is infinitely better than this creation. The foie gras mousse inside tasted like it had been violated with cheap, sweet buttercream icing.

Smoked eel 'nigiri' with almond cake and coffee and shiso leaf is another bracing combination, though more successful than the foie gras. We also noticed it was a good deal less grainy and refrigerator cold than our first visit.
Sticking with the positives, the warm hamachi fish in tomato water with pipparas (a kind of long, green pepper commonly eaten in the Basque Country, Spain) had also improved from our first visit. The raw fish cooks gently in the tomato water, while still retaining its pleasant fleshiness.
From the RMB500 menu, the smokey slow-cooked Australian wagyu beef was also good, though certainly not enough to deal with the lesser dishes included in this set (I'm looking at you, greasy fried beef tendons).
The happy notes end there. Aside from there being virtually zero vegetables on either the RMB300 or 500 menus, our other gripe with Sabor from our second visit was that the (many) deep-fried items had an 'old oil' flavor to them, which literally put a bad taste in our mouths for the remainder of the menu. That's just not OK for RMB300, and certainly not for RMB500.

It was a shame that 'old oil' flavor corrupted the flavor of Sabor's milk-fed suckling pig with black quinoa, two micro zuchini and a solitary slice of radish.
It was also a shame it crept into the fried calamari and shrimp heads.
The final straw was the cod fish with sago, 'superior sauce' and spiky tendrils of deep-fried kombu (seaweed).
We don't go much for over the top plating, but somebody seriously needs to work on this. To us, it looked like something that had been hauled from the murky, satanic depths of the Huangpu River. Taste-wise, the fish was spongy, underseasoned and mushy.
Food verdict: 1/3

The Vibe
Despite the food, the service we got at Sabor on both visits was professional and thoughtful. On visit two, our Chinese server did a particularly great job of explaining each course in English, and the bilingual front of house staff are doing a great job welcoming guests and taking reservations.
Vibe verdict: 1/1

Value for Money
Fine dining is expensive, this we all know, and it is commendable that Sabor is attempting to bring an affordable version of Spanish 'haute cuisine' to China. However, it's clear they need to go back to the drawing board and improve the quality of these dishes if they're going to compete with the other more value driven restaurants in Shanghai.
Value for Money: 0/1

TOTAL VERDICT: 2/5
Price: RMB300-500 per person (excluding drinks)
Who's going: locals, a smattering of well-heeled expats
Good for: Bund-side dining

Sabor, 33 Sichuan Zhong Lu, by Yan'an Dong Lu.

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