The Cantonese restaurant Ai Mei impressed me most with its marvelous fish-tank door front during my first visit there. In the stunning huge aquarium, which is shaped like a gate at the entrance, there are reportedly 2,800 fish. It is said to be a special design for good "feng shui."

In addition to the grand aquarium entrance,nearly all decorations and arrangement of the 2,000-square-metre dining space at Ai Mei are designed with feng shui in mind. The marble floor of the restaurant is enhanced with flowing water. The 19 private rooms of the restaurant are all decorated with glass walls and dazzling bean curtains, which create an exquisite and cozy ambience.

The restaurant seats 360 diners. There is plenty of space between the tables in the dining hall. Diners can enjoy a splendid view of Nanjing Road and People's Square through the floorto-ceiling glass windows.

The food served at Ai Mei Chinese Restaurant has the most popular characteristics of Cantonese cuisine: delicate presentation and mild flavour. My dinner started with dim sum (25 yuan, US$3), one of the Cantonese signature dishes. The course, visually attractive, was composed of a steamed minced pork dumplings with crab roe, a steamed shrimp dumpling, a deep-fried shrimp and chicken spring roll and a vegetable-stuffed dumpling. The dim sum set indeed met the basic standard for high-quality dumplings - thin wrap and rich stuffing. The steamed minced pork dumping with crab roe was especially tasty, plump and with a mild but not greasy flavour.

Cantonese cuisine is famous in China and Southeast Asia not only for its dim sum but also for the slow-cooked soup. The soup I had was called double boiled fishmaw with mushroom (68 yuan, US$8.50). The mushrooms in the soup were heavy and tasted delicate and almost covered the flavour of the fishmaw.

The stir-fried pigeon fillets with zucchini (68 yuan, US$8.50) was a hot dish which tasted much like Shanghainese dishes due to its deepfried preparation and heavy taste. The pigeon fillets tasted rich, properly salty and a little Creative Cantonese like fried seafood while the zucchini was fresh, crispy and delectable. According to Law Yip Lam, an experienced chef from Hong Kong,the preparation of this dish is not complex. His special recipe is to add some oyster oil into the fried pigeon to highlight its delicate flavour.

Dessert - chilled avocado cream (32 yuan, US$4) is especially worthy of recommendation for its unique natural flavour. Unlike many desserts, this one was not too sweet, and was easy to prepare.According to Lam, the dessert was made of avocado pulp, milk, ice cream and honey. The dish served in a porcelain bowl had a lovely green-colour presentation with small slices of kiwi placed in the centre. The fruit flavour was strong,the taste was like yogurt and it was fragrant.

The Ai Mei Chinese Restaurant is part of the newly opened luxury hotel,Le RoyalMeridien Shanghai near People's Square. The owner of the restaurant claimed that it was the biggest restaurant in a five-star hotel in Shanghai. There is no service charge at Ai Mei.

Ai Mei Chinese Restaurant
Location: 8F, Le Royal Meridien Shanghai, 789 East Nanjing Road
Opening hours: 11:30 am-2:30pm, 5:30pm-10:30pm
Tel: 021-33189999 ext 8923