Enjoy premium seafood of the season at the Warldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund, where the ingredients are now at their best. Provided to China Daily

Shanghai

The Waldorf Astoria Shanghai on the Bund is taking advantage of the best ingredients of the season, including an offering of the traditional steamed hairy crab.

The set menu in the hotel's Wei Jing Ge Chinese restaurant is perfectly balanced between the delicately flavored dishes and the richer options.

After the marinated appetizers, our first dish is baked crab shell stuffed with wild mushroom. You have to wait 15 minutes for it, but you know the wait is worth every minute when you taste the luxurious mix of mushrooms, crab and cheese.

Up next is the crabmeat soup with green vegetable, a thick but refreshing soup perfumed by the fragrance of crab. These first dishes are just to get you started.

For the ladies, you have to try the braised mushroom with fish maw, as the fish maw is full of collagen, a precious ingredient good for the complexion, especially in the low humidity of autumn.

The long anticipated steamed crab is from the famous Yangcheng Lake, already a designer branding for the hairy or mitten crabs. You have a choice of female crabs weighing in at 200 grams or the 250g male crabs. The sweet, crystal white flesh and rich crab roe make the complicated process of dismantling the crab a rewarding experience.

Since hairy crabs are believed to have a cooling effect on the body, the crab is eaten dipped into vinegar with minced ginger to dispel the chill. A cup of spicy, sweet ginger tea is also offered after you finish the meal.

Sam Yuen, the restaurant's chef from Hong Kong, reveals the secret to the vinegar dip.

"We use the vinegar from Zhenjiang (a major vinegar production area in Jiangsu province), the taste of which matches the crabmeat best. We also add sugar and salt in the proportion of 10 to one. In fact, salt is crucial to enhance the flavor," he says.

The restaurant also provides the proper tools: a pair of scissors to trim the legs, a long thin stick to pick out the meat and a pair of nutcrackers to get into the claws.

A specially prepared dish of noodles end the meal, and again, the secret is in the details, says the chef. The noodles, smothered with sauted crabmeat, is infused with the aroma of crab and quickly earned the appreciation of all at the table. Chef Yuen says the fragrance comes from the oil they use, an infusion he gets by stewing the crab shells for hours.

The set menu is priced at 688 yuan per person with a 15-percent service charge.

You can contact the writer at yangyijun@chinadaily.com.cn.

China Daily

(China Daily 11/06/2011 page13)