It’s been three months since Shang, the anticipated restaurant by acclaimed chef Susur Lee, arrived in Manhattan. But despite Lee’s list of accomplishments—from battling Bobby Flay on Iron Chef to owning successful Toronto restaurants Madeline’s and Lee—Shang has received less than flattering reviews.
Adam Platt of New York magazine described the restaurant—located on the second floor of the boutique hotel Thompson LES on the Lower East Side—as “low-slung and haphazardly lit,” with “generic club music,” and “a few scraggly sprays of cherry blossoms and oversize lanterns made out of what look like rumpled old stockings.” He considers the restaurant “too prosaic.”
The menu has been referred to as extensive—with surprising appearances like jerk chicken—but missing key foods such as anything including a noodle. Shang’s signature is the $16 slaw with 19 ingredients. “It goes down easy and doesn’t fill you up. You’ll forget about it minutes later. In other words, it’s everything a slaw should be,” wrote Ryan Sutton of Bloomberg. “But is even this gussied-up version of an unassuming side dish worth $16?” Sutton doesn’t think so.
Yet, The Toronto Star's Corey Mintz maintains Lee's flagship Manhattan restaurant does Canada proud. Mintz writes that "Shang is on a bigger stage than Susur, Lee's previous flagship restaurant in Toronto, but it's downscaled in tone. The service is breezier. No dish costs more than $29. There is no tasting menu. Six dishes (plenty) arrived in pairs and no one rushed us to the next course on any visit."
