The Shang Palace 50th Anniversary Menu is A Set of 50 Itself - Men's Folio
Lifestyle, Wine & Dine

The Shang Palace 50th Anniversary Menu is A Set of 50 Itself

  • By Bryan Goh

The Shang Palace 50th Anniversary Menu is a Set of 50 Itself
For anybody who is a millenial born on the cusp of the 1990s or a Gen-Zer, you might not know that Shang Palace was the place to be if you were of legal age to drink. Business moguls brokered deals over dishes (fat cats in suits!) and the OG fashion folks courted advertisers over lunch here (remember something called the corporate card?). With their 50th anniversary however, Shang Palace is now for everybody. In fact, it has quite perfectly nailed down how we like to eat — we want choices.


The Shang Palace 50th Anniversary Menu is a Set of 50 Itself
Three bite-sized portions of steamed pork dumplings and shrimp with coriander. 

What you’re then going to be mind-boggled with the Shang Palace 50th anniversary menu is no thanks to Chef Mok, the good chef who mined the troves of the restaurant’s treasures. More specifically, it is a throwback to the restaurant’s opening where a gala dinner was held.

Held from today till 30 June 2021, the highlight of the Shang Palace 50th anniversary menu are three specially commissioned dim sum pushcarts (no angry aunts here, just lovely ladies serving you) where 50 old-school favourites are served.


Not just your run-of-the-mill siew mai, this one is served with quail eggs. 

You might not know this either but what Chef Mok has also done is another throwback to a hippy-dippy concept of the 1970s — a “no-waste” philosophy. While chefs back then maximised ingredients by using every part of it, it demanded a kind of Kill Bill-esque level of knife skills too. Pork had to be sliced so thinly that each piece becomes translucent and even something so simple like deboning a quail had to be done properly, lest its skin or flesh becomes damaged.



The classic: the Shang Palace Classic barbecued meat and poultry platter.

But what is Chinese cooking without some greatness? And this greatness, starts with the raw materials used in the Shang Palace 50th anniversary menu. A 50-year aged tangerine peel (the Cantonese used to prize it more than gold, go figure) is used to add a zesty kick to a simple bowl of red been soup. Dried olive seeds (a delicacy previous reserved for the wealthy) are used for their light flavours — an age old superfood used in the present.

The Shang Palace 50th Anniversary Menu is a Set of 50 Itself
The old: the barbeque method for the pork roll. The new: chicken liver drizzled in honey sauce. The taste: fantastic. 

“It is the duty of the chef to pass down knowledge; and to share wholeheartedly,” shares Chef Mok — a reference to how he wants the boomers and the young to eat when they do with the Shang Palace 50th anniversary menu. It’s going to be great. It’s going to be sumptuous. And most importantly, it’s going to be worth trying out all 50.

Once you’re done with this story about the Shang Palace 50th anniversary menu, click here to catch up with our May 2021 issue.