Yong Yi Ting

Green peas, minced fish, a Hangzhou line

Green peas set the register before the fish ball arrives. Fu Yue Liang , consultant chef at Yong Yi Ting in Pudong, Shanghai, uses the dish to hold Hangzhou cuisine in a hotel dining room without blurring its edges. The method depends on restraint: minced fish worked to a clean texture, seasoning held back, the peas allowed to mark the season rather than decorate the plate. Fu’s role here began with the restaurant’s January 19, 2024 relaunch, when Yong Yi Ting reopened with a stronger emphasis on Hangzhou while keeping its Jiangnan roots. His parallel work as chef-owner at Ru Yuan in Hangzhou gives the Shanghai kitchen a line back to the place whose vocabulary it now speaks most directly. In 2025, he received Master Chef of the Year from the Chinese Restaurant Awards, Asia Region, recognition attached to the same continuity rather than a change of direction.

A Jiangnan kitchen tuned to lightness

The kitchen’s task is not to make Jiangnan cooking louder. It has to keep it legible. Yong Yi Ting works through fresh seasonal ingredients, light seasoning, aromatic broths, steaming, braising, and crisping, the techniques that let Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and Hangzhou references sit together without heaviness. The restaurant has held one Michelin star from the 2017 Shanghai guide through the 2025 edition, and that consistency rests on dishes whose success is easy to overstate and hard to fake. Hangzhou-style minced fish ball with green peas asks for clarity in texture. Lion’s Head pork dumpling needs depth without greasiness. Crispy River Eel relies on the point at which a sweet glaze clings to the surface but does not soften the fry. The menu moves between à la carte, tasting menu, and small plates, and the pass shows whether the broth tastes balanced, whether the dumpling skin keeps its bite, and whether a seasonal ingredient reads as part of the dish rather than an ornament.

Below Pudong, a quiet room

The room sits 21 feet underground, but it is not sealed off. Floor-to-ceiling windows open onto a sunken patio, giving the dining room natural light below the level of Pudong’s streets. After the relaunch, the space took its cues from Chinese gardens and Jiangnan water towns: perforated screens that recall Suzhou garden walls, sheer curtains marked with ink-like strokes, natural stones, traditional elements, and gilded accents kept low enough that the food remains the center of gravity. It is a formal room, quiet in tone, with the rhythm of a hotel restaurant but not the anonymity that can come with one. The pass has to carry that tension: precision for the setting, softness for the cuisine. When the Hangzhou-style minced fish ball reaches the table, the green peas make the argument in plain terms.