House & Hotel Magazine loves the Golden Flower Hotel which is a beautiful location with a lot of hospitality, a feeling like coming home.
Start with the history lesson.
People’s Republic of China has a population of over 1.5 billion. Covering 10 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world’s second-largest country by land area and the third largest in total area, China’s landscape is vast and you feel always a bit lost.
So, the Golden Flower is a five star hotel offering every desirable amenity like broadband access, fluffy robes and slippers, designer toiletries, complimentary suit pressing and shoe shines. And the classically elegant Golden Flower has plenty of that. Jet-lagged travelers even get a little help from the plush, ever-changing elevator carpets that have the day of the week woven into the nap.
Beyond the upscale niceties that the Golden Flower (it belongs to the Shangri-La Hotel group) offers, it is the hospitality from an exceptional staff that makes this hotel experience deserving of an extra star. Seemingly there is no reasonable request that I might conjure up that they cannot fulfill or at least try to fulfill with great determination. Clearly there is personal pride in their friendly professionalism.
So lets say the award-winning Golden Flower is fit for both royalty and statesmen, who in fact are frequent guests. It is also well suited for ordinary folk like me who like being treated like royalty and statesmen.
Located just 40 minutes from Xianyang International Airport and 30 minutes from the Terracotta Warrior Museum, the hotel offers the most spacious collection of guest rooms and suites in the city. With stylish décor and modern comforts throughout the facility, we were accommodated with a temperature controlled indoor swimming pool adjacent to a fully equipped fitness center and spa including Jacuzzi, steam and sauna.
Along with its Horizon Club meeting center and internet facilities, the hotel has three dining venues offering an array of international fare that includes classic Sichuan and Cantonese delights. The buffets are diverse, deliciously suited even to finicky eating habits and excellently prepared.
Besides a half dozen rooms for modest size events, the Garden Ballroom accommodates up to 600 people, like the capacity-crowd wedding that appeared one morning while I was there. The photographer in me couldn’t help asking for permission to photograph it. The bride and groom happily agreed and within minutes I was mingling with their family and friends, snapping away and capturing treasured moments. As they say, a good time was had by all.
Our Golden Flower experience was based on no special clout or status. My wife and I were far from our regular address. Yet after each day’s activities in Xi’an, returning to the hotel truly felt like coming home. And when it was time for an early morning departure on our final day, the kitchen staff bid us farewell with a specially prepared take-away box of breakfast goodies, even though the hotel restaurant had not yet opened. Another touch of class.
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If you travel in China.
Besides this our restaurant tips for Shanghai:
#1: Three on the Bund
Its in one of the glorious 1920s colonial buildings, converted into an art gallery and designer shopping emporium, with four restaurants. The 7th floor roof terrace has a fabulous view over the river and Pudong. The restaurants are Laris, New Heights, the Whampoa Club, and Jean Georges (outpost of the New York chef Jean Georges Vongvichteren). On the top of the building is a little cupola, which has been cleverly converted into two private dining rooms, each with just one table. The upper cupula has a table for two, the lower one a table for up to eight. In these you can eat a menu prepared by any of the restaurants, or indeed even mix and match courses if you wish. We had lovely Sea Scallops with Caper-Raisin Emulsion and Lobster Tartine, Lemongrass, Fenugreek Broth, Pea Shoot. It was fantastic.
The chef Jean Georges is fantastic and known for its use of spices with more classical dishes, and indeed this was on show tonight e.g. the lobster had very distinct spices. The Desserts were an excellent mix of chocolate dishes, including a fine chocolate fondant.
Overall a yummy lovely exerience on the bund, the great thing here is the setting. YYou have the sense from this that it is a bit of an unusual novelty rather than a pure dining destination, but it is a seriously romantic setting.
#2
A revolutionary 10-seat multi-sensory experience restaurant Ultraviolet. It will evoke a ‘bold and exclusive dining experience that engages all the senses to create the ultimate luxury.
Ultraviolet, a sort of dress rehearsal for the final draft of the restaurant which has finally rolled out. And after this, admittedly invited, tasting, we can say definitively that yes, Ultraviolet is radical and it was very much worth the wait.
Ultraviolet is located in a secret location in an old Shanghai neighbourhood. After being driven to the restaurant by their private driver, you enter a set of inconspicuous double doors and cross into Pairet’s fantasy restaurant: a mixture of James Bond lair and mad scientist laboratory. Mesh metal doors slide open without any visible human attendants. Your chilled drink awaits on a bar counter of raw wood. After a few sips, another door slides open, beckoning you down a hallway lit by a Baccarat crystal chandelier. Then, a final set of doors slides open. You can’t help but laugh as the 2001: A Space Odyssey opening chords play while you step into the all-white dining room: a plain rectangular table flanked by 10 white adjustable chairs. The dining experience begins.
Each course is paired with 360 degree video projections, surround sound music (a different song tailored to each course) and even custom scents: sometimes they waft from a pressure cooker which is hand carried around the room, sometimes from a scent machine installed in the ceiling and with one course, the scent of cigar smoke captured in a glass dome is held up to your nose by a waiter.
The full dinner includes 20 ‘avant garde’ courses with names such as ‘Foie gras can’t quit’, which is an extraordinary edible ‘cigarette’ of foie gras wrapped in a shining fruit-flavoured ‘skin’ and presented in a shining silver ashtray. You dip it in ‘cabbage ash’ while a projection of cigarette ash wheels around you on screen.
For other courses, many of which are paired with drinks ranging from dessert wine to peppermint tea, projections include crashing ocean waves, ancient trees in fog or Indonesian masks. A ‘micro fish and ship’ course is actually a single giant caper berry deep fried in batter and paired with anchovy tartar sauce. The food is central to the night, never just a prop; each meticulously crafted bite is so delectable, we’re left craving more after nearly every course.
It was a great experience.
Just enjoy.
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