The café, barely one month old, sits near Jiashan Market and faces stiff competition with a wealth of cafés and eateries and a noticeable dearth of office buildings surrounding it. Given its generic furnishings, lime green walls and pictures we feel could only have come out of IKEA, the eatery’s stock hotel lobby décor did little to live up to the quirkiness of its name.
The menu offers a standard mix of café fare from soup to salad to pasta and sandwiches–with mixed results. The chicken pesto pasta’s (RMB48) penne was about as perfectly al dente as boxed penne can be, but the chicken was dry. The bizarrely-conceived Thai Bolognaise quesadilla (RMB58) is surprisingly not bad, although it’s food that is probably best appreciated after a long night of boozing. The croque monsieur (RMB38) was the biggest success: two succinct triangles of oozy cheese with ham in between layers of indulgently buttered toast. We rounded off the meal with a deliciously silky chocolate mousse cake (RMB30) and an adequate caramelized pudding (RMB26). It was a good albeit unmemorable meal. While we’ll return for the croque and mousse cake, we won’t be in a rush.
Our rating: 3/5
DETAILS
What: Buttonwood
Where: Rm. 2, 438 Shaanxi Nan Lu 陕西南路438号2室
Tel: 6468-2688
City Weekend is the only online magazine in Shanghai to review restaurants according to a transparent process vetted by local food & beverage professionals. Check our Restaurant Review Process here.
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