Shoga, formerly know as Daojianghu, is the Japanese izakaya member of the Ginger restaurant group and, like Ginger, you leave feeling good about what you ate.

There’s a spa-like quality to the MSG-free menu enhanced by the lounge music and the limited number of patrons (at least on our recent visit). The servers are also eager to please and, although we did overhear a minor complaint when they ran out of the house white wine, they quickly recovered and offered to open another bottle for our neighbors and sell it by the glass.

If you are starving, do what we do and order the potato salad with mustard mayo (RMB18) soon after arrival. It goes down smoothly with a pint of the Asahi draft (RMB20), served in a chilled glass, while you decide what else to order. We started with a crispy salmon maki roll (RMB42) that balances its fatty fish skin with the aroma of sliced shiso leaf and pungent spring onion. Usually this roll feels more decadent, but in this version, the vegetal flavors are stronger than the salmon skin.

It was followed by an eggplant salad that we wish we’d discovered earlier this summer (RMB35). Each bite is a different pleasing combination of temperature, taste and texture: warm and smoky eggplant, crushed peanut, fresh shiso, nutty sesame seeds, spicy chili peppers, and sweet and sour vinaigrette.

The tsukune pan-fried chicken meatballs (RMB32) that rounded out the meal look more like dollar pancakes than spheres. The ground chicken is lean and, though we prefer the fattier meatballs at Tanya Matabei, the sweet yakitori sauce goes well with the dish’s strong ginger flavor. We ran out of room for dessert, but there’s a lemon tart that caught our eye. We’ll be back to try that as well as the enticing hot duck soba with spinach.

DETAILS

What: Shoga

Where: 30 Sinan Lu 思南路30号

Tel: 6093-5820