Lovely jubbly! Getting a taste for British grub
Print Edition
WHEN one of our editors heard we were doing a piece on a British restaurant, she announced that Britain’s cuisine consisted of three dishes: fish, chips ... and fish and chips.
Frankly, that’s a bit harsh. What about the mushy peas?
But since last August when he opened the eponymous Mr Harry five floors up on Nanjing Road W., restaurateur Harry Spencer has been attempting to dispel Shanghai preconceptions about British food.
“To be honest, British food doesn’t always have the best of reputations. But I’d like to think that most people who come and try our authentic dishes would change their mind,” says Spencer, whose family is in the restaurant business back in Britain.
To this end, the Mr Harry menu reads like a roll-call of British classics, from greasy spoon caff favorites to fare fit for a dowager’s drawing room.
Dishes range from full English breakfast, bangers (that’s sausages, folks) and mash with onion gravy and bread and butter pudding with custard — through to afternoon tea, complete with cucumber sandwiches and homemade scones with Devon clotted cream.
And not forgetting, of course, the ubiquitous fish and chips, with crispy beer batter, chunky chips and mushy peas — though in the fancier guise of “pea puree.”
The appeal of good old British stodge is obvious to many expats — Mr Harry diners have included DJ, musician and actor Goldie, former All Black Justin Marshall, a UK government minister and two members of Britain’s House of Lords.
But Spencer says 75 percent of customers are Chinese, including a visit from Vogue model Lina Zhang.
“Shanghai diners are keen to try new tastes, they’re open-minded and international in their outlook,” he says.
Full English had never struck me as an international dish. But watching Chinese colleagues — who share all the dishes we order — carefully cut up the eggs, bacon, sausages, homemade black pudding, baked beans, mushrooms, tomato, plus fried bread, and then dine on dainty morsels, offers a new take on the everyday classic.
Confounding the view that Chinese diners don’t want cold main dishes, Spencer says pub staple the ploughman’s — featuring English pork pie, crusty bread, cheese, apple, homemade pickle and salad — is Mr Harry’s second most popular line after, yep, fish and chips.
Spencer says Chinese diners are not looking for fusion dishes (a green tea cream pudding was dropped) but a distinctive British experience.
“We’ve found that people want something they can’t otherwise get here. Diners are really inquisitive and are looking for a complete dining and social experience,” he explains.
In a bid to create this and at odds with its food mall setting, Mr Harry is fitted out with several pieces of British antique furniture and a display of UK-sourced knick-knacks.
These include old-school bristle brushes — a nod to Spencer’s great-grandfather who in the 1930s would come to China for his bristle business, vintage postcards, gurning toby jugs and a china figurine of the Queen in her younger days, though Spencer confides that no one seems to recognize the more youthful monarch.
Now seven months down the line, Spencer is looking ahead this month to starting a delivery service, introducing that most quintessential of dishes the Sunday roast, and keeping, er ... chipping away at preconceptions about British food.
Address: 5/F, 819 Nanjing Rd W.
Opening hours: 10am-10pm
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