RESTAURANT REVIEW
Shangri-La Singapore, Tower Wing, Lobby Level
Cantonese Fine Dining · ★★★★½
Ambience & Setting
Shang Palace occupies a deliberate remove from the city’s clamour. Tucked into the Lobby Level of Shangri-La Singapore’s Tower Wing, the dining room carries the unhurried grandeur of a Hong Kong institution transplanted to the tropics. The interiors lean into a restrained palatial register — lacquered panels in deep cinnabar, pendant lanterns that cast the room in amber warmth, and white-clothed tables spaced generously enough to permit genuine privacy. There is nothing ostentatious here, which is itself a kind of luxury.
The overall chromatic mood of the room is one of controlled richness: burgundy and gold, dark timber, the occasional flash of celadon in the tableware. Natural light is largely absent, replaced by a carefully calibrated warmth that flatters both the food and the diner. Service is attentive and unhurried — a staff that reads the table rather than overwhelms it. One senses the room has been composed, not merely decorated; it is the kind of space in which a significant meal feels entirely fitting.
The Kitchen: Chef Daniel Cheung
Executive Chef Daniel Cheung, 57, brings an unapologetically Hong Kong sensibility to Shang Palace’s menu. His retooling of the kitchen’s repertoire draws from the full breadth of Cantonese culinary history — from the rooftop dai pai dong to the carpeted private dining rooms of Central — and the result is a menu that is simultaneously nostalgic and technically refined. Cheung cooks as though he has something to prove to memory itself.
Dish Analysis
Double-boiled An Xin Chicken Broth With Fish Maw, Sea Conch & Honeydew
$48 per person
To begin with the broth is to begin with a lesson in restraint. The soup arrives in a ceramic vessel, steaming quietly, its surface a pale gold with the faintest translucency — the colour of late afternoon light through old glass. Double-boiling, the foundational technique of Cantonese soup-craft, extracts from its ingredients not a bold declaration but a slow confession: collagen released over hours, flavours surrendered rather than forced.
The fish maw contributes a gelatinous, cloud-like texture — tender, almost evanescent, dissolving at the slightest pressure. Sea conch provides resistance and a faint brininess, a counterpoint that keeps the soup from retreating into sweetness. But the truly unexpected element is the honeydew. Softened by its long immersion, the melon yields readily between the teeth, its flesh now permeated with umami, its own sweetness amplified and complicated by the surrounding broth. The hue of the melon within the soup shifts from its raw pale green to something approaching ivory, its cellular structure opened and hospitable.
Historical note: This soup traces its lineage to the private dining habits of Hong Kong philanthropist Tang Shiu Kin, who survived a bayoneting during the Battle of Hong Kong in 1941. The dish he commissioned — with ingredients sent ahead to his favourite restaurant — eventually became a Cantonese classic. To drink it is, in a minor key, to participate in that history.
Baked Assorted Diced Seafood, Sea Conch & Chicken in Cream Sauce
$38 per person
Presented in a conch shell — a vessel that is itself a kind of theatre — this dish is Cheung’s meditation on the Portuguese-Cantonese fusion food of Hong Kong’s café culture, elevated beyond recognition. There is no rice here, no filler; just the principal players in a cream sauce of notable depth and composure.
The cream is not the blunt, flour-thickened variety one encounters in lesser preparations. It is silken and reduced, its fat content held in emulsion, clinging to each piece of seafood without overwhelming it. The colour is a warm ivory with golden patches where the cream has caught heat at the edges. Texturally, the dish moves between the yielding tenderness of the seafood, the slight resistance of the diced conch, and the clean bite of chicken — a textural argument that the cream mediates rather than resolves. The aroma, when the shell first arrives, is of butter and the sea: oceanic salinity folded into dairy richness.
The conch shell functions as insulation, maintaining temperature admirably. One eats from it with the awareness that the vessel itself is part of the dish’s meaning — a nod to provenance, to the ocean, to the pleasures of an unusual container.
Baked Australia Pork Ribs With Osmanthus Honey & Black Pepper Sauce
$60 for six ribs
This dish is served with ceremony, and the ceremony is earned. Six ribs arrive with a caramelised crust of deep amber — nearly mahogany at the thickest points — the surface lacquered and brittle in that particular way that only prolonged dry heat followed by quick finishing can achieve. Then, tableside, rose wine is applied and the torch brought to bear. The vapour rises; the aroma that follows is extraordinary: burnt sugar, floral osmanthus, the warmth of black pepper, and underneath it all, the deep, rendered fat of well-raised Australian pork.
The meat itself falls from the bone with almost no resistance. The collagen has long since dissolved into the flesh, leaving fibres that separate laterally in long, luxuriant pulls. The osmanthus honey forms a thin lacquer rather than a glaze, contributing sweetness and floral fragrance without cloying. Black pepper, here, is used as punctuation rather than decoration: its heat arrives late on the palate, building after the sweetness has peaked, extending the finish without domination. The contrast is not merely pleasant — it is structurally intelligent.
The hues alone merit attention: the caramelised crust ranges from amber to near-black at the bone ends, while the interior reveals a blush-pink tenderness that speaks to precise temperature control throughout the cook.
Traditional Stewed Pomelo Peel With Shrimp Roe
$20 per person
The pomelo peel arrives in a deep, glossy sauce, the colour of old amber darkening toward brown at the edges. This is a dish that requires patience of its diner as much as its cook: the peel must be blanched repeatedly over days to leach out bitterness, then slowly braised until it has absorbed all that surrounds it.
The texture is sponge-like in the most precise sense — the peel, deprived of its original bitterness, has become a vehicle of almost philosophical neutrality, receiving the shrimp roe sauce and holding it within its open cellular structure. Each bite releases both the gentle bitterness that remains and the concentrated umami of the roe, which arrives as a savoury flourish on the back palate. The dish is rare in Singapore, and encountering it here feels like a small archival act — a dish rescued from culinary obsolescence and reinstated with full honours.
Braised Boneless Duck With Eight Treasures (Nostalgia Menu)
$78 for half
The Nostalgia menu section from which this dish is drawn signals Cheung’s intent clearly: this is food constructed from memory, from the Cantonese culinary archive. The duck arrives in a mahogany-toned braising liquor, the skin lacquered to a deep, translucent sheen. The eight treasures — a combination that typically includes glutinous rice, lotus seeds, chestnuts, and dried aromatics — are packed within the boneless cavity, each component having absorbed the braising liquid’s character.
The skin is the showpiece: taut, yielding, slightly sticky, releasing fat on the tongue with a warmth that is almost therapeutic. Beneath it, the duck flesh is deeply flavoured, the muscle fibres having relaxed into something approaching tenderness without sacrificing structural identity. The eight treasures introduce starch, nuttiness, and floral sweetness in varying proportions — each forkful is compositionally distinct.
Verdict
Shang Palace under Daniel Cheung is, without equivocation, serious dining. The menu does not pander to novelty; it proceeds from a position of deep Cantonese knowledge and asks the diner to meet it there. The ambience supports this posture entirely — composed, warm, and unhurried.
What distinguishes the kitchen is not technical flash but the quality of its restraint. Sweetness is deployed precisely; texture is considered, not accidental; history is present in the bowl. The Double-boiled An Xin Broth alone would justify the reservation. The pomelo peel makes it essential.
Rating: ★★★★½ — Exceptional
Best dishes: Double-boiled An Xin Chicken Broth · Pork Ribs with Osmanthus Honey · Stewed Pomelo Peel with Shrimp Roe
Practical Information
Address: Lobby Level, Tower Wing, Shangri-La Singapore, 22 Orange Grove Road · MRT: Orchard
Hours: Mon–Fri Noon–2:30pm; Weekends 11am–3pm; Daily 6–10pm
Reservations: +65 6213-4473 / 4398