THE STAR-LEDGER
Friday, October 21, 2005
“MUSIC AND CUISINE MERITS ENCORES AT SHANGHAI JAZZ”
by S.J. Gintzler
Dinner at Shanghai Jazz hits many high notes. Deftly prepared Chinese and pan-Asian food is served alongside exciting live jazz. It’s a winning combination.
AMBIENCE: Access the snazzy supper club, in its 10th year, via a front or rear entrance (there’s a parking lot in the back). An eat-in barroom overlooks the classy dining room, spotlighting entertainment five nights a week.
STAFF: Topnotch.
FOOD: Upscale Asian.
From start to finish, dinner didn’t skip a beat. A lively jazz ensemble began as our appetizers were served: crisp shrimp rolls complemented by a mild peanut dipping sauce; meaty, fat-free barbecued spareribs; dumplings filled with seasoned minced pork, served in a bamboo steamer; lo mein chock full of sizzling roast pork. Three dipping sauces were a five-alarm chili, a snappy sesame-ginger-scallion and pungent soy vinaigrette.
Attractively plated entrees came with rice. Tender sliced beef sautéed with peppers and scallion in a rich brown sauce came Korean-style with crisp leaves of romaine lettuce in which to wrap the meat. Also winning was succulent seafood of basil…. Dishes were garnished with a daikon radish shaped like flowers.
Desserts were a delicious coda. A sampler for four had a house-made warm chocolate brownie sundae, Belgian chocolate truffle (dark chocolate over pistachio gelato, mint chocolate chip ice cream in a chocolate tuile and a profiterole served in a martini class
Shanghai Jazz offers a unique evening of great food and entertainment.
We’d head back in a heartbeat.
FOOD: 3 ½ Stars out of 4
AMBIENCE: 3 ½ Stars out of 4
SERVICE: 3 ½ Stars out of 4
OVERALL: 3 ½ Stars out of 4
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Jazz Age inspires
Chinese Restaurateur |
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| It's Saturday
night and the band, a quintet led by trumpeter Frank Grasso, is playing
typical jazz club fare: "Green Dolphin Street," "Satin Doll," "Autumn
Leaves." But the fare on the tables is not to typical: Beijing duck,
General Tso's chicken, dim sum, portabello mushrooms and spinach saute.
Welcome to Shanghai Jazz, New Jersey's latest jazz venue, a restaurant-bar, at 24 Main St., Madison, named in honor of one of the Jazz Age cities of the 1920s and 1930s. "People may wonder how you get Shanghai and jazz," says proprietor Martha Chang, "but if you learn about the history of Shanghai, it makes sense." You don't even have to delve into Chinese history for the connection: the history of the Count Basie Orchestra will suffice. Note that trumpeter Buck Clayton, a mainstay of Basie's Swing Era band from 1936 onward, is listed as having joined Basie after returning from Shanghai, where he led a band for a couple of years. Chang became fascinated with Shanghai when she spent a year there, and in other Chinese cities, as a Fulbright Scholar in 1993, working on a Harvard doctorate in East Asian politics. "Shanghai really captured my imagination," says Chang. "There's all these European influences there that are so strong. They're in the architecture and attitudes and the music. In the late '20s and '30s, the Peace Hotel had jazz every night. And after the Cultural Revolution, they brought back the old musicians who used to play there. You can hear them on Saturday nights; it's like a Shanghai Preservation hall. So Shanghai was on her mind when Chang took over the family restaurant, Four Seas, Cuisines of China, and changed the name to Shanghai Jazz. "I saw Shanghai in the he '20s and '30s as this place that was exciting and cosmopolitan, like morocco, London or New York -- just so glamorous, a real destination. And I thought why can't we evoke that feeling here, in New Jersey?" "And I love jazz: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong. So why not have that classic jazz I love so much? I thought: Louis Armstrong and Chinese food, what more could you want out of life?"
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Even before she
brought live jazz into the restaurant last fall, Chang had already begun
preparing diners for the music. The soundtrack to the dining experience
at the restaurant is wall-to-wall classic jazz, as recordings by Ella,
Billie and Louis, as well as Duke Ellington, Count Basie and other jazz
giants are piped in over the sound systems.
Then the restaurant began presenting live jazz in a corner of the dining room on Wednesday evenings from 7:30 to 9:45, a move so successful that on Saturday evenings, jazz groups were added from 9 to 11:30 p.m. "I want to gradually expand the live music," says Chang. "A lot of times people have to schlep into Manhattan to hear jazz. We'd like to help them avoid taking that trip all the time, and provide a place to nurture jazz locally." Among the local musicians who have already played Shanghai Jazz and will be returning are guitarist-singer Eddie Hazell's Trio, singer Nancy Nelson, the Eric Olsen Trio and guitarist Bob DeVos. Singer-guitarist, Grover Kemble, and his trio make their Shanghai Jazz debut tonight, and saxophonist Jim Pellgrino, who appeared last Saturday in Grasso's quintet, returns in a more intimate duo setting this Saturday. Beginning next month, on Feb. 9, Chang plans to increase the live jazz lineup to three days a week by adding Friday nights. And on Sunday, Feb. 18 and Friday, Feb. 23, the restaurant will host, "Chinese New Year in New Orleans," with music by Mike Denny's Dixieland Jazz Band and Chinese New Year banquet food, with patrons encouraged to wear Mardi Gras costumes and/or masks. Jazz and restaurants in New Jersey have
had uneasy marriages over the years but things bode well for Shanghai
Jazz. Usually it is musicians or agents who push for the music; this
time it's the owner herself. And by playing jazz on
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