CLOCKWISE FROM
TOP: Tea time at
The St. Regis
Shanghai; into The
Drawing Room; a
moment of
reflection in an
Executive Deluxe
room; between
floors in The St.
Regis Bar; at Yan
Ting restaurant,
order the shrimp
cakes twice.flung provinces stop traic on the footpaths,
but you can also score a quiet gazebo for some
reflection. Garden trails in Jing’an Sculpture
Park can give you a Zen-infusion as well.
You’ll feel the same mix of hustle and hush
within the hotel. In this era of shifting tastes,
when so many properties are nixing lobbies
and swapping out the gilt for the reclaimed, it’s
refreshing to enter a hotel so unabashedly
dripping in glamor. Of course, old-school class
is St. Regis’s modus operandi, but this St. Regis
has nearly perfected the genre. After pulling
up to the grand porte cochere and passing the
army of concierges (who will later recover the
wallet you lost in a taxi in a rainy-night
frenzy), you’re led to the double-height lobby
and a pair of leather armchairs at a private
desk for a seated check-in—it brings the club
lounge greeting to every guest, and it’s as
pleasant as life admin after a red-eye can be.
There’s so much bling hanging from the
ceilings here that I couldn’t stop looking up and
kept bumping into strangers. The chandelier on
the spa level was inspired by autumn leaves in
the former French Concession. They dangle in
the shape of a dragon with its head facing east,
in accordance with feng shui. Perhaps he’s
heading for a swim in the marble indoor pool
guarded by Roman statues, or to blow off some
steam in the labyrinthine Iridium Spa. After a
jetlag-curing rubdown, a rest in their semicircle
of full-cocoon massage chairs is the perfect
salve to my typical end-of-spa sadness.
Afternoon tea is also a mood-brightener—
especially with its curated selection of
specialty loose-leaf blends. The Drawing Room
has a conservatory feel, heightened by the
classical string duo, and under, of course, a
chandelier made of small glass spheres strung
in the shape of a massive sphere, I was served
a prodigious spread of sweets and savories,
both Chinese-inflected and classic English,
that made the strongest case I’ve ever seen for
designing one’s tables to fit one’s menus.
The bar’s version of the Bloody Mary has
homemade fig vodka, yellow tomato juice,
osmanthus honey and lemon—it’s a frothy,
surprisingly balanced drink that tastes like it
should be the amuse bouche’s accompanying
cocktail in a 10-course alcohol-pairing
degustation. The chartreuse and carmine
chesterfields, sky-high shelves of whisky, and
live jazz evoke a social club of yore. Head there
before or after dinner at Yan Ting, the fine-
dining southern Chinese restaurant that seems
to be gunning for Michelin. Flash-fried
abalone, mushrooms in tofu skin, shrimp
cakes... amiable chef Junping Lui elevates the
simplest Cantonese food to dishes I order
twice, despite being full, for both the flavors
and the photos. Everything is naturally
prepared and fancily presented yet magically
not try-hard. Which, come to think of it, is a
great view to take on this St. Regis itself.starwoodhotels.com; doubles from RMB2,080.