The F-word. It keeps coming up in restaurants. Not from cooks screaming at one another in the kitchen. But this one: Fusion. It stings the ears a little and makes chefs and diners cringe in sync. So what is Bo Shanghai? For lack of a better term Bo Shanghai is fusion. Or as the chefs at Bo would put it; a journey through the 8 silos of Chinese cuisine paired with another country’s cuisine. Chinese + French, Chinese + Italian. However you look at it: Fusion.

So how is it that Bo Shanghai’s food doesn’t end up in “confusion.”? The answer lies with its two co-head chefs, Simon Wong and DeAille Tam, who also happen to be a couple who’ve been together since culinary school. They came to Shanghai after working for their parent restaurant, Bo Innovation in Hong Kong; superstar chef Alvin Leung’s 3 Michelin-starred restaurant. They came to Shanghai and opened Bo in 2017 and earned their first Michelin-star (making DeAille the only Michelin-starred female chef in China).

Bo Shanghai’s food is simply presented on the menu. Items will be listed as Shandong Chicken or Sichuan Fish. But what arrives on your table is a complex reimagining of ingredients, textures and flavors. “Nothing is just done for the sake of doing it.”, Simon assures us. “We don’t just put an ingredient into a dish to make it more Italian.” Take for example their Shandong Chicken. The original dish comes from a small train station vendor in Dezhou, Shandong. The vendor blended together as many aromatics as possible to bring travelers to his track-side stall. What Simon and DeAille have done is taken the humble travelling man’s dish and broken it down into perfectly crafted pieces. The chicken is a thigh, deboned, rolled, sous vide, dried then anointed in hot oil until the skin crisps up like the a Beijing Duck. The vendor’s original spices are blended down into a sauce thickened with mascarpone cheese to add a touch of richness. An accompanying micro-herb salad is made with a fermented fennel, pickled in the same way the people of Shandong pickle cabbages for their long winters. The resulting dish is unforgettable. And it is just one of the 8-10 courses you will find on their tasting menu any given night.

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