Shangri-La Detroit

For years friends have been telling me that I need to go get Dim Sum at Shangri-La in West Bloomfield. Everyone says that it is the best Chinese food in town and that it is worth the drive. Unfortunately, I have never been able to make the trek over to the west side, but I was able to finally have dinner at the newer Detroit location on Cass Avenue (where Twingos used to be). Before I left the house, I compared the menus and realized that they feature different items at the different locations. So this review cannot be applied to the other location for that reason alone.

First of all, I am not a huge fan of going out for Chinese food. I never know what to order and it is not in any way shape or form a very healthy or low calorie option. But, every once in awhile I'll get the craving and go out and splurge with a few friends. I usually end up getting sushi, if they have it, to try to cut down on grease and I was excited to see that they had
an option to get your sushi made with brown rice. I ordered soup, a spring roll, and 2 different kinds of sushi, salmon avocado and tuna avocado on brown rice. Of course I knew I wouldn't be able to finish all of , but I wanted to try a little bit of everything. My dining mates did the same thing, one ordered Kung Pao chicken with a spring roll and soup and a few items off the Dim Sum menu, including shrimp buns and fried noodle. The other ordered almond shrimp and sticky vegetable buns. We had a vast array of treats on the table and we all shared and sampled from each other.

I have to be honest, I only liked part of the food. It seems to be that this place excels at Dim Sum items, but slacked when it came to the regular menu items like the Kung Pao chicken. It just wasn't that good. And as far as brown rice sushi went, it's just not good, but I think that was my fault not theirs. Sushi needs to be made with the standard sticky Jasmine rice. The brown ruined one of my favorite foods and made it difficult to eat. The rice kept falling off every time I tried to get some soy sauce on the rolls.

I was also a little disappointed in the service. It took a long time get all of our food and then at least a half hour after we finished for them to ask if we wanted our bill. By this time we were all out of beer, tea, and water, so we really were ready to go. If I return, I will likely only order Dim Sum items, as I felt they were all very good and responsibly priced. The unfortunate part about that is that they are not open on Sundays and that would be the traditional day to go out for Dim Sum. So, you have to want to have Dim Sum on another day of the week to get it from here. I would give it like ⅗ stars overall, but ⅖ if you include the poor service. One pot of tea in two hours for three people, that's just sad!

~S