If you like your seafood ready to swim away at the slightest opportunity, this is the place for you. Fish as fresh as a coastal breeze is the house specialty, in particular that most gourmet of shellfish, the oyster.
Shucked to order, the varieties on offer vary depending on availability, from Gillardeau to Kumamoto, with a median price of RMB338 for a half dozen. It’s certainly not cheap, but the quality is excellent – though a true oyster connoisseur might balk at the lack of consistent choice, which may just be a feature of soft opening teething. We hope.
This is clearly a restaurant aimed at the Chinese market. Be warned that the friendly staff speak minimal English and some of the oyster types are written only in Mandarin – even for the adept speaker, this is a tough code to crack. Bottles of baijiu suffuse the menu, from the budget options to the high-end stuff.
An addendum to this is the selection of baijiu cocktails for the brave to try, including the sashimi martini (RMB58), a mixture of vodka, baijiu and Martini extra dry served over a strip of raw salmon. Like all the unusual concoctions at this restaurant-bar, the drink is more novel than palatable, and it may not even be the most outrageous example of mad alchemy: Wish Fish (RMB58) mixes blue Curacao syrup with green peppermint cream, white cacao cream, whipped cream and, um, yogurt. The Ocean Cooler (RMB58), meanwhile, blends citrus vodka-infused seaweed with baijiu, Galliano and fish roe. There are no words to describe this odd mish-mash, but perhaps the most diplomatic way to put it is, ‘inventive.’
If you want sashimi, skip the fancy mixology voodoo and have it the old-fashioned way: pure and unadulterated. Just as fresh as the oysters, the salmon (RMB98) comes in five slices – large slices, we might add; no skimping on serving size here, and you will have to take more than a couple bites to get a piece down your gullet.
With its exterior and interior highlighted in neon blue, Oyster Passion Bar isn’t afraid of announcing itself boldly to the world. Don’t expect this solid seafood surprise to clam up anytime soon, as it might just mussel its way into the Huajiu Lu seabed.
// No. 101, 6 Huajiu Lu, Zhujiang Xincheng, Tianhe District 天河区珠江新城华就路6号101铺 (8560 1862)
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