Yuan You Tao Description

The lovechild between five partners – Chef Holly Lian (Crave Café, Cou Cou) and Ruomi Gan on menu R&D and design, Lin Zhenyi on branding, Xie Shu Yu on front-of-house management, and sommelier Yannick De Brouwer (previously of RAC, Crave Café) on, well obviously, wine – Yuan You Tao (园有桃), or Where The Peaches Grow, as it's so poetically called in English – opened quietly on Xinle Lu in September 2022. 

Half the team is Hunanese, and the other half have attended culinary school in Paris, so they decided to bridge the gap by embracing the flavors of their childhood, presenting them in a way that fits the modern lifestyle-centric Shanghai dining scene through hints of Western influence – via ingredients or cooking techniques. 

Yuan You Tao is a shining example of what we love so much about Shanghai's nascent contemporary Chinese dining scene that is so promisingly budding these days. The team isn’t trying to reinvent or alter Chinese cuisine – there’s so much to be explored already within regional delicacies – instead they are serving up a plate of spice-laden nostalgia to the Shanghai crowds.