The Place
Chaoyi Buer is a trendy, luxury space housing a café with imported beans and French pastries designed by an award-winning French chef, a florist shop and a retail pop-up space with rotating collaborative exhibitions and displays.
Attracting the hippest fashionistas, the 800-square meter space combines lifestyle, the arts, design and food in one place, with both indoor and outdoor seating options.
Guests can order a coffee and one of the many healthier-alternative pastries.
Then, they can peruse the current pop-up by LLADRÓ – a Spanish porcelain art brand with well-selected design pieces and thematic floral scenography – purchase a specially-crafted bouquet and enjoy the Parisian café atmosphere. Bouquets can be fully customized in a variety of sizes for gifts and even branded and designed for full-on event floral arrangements, like birthdays, ceremonies and other special occasions.
All of this is in one unique space, that just opened in August.
The café is decked out with tailor-made furniture, French designed dishes and unique mix-and-match colored coffee cups by Revol, a 250-year old French brand, while the pop-up exhibition features photogenic displays in every corner, inviting the wanghong-seeking crowd to snap and sip.
The welcoming space serves as an ideal location for brunch, afternoon tea and exclusive, private parties, with custom-designed desserts, snacks and drinks into the night.
The Food & Drinks
The current menu is all about the pastries, coffee and drinks, bringing the true flavor of the key ingredients to the forefront, with an emphasis on varying textural contrasts. Fresh fruits, light creams and homemade crumbles are the main forms of sweetness, as minimal added sugar ensures diners won’t experience the dreaded mid-day crash.
The Panna Cotta (RMB88) is a labor of love, with a delicately light cake rim surrounding a frozen rosemary cream that centers on a sweet cherry jam. To keep all the layers separate, with individual textures intact, a paper thin slice of white chocolate surrounds the cream, ensuring the pastry’s structural integrity.
An additional crunchy white chocolate mold adorns the top, studded with fresh, seasonal cherries, while a crisp cocoa crumble base keeps all the elements in place.
A contrast to the daintier desserts, the Tarte au Chocolat (RMB88) is bold and rich, with 72% cacao cream piped into globules atop a dense cocoa crumble, garnished with candied pecans.
Sliced raspberries and strawberries stud the top of the Tarte aux Fruits Rouges (RMB88), a layered dessert composed of a walnut crumble bottom, a basil-infused cream center, and fresh summer fruits on top.
Image courtesy of Chaoyi Buer
The Tarte au Chocolat and Tarte aux Fruits Rouges are also available in both 6- and 8-inch rounds for parties, events or takeaway for special occasions. Gallete des Rois, or French King Cakes can be purchased, with 3-D printed patterns on top that mimic the glass windows of the Notre Dame de Paris' architecture.
On the beverage side of the menu, the customary coffee fare is available yet elevated. The usual suspects – like Flat White (RMB48), Americano (RMB38) and Café Latte (RMB48) – are on offer with beans hailing from Columbia, Brazil, Ethiopia and Guatemala, and Hand-drip Coffee (RMB58-68) hails from Ethiopia, Rwanda and the 2021 CBC champion batch of Yunnan Baoshan. For regular customers, monthly coffee loyalty cards are available.
Other signature drinks span fruity or earthy teas, detox juices and cold brews, along with French wine and champagne. We suggest the 7724U (RMB58), a healthy green blend of spinach, kale, ginger, apple and chia seed oil.
Image courtesy of Chaoyi Buer
Soon, the menu will see the addition of some lighter fare, like salads, sandwiches, cheese plates and lunch sets to offer more choices during the day, along with the launch of more signature pastries that will be specifically tailored to fit Chaoyi Buer's taste and style. With the seasonally updated menu, Chaoyi Buer creates offers diners refreshing tastes and surprises.
The Vibe
This lifestyle space embodies the offline connections that luxury brands are aiming to make with consumers. Appealing to art and design enthusiasts, café goers and flower lovers, the younger gathering of loungers in the space reflects the well-off, good-looking and well-to-do crowd that regularly relax near the Bund.
Service is meticulous, so don’t expect a coffee on the fly; this space is more about spending an afternoon with friends, taking in the artistic exhibits, posing with floral displays and nursing a pot of tea while eyeing up others doing the same.
Price: RMB50-200
Who’s Going: High-end wanghong lifestyle seekers, pastry and coffee lovers, the well-off, good-looking and well-to-do Shanghai crowd, usual Bund goers
Good For: Slow-drip coffee on a slow afternoon, douyin fodder, porcelain purchases
See a listing for Chaoyi Buer. Read more Shanghai Restaurant Reviews.
[All images by Sophie Steiner/That's]
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