Restaurant Review: Marina by DN

By Betty Richardson, January 28, 2015

Despite its pleasant location on the water’s edge in Pudong, a stone’s throw from Lujiazui metro, Marina by DN is a troublesome new restaurant, and has proved to be the biggest disappointment in 2015 (so far).

Marina by DN is the brainchild of Spanish chef Daniel Negreira, who, according to PR sources, takes inspiration from El Bulli’s Ferran Adrià. In 2006, he received the prestigious Bocuse D’Or award for Best Young Chef of Basque Country, placing second for the Best Young Chef in Spain category. By all extents, Mr. Negreira’s first restaurant in Shanghai should be a case in point of fine dining done right.

Amuse bouche with chicken consomme

It’s not that we doubt this talented chef’s capabilities–his restaurant DN Innovación was ranked ‘best foreign cuisine restaurant in Taipei and fourth nationwide’ in the Miele Guide’s‘Asia's Finest Restaurants Top 500’ (2013). But for some unfortunate reason, his Shanghai dishes don’t live up to the hype.

Opting for the RMB398 set menu, the most chronically misguided elements of the experience were three starters: blue lobster with coffee and salpicon salad,“pink” cuttlefish with saffron and potatoes (above) and Italian Porcini risotto with seasonal sprouts and shaved Parmesan.

Lobster with coffee? Perhaps a riff on the mid-2000s dish ‘lobster cappuccino’ (which doesn’t actually contain coffee)? This risky-sounding dish turned out to be innocuous, watered-down coffee foam atop a segment of chilled lobster tail with chopped salad.The wet, slightly bitter flavors did little to enhance the lobster.

For an extra RMB50, we added a starter of foie gras and carrot cake (above), bizarrely garnished with dots of mustard, sweet green tea sauce and cocoa, plated on what looked to be a ceramic floor tile. As avid fans of both carrot cake and foie gras, we can say that the two have absolutely no business being together on one plate (or, for that matter, one floor tile). It’s exactly the kind of cooking that aims to be cerebral and avant-garde above being delicious.

A final starter of risotto proved to be the safest dish of the evening; evidence that Mr. Negreira’s cooking isn’t lacking for executional ability, while an entrée of sous-vide wild yellow chicken with 60-month aged Joselito ham, chickpeas and truffle cream (above) was approachable and tasty.

On our second visit, a fascinating amuse bouche titled “Not That Simple Egg” (warm egg yolk infused with truffle, eaten alongside a cube of deep-fried toast, (above) showed that Chef Negreira is indeed capable of better ideas.

Cuttlefish with potato and saffron

Another entrée looked similarly promising: 12-hour sous-vide roasted suckling pig (below) with an amber-hued crispy skin.

Sadly, this was undermined by a sauce of licorice and “nuts,” an ominous description which should have been taken as a warning. For reasons unclear, the particular flavor combination of licorice with pureed walnuts creates a peculiar and startling pharmaceutical, almost industrial tang.

Steak with 'corn' and saffron sauce

Thus concludes our encounter with Daniel Negreira, an undeniably talented chef whose choices with the fine dining menu at Marina by DN betray his pedigrees.

Green tea tiramisu garden

Despite this, we’re not totally writing Marina off; in fact, other diners seemed to be enjoying fresh seafood platters and oysters. We’ll be back in a few months to see if it fares any better.