It’s our great pleasure to tell any fellow carnivores who might be reading this that a very decent rib shack has opened up right on your doorstep (if you live in Jing’an). Well, ‘shack’ may be a bit of a stretch: Gumgum is more of a brightly minimalist, floor-to-ceiling windowed, concrete-floored hipster hangout than the traditional ‘down ‘n dirty’ rib shack.
The work of the fellas behind Studio GumWap (the office of which is above Gumgum) a creative agency concentrating on fashion, branding and cultural events, joint owner Davey Yang says the idea for Gumgum stemmed from the desire to open a place they themselves would actually dine at. Aimed at being informal and trendy, the current slogan is ‘Not a Restaurant.’ Sure seemed like a restaurant to us, but what do we know.
Menus are kept simple, with two main offerings in the form of beef burgers and pork ribs, along with sides of arugula salad, excellent Mexican grilled corn (above) and French fries (doused with either black pepper or Parmesan, both delicious).
Drinks come in the form of bottled beers like Brooklyn Brewery and Hoegaarden and canned soft drinks.
We started off with burgers, of which we tried all four: New York (cheddar, smoked bacon, pickles and BBQ sauce, above), Mexico City (sliced jalapeños, green chili, lettuce, pickles, cheddar and roast garlic mayonnaise), Seoul (spicy kimchi, cheddar, fish sauce, sesame, scallions and mayonnaise) and East Indies (arugula, crushed peppercorns, cheddar and BBQ sauce). All of these were utterly delicious, and we particularly liked the friendly RMB68 price.
If sliders are more your thing, pick the mini burger set (above) and get your choice of three plus fries or salad and a soda for RMB98.
Onto the main event, ribs come in three portions large/RMB138; extra large/RMB268 and extra extra large/RMB388. Naturally we opted for the latter, and weren’t disappointed. Pleasingly enormous and slathered in tangy BBQ sauce, this rack is so big it’s served on a de-wheeled skateboard, chopped up at the table by servers.
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The rib meat itself was tender and fell off the bone (no cutlery necessary), and it’s fair to say we enjoyed it. Our only criticism is that we like our ribs a little more ‘done’ and charred on the outside, which leads onto our next point: Gumgum is incredibly busy, and the staff honestly seem a little overrun.
Enjoying enormous popularity despite being opened for just three weeks, a reservation is absolutely necessary, and wait times for food can be long. If you have to wait 40 minutes for a table like we did, order your food while you’re waiting or come at a less busy time (i.e. lunch, early or later on in the evening).
With that said, the team are doing a great job, and Gumgum is a place we’ll be returning to post haste.
Price: RMB150 per person
Who’s going: Very hip crowd of young locals and expats
Good for: Ribs, burgers, casual, dinner with friends
> See a listing for GumGum Ribs & Burgers.
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