Tina Kanagaratnam/Shanghai Daily news

Zin’s passion for pairing good food with just the right wine makes culinary sparks fly – which translates into one of Shanghai’s top dining experiences.

The restaurant Zin sits alone in a park at the edge of the madness that is Huaihai Road. It is so quiet and unobtrusive that a guest, riveted instead on the bright lights ahead, is likely to miss it. So even though the restaurant, which opened last September, is not unknown, one enters with the sense of having chanced upon a delicious secret.
Zin is a restaurant with a passion, one that is evident immediately upon entering the portals of this restored turn-of-the-century shikumen house. The first thing that greets the visitor is seven floor-to-ceiling wine racks, filled with 180 different types of wine from around the world. (They are organized by nationality, except for the first and last rack: the former is an eclectic grouping of the sommelier’s favorites and the latter, a very special collection of wines not yet available in China.)
A wheel of cheese sits by the wine racks, to encourage browsing, and some guests get happily lost in here – but that would be a mistake. Because as passionate as Zin (the name is short for Zinfandel, the grape that makes the fruity white wine of the same name) is about wine, its greater passion is creating the culinary sparks that fly when good food is perfectly paired with the right wine.
Sommelier Diane Tan is a bright, bubbly Singaporean with a wide smile, an encyclopedic knowledge of wines, and an unchecked enthusiasm for creating those culinary sparks. She visits every table, inquiring about menu selections, suggesting wines, explaining the flavors that will be enhanced by a particular pairing, and watching anxiously as the guest takes the first sip.
The Zin experience is shaped by Tan and manager Steven Smith, who spends time discussing the menu with every guest, and that is a good thing: after all, all of Shanghai’s great restaurants are defined by personalities.
Despite the serious commitment to wine, this is not a formal, stuffy, or even glamorous place. Zin obviously takes its cue from the restaurants of San Francisco and the Napa Valley, where food and wine are taken extremely seriously, but the settings are casual.
The restaurant, on the ground floor of the former offices of China Youth magazine, has only 12 tables, which are close enough to each other that you can hear your neighbor’s conversations. Black wood tables, adorned only with oil and vinegar bottles, candles and simple place settings sit under coral ceilings with silver beams, a riff on the wooden beams of the original. A bar, with selections of grappa and port, is at the far end, and a curved staircase leads to the second floor bar.
The informality is underscored on the menu, where the signature dish is pizza. Gourmet pizza, Wolfgang Puckstyle, to be sure, but pizza nonetheless. Still, the Italianinspired menu, serving a winter menu until March, offers a range that would please even the choosiest palate with selections of soups, starters, pasta, slow-cooked dishes and items from the grill. As a nod to their passion for wine, it features as an ingredient in many of the dishes: Zinfandel, Port wine, Chardonnay, Burgundy and Merlot all show up on the menu.
Predictably, the wine list is one of thorough quality, one of the finest in the city. 80 reds and 30 whites, covering both  Old and New World wines, as well as a strong list of Zinfandels (of course!) feature on the main list. Then there are the “Cellar Selections”, an all-star team of big Bordeaux labels, Napa Valley luminaries, two legendary Italian wines, and a sprinkling of other desirables from Australia and Chile. At Tan’s suggestion, we begin with the signature braised oxtail Burgundy pizza, topped with pureed leek, sun-dried tomatoes so flavorful they taste like fresh, all heaped with fried scallions. It is a mouthawakening contrast of soft cheese, crunchy scallions, thin crust and meaty oxtail, paired with a South African Pinotage. As Tan promises, the tannic flavors of the Pinotage, when sampled alone, disappear when accompanied by the pizza. Says my dining companion: “you could have a nice meal with just this pizza and this wine.”
Thinking we can come back for it another time, we eschew the chef ’s house salad – a hunk of lettuce with a zingy combination of blue cheese, fresh tomatoes, shaved onions and crumbled Italian bacon – in favor of the seasonal diver’s scallops. These delicious nuggets are found deep underwater in cold weather, and can only be harvested by divers – hence the name.
The pan-seared scallops are fresh-tasting, the searing giving them a roasted exterior that makes for a nice juxtaposition with their soft inner flesh. Wrapped in parma ham and topped with Chinese black truffles and frisee salad leaves and served on a bed of spinach ricotta, there may be a little too much going on with this dish, though, when all you want is to focus on the scallops. Tan suggested a crisp white Blanc de Blanc from Graves with the scallops, a clean, almost pure taste that proved an excellent foil for the light, sweet scallops.
Zin’s signature double rack of lamb, served with a fruity Australian red, is cooked to perfection – not being a fan of bloody meat, I asked it to be cooked medium well, which often results in a dry, chewy meat. Not at Zin, though: my lamb chop was seared on the outside but moist and tender inside, juicy but not bloody.
Flavored with Dijon mustard, merlot and an agreeable bite of pepper, it was a highlight of the meal. My dining companion
selected the salmon steak, one of the simplest and most delicious items on the menu. Flown in on Tuesdays and Thursdays from Norway, the salmon was perfectly cooked, with a crispy skin, rare in the center and dusted with fresh pepper and paired with a delicious lemon mustard sauce. Roasted vegetables accompanied both dishes, as did homestyle mashed potatoes.
Winter desserts at Zin are of the comfort food variety: the flavors of hot fudge and chocolate ice cream, baked cinnamon
apple calzone, creme brulee. The creme brulee was disappointing, more of a custard than a creme brulee, and lacking the crunchy caramelized texture of the best of this breed, but the lively mandarin orange and ginger flavors more than made up for it. The dark rum bananas flamb, over a Nutella brioche sandwich and served with a pot of vanilla ice cream, on the other hand, was flawless. The combination of warm bananas, drenched in rum, with warm chocolate and cold ice cream was almost sensual, it was so good. The Austrian dessert wine, Kracher, that accompanied the bananas was not as cloying as most sweet dessert wines, and the combination ignited a final culinary spark, fortifying enough to face braving the cold Shanghai night once again.
 
66 Danshui Road, #2, Shanghai (between Huaihai Road and Yan’an Road)
Reservations: 6385 8123
Website: www.elite-concepts.com