La Scala's Black Pearl Tasting Menu & New Seasonal Dishes
La Scala, the signature, award-winning Italian restaurant at The Sukhothai Shanghai welcomes new chef de cuisine Enrico De Martino.
He’s changed up the menu, adding new seasonal dishes and has just launched a Black Pearl Tasting Menu featuring the highlights.
Chef Enrico De Martino, La Scala
Chef Enrico De Martino hails from the seaside town of Salerno, located in the Campania region, the gateway to Southern Italy. He brings with him more than 20 years of professional experience from carving his way through Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe to his last posting in Vietnam at the prestigious Reverie Saigon hotel.
Youthful and brimming with excitement, Chef Enrico is determined to bring his style of Italian cuisine to Shanghai—traditional with a modern twist, and room to highlight local ingredients. This is his first posting in China.
As for La Scala, the upmarket Italian restaurant boasts accolades of being listed as a Michelin Plate restaurant in 2021, a distinction given by the Michelin Guide, and is a Black Pearl One Diamond Restaurant, a prestigious and coveted denomination awarded by Dianping.
To celebrate their achievements and to introduce Chef Enrico, La Scala has launched a Black Pearl Tasting Menu, a multiple course journey of menu highlights.
Black Pearl Tasting Menu
The Black Pearl Tasting Menu is ¥1,388 per person and includes amuse bouche to start, a chef’s selection of antipasto (there are five of them), a seafood soup, a pasta, a main course, and dessert. All the dishes are also available a la carte. The tasting menu is available for lunch and dinner.
Let’s take a look shall we? Here’s what to expect:
To start, a breadbasket of house specialties, including focaccia and sourdough bread, followed by amuse bouche.
Amuse Bouche – A cool and comforting potato salad.
Next is a flurry of antipasti, featuring a selection of five bites by Chef Enrico.
Lightly cured tuna tataki with salmon roe and apple-ginger purée.
Beef tartare with balsamic caviar, hazelnut crumble, and quail egg. A lightly seasoned tartare with capers, shallots, and Tabasco.
Lightly seared Hokkaido scallops with peperonata (diced roasted peppers), dressed with citrus juice and garnished with a spinach tuile.
Foie gras bonbon with an amerena cherry glaze, served with brioche. Excellent textbook foie that’s velvety smooth and a tart, uplifting cherry glaze.
Grilled octopus with pappa al pomodoro, a tomato sauced bread, with grilled green peppers and homemade anchovy mayonnaise. Delicious, and would order again. Available a la carte for ¥228.
Then comes the abalone soup. The broth is inspired by Livorno’s famed seafood stew, cacciucco, but made lighter to let the abalone shine. It comes with white fungus mushrooms, grilled chanterelles, goji berries, and toasted garlic bread.
It’s a very interesting twist on a traditional dish, one that also highlights local ingredients—nice texture from the white fungus mushrooms and sweetness from the goji berries.
The next course is a pasta, which you can choose from either ossobucco ravioli or lobster linguini.
Lobster linguini – A half lobster with linguini that’s been coated in a thick lobster bisque brightened with lemon essence. Lightly spiced, luxurious, and divine. This is definitely the one to choose.
Ravioli filled with slow-cooked osso buco with lashings of heady saffron sauce and garnished with freshly shaved black truffle. Delightfully al dente with a sauce that complements.
A quick palate cleanser of fermented rice, panna cotta, honey melon, and melon juice.
For the mains, it’s a choice of beef tenderloin or black cod.
A medallion of Rangers Valley M9+ wagyu beef tenderloin on an English muffin with spinach topped with pan-seared foie gras and shavings of black truffle, drizzled over with a luscious demi glacé and basil oil. High quality ingredients that shine.
Pan-seared black cod with a lemony bagna cauda speckled with Black Pearl caviar and a dash of lobster bisque, served with sautéed vegetables.
For dessert, it’s a deconstructed Mont Blanc. Chestnut mousse, cacao nibs, crunchy orange meringue, and marron glacé (candied chestnuts).
The Black Pearl Tasting Menu at La Scala is ¥1,388 per person, and is available until February 2023. Most of the dishes featured in the menu above are also available a la carte.
Celebrate Christmas
Looking to celebrate Christmas? La Scala is hosting a Christmas Eve dinner on December 24 from for ¥1,588 per person, including one glass of champagne. The dinner menu features citrus cured salmon with Black Pearl caviar, gnocchi with langoustine tartare, red snapper with lemon butter, M9 wagyu tenderloin with barolo wine sauce, and dessert of housemade panettone. Scan the QR code above to book.
La Scala, The Sukhothai Shanghai
Address: 1/F, The Sukhothai, 380 Weihai Lu, near Shimen Yi Lu 威海路380号1楼, 近石门一路
Tel: 52378888
Hours: 11:30am-2pm, 5:30pm-10pm
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About Rachel Gouk
Founder & Editor, Nomfluence
Rachel Gouk is a seasoned dining journalist based in Shanghai with over a decade of experience covering food culture, restaurant developments, and the Asian culinary landscape.
