According to the gourmands at The Michelin Guide, Japanese cuisine is unmatched globally. It might only be a short flight to sample authentic sushi, soba and sake in Tokyo and Osaka, but we decided to save on plane tickets and settled for a tour of Shanghai’s top Japanese restaurants instead. Kanpai!

Fount

What: A-la-carte Japanese favourites, and then some

Where: No. 1, Building 5, 570 Yongjia Lu, near Yueyang Lu. Tel: 6073 7786

Why: You can’t pick just one Japanese cuisine

When celebrities open restaurants, it usually doesn’t go well. Remember Nyla, the short-lived attempt by Britney Spears to bring Cajun cuisine to New York, or Dive!, Spielberg’s kitschy submarine-shaped diner? Embarrassing. So when we heard Fount’s investors included hometown hero and movie star Hu Ge, we were skeptical, but after ten minutes at the joint, Fount had restored our faith in the palate of the celebrity restaurateur.

The menu is as sprawling as the dining room, covering basics like sushi and tempura and getting familiar with dishes that haven’t been so heavily exported to the West. A mug of pickled moruku seaweed with Japanese vinegar wouldn’t be our usual order, but we were intrigued and satisfied by the dish that tasted more like crunchy pasta than the ocean’s most prevalent green. The egg custard with foie gras was drenched in a sauce that buttressed the dish’s flavours by tasting exactly like liquefied goose liver, and the bits of sweet pepper, taro and water chestnuts holed up beneath the custard layer made for a fun game of culinary hide and seek. Another surprising favourite, the chestnut soup emanated umami from the handful of tiny crab mushrooms floating in its thick, earthy broth. 

Fount’s head chef learned his dessert trade as the pastry chef at Nobu, so don’t even think about leaving without ordering his confections. The assorted dessert platter brings together three of his best (and unceremoniously named) desserts, including the “vegetable dessert”, which would be better described as Japanese flan. Topped with ruby red dots of strawberry jam, the crème caramel is perfection. The plate also hosts an inspired take on a cannoli, while the inexplicably named “W.A. dessert” features a delicious assortment of green tea pudding, crumbly crusts and mango sorbet. All in all, a sweet ending to a solid dinner.