Midnight Shanghai

 




6/10 Complaints: Great Food, Great Drinks, Good Atmosphere, Pretty Lights, Aesthetic, Crap Karaoke, Suicide Threats, Concerns for Staff Mental Health, Rudeness, Blood, Panda, Run-In with Manager 


Mr Karenson and I recently had the pleasure and privilege of taking a plane trip down South to spend some much needed time away with mates and see Queens of the Stone Age, who were straight up AMAZING and didn't disappoint. 

We met up with Linda, Bob, Bill, Daryl, Arlene and Patrick for a weekend of sightseeing and getting obliterated on fireball champagne bombs. One of our first prerequisites for the trip was a beautiful dinner out at Midnight Shanghai, followed by drunken, wildly mixed skill karaoke. I'm a notoriously bad singer who in the past, has been told "never to open my mouth again" by a surely well meaning acquaintance, so was a little nervous about this last activity. Mr Karenson is basically Jack Black with a Kiwi accent so was really hyped for it.

Midnight Shanghai is in the city centre and is an upstairs yum cha restaurant festooned with beautiful coloured lanterns and with a warm and comfortable ambience. There seems to be an upstairs and downstairs dining area, and a varied and extensive drink and food menu including cocktails in panda-shaped glasses. I wanted to steal one of these glasses but have already pushed my luck enough nicking cool pint glasses from various pubs, so thought better of it. I'm glad I decided to stay within the law as it turns out, as we ended up breaking the restaurant manager's mind by the end of the night.

The food at Midnight Shanghai was very good, seemed to turn up quickly and had a good variation. The salt and pepper squid came with an excellent dipping sauce, the ribs and various chicken dishes were absolutely delicious and even the chips, which Mr Karenson insisted upon ordering, were uncommonly well fried and fluffy. By the middle of dinner, we were all quite tipsy and the noise level at the table was starting to rise somewhat.

I'm not entirely sure at what stage things started to turn weird with the evening. Perhaps it was when Arlene got up on a table and reflexively started vaping while still inside the restaurant, drawing the wrathful glance and snapping commentary of the brisk and abrupt restaurant manager. Perhaps it was when Bob had the audacity to ask the manager for more drinks and some shots for our noisy crew.

Perhaps it was when Arlene and Patrick started to drunkenly bicker and made a quick adjournment to the street to shout a bit, then return upstairs for more drinks.

Perhaps it had nothing to do with us at all, and more to do with the hens party being hosted upstairs, who somehow managed to incur injuries resulting in the increasingly harried and cranky manager having to clean up spilled alcohol and blood. 

Whatever the cause, we were forced to wait over an hour and a half for the karaoke room to be opened, while we all (Bob in particular) became increasingly bored and impatient. He went to see the manager and ask for updates a few times - surely it would have been easy enough just to open up the room and let us have access to it instead of waiting in the restaurant getting drunker and drunker. To be fair to the manager, she did bring us some extra shots that may or may not have contained hand sanitizer in an attempt to compensate for the delay, but she also seemed really grumpy by this stage and like she was barely holding back her vitriol with our crew.

At long last we were admitted to the upstairs karaoke parlour, after the manager had finished cleaning up the hens party carnage, wiping the blood off the walls and wringing spinal fluid out of party dress hems. 

The karaoke was, unfortunately, exceedingly lacklustre and seemed to send a very drunk and peeved Bob to the edge of his patience. The range of songs was limited to 80s and 90s MTV hits, there were no lyrics with half the songs and upon asking where the lyrics were, the answer was "just look them up on YouTube". It was the most uncomfortable, half assed and bizarre karaoke experience I've had so far, but at least there was champagne and most of the crew seemed to be having a good time by the end of the evening.

That's where things got worrying. Honestly I am a bit concerned about the mental health of the staff at Midnight Shanghai and hope they have access to some sort of EAP service or counseling, given that they have to deal with not only a hospo job, but also drunk and disorderly patrons, blood, sweat and other biohazards. 

Bob in his liquor-soaked and impatient wisdom, went down with the other men to settle the bill and to negotiate some form of compensation for the very long wait times, rubbish karaoke setup not as advertised, and a few other things that he felt needed to be addressed with the management. Upon discussion of these matters, the manager told Bob that we made her want to commit suicide, that she'd locked the doors and that we'd better pay up or else. I'm truly concerned for this lady as she seemed stretched to the absolute limit and I think we inadvertently wrecked her night beyond repair.  

To cut a long and convoluted story short, the doors were not locked at all but the bill was settled without further bloodshed, tragedy or indeed, suicide. 

I'd definitely return to Midnight Shanghai for the food but am unsure if we are now banned or would be otherwise unwelcome after drinking the bar dry and triggering a staff mental health crisis. Perhaps will give the manager a bit of time to calm down and may revisit in the future.



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