[Shanghai] Hillbilly Tea (Brunch)

Hillbilly Tea | hillbillytea.cn.com | Dianping
Address: 建国中路171号1栋楼203室(近瑞金二路) – Unit 203/Bldg 1, 171 Jianguo Middle Rd (卢湾区 Luwan District)
Date visited: 2013.10 for brunch
Total bill: RMB¥504 of five people
Will return: Maybe

Edit: this venue has closed

Hillbilly Tea serves southern style comfort food and–you guessed it–tea of all sorts. First location: Louisville, Kentucky. Second location: Shanghai, China. Makes perfect sense…

I had been looking forward to trying brunch here for awhile but it didn’t quite meet my imagination. The menu is decent on paper but the execution is slightly off. It’s just average and I don’t see myself back for brunch any time soon.

Dog friendly.

Sweet iced tea (RMB¥35 for cup, RMB¥55 for free-flow)
They use these cute jars to serve tea. Go for the free flow. They also have alcoholic tea, which I did not try during this visit but was told by a friend that it is very strong.

Hillbilly Deluxe (RMB¥85) with scramble, skillet pancake, pumpkin syrup and tea butter, cheese grits and choice of bacon or sausage

This had potential but didn’t quite deliver–the pancakes were undercooked. Otherwise, the tea butter + pumpkin syrup would have made this a great pancake plate over ordinary maple syrup and butter. Slightly disappointed as it sounded better on paper than it tasted.

The rest of these came with the Hillbilly Deluxe. Quite average.

The grits were a bit bland although I don’t think I would like grits anywhere.

Hillbilly Steak and Eggs (RMB¥79) with two sunny eggs, pan seared ribeye, cheese grits & bourbon bbq
The first time we got the steak, it was cooked all the way through even though we asked for it to be medium rare when ordering. The server was really nice and had the kitchen cook another steak for us without much hassle.

Our steak turned out nicely the second time around.

Runny eggz.

Comments

comments