The hotel’s Chinese restaurant turned out to be the meal we keep talking about, upscale enough to feel special but still happy to have two small kids at the table.
We checked in around four and had dinner booked at Yi Hui Xuan, the Chinese restaurant on the second floor, for our first evening. It turned out to be some of the best Chinese food we’ve had in a long time, and it set the tone for the whole stay. It tasted like the real thing too, not the watered-down version hotel restaurants sometimes put out.
Dinner came as a set menu, and it opened strong with a welcome platter of abalone in green Sichuan pepper and scallion, served alongside a Shanghai-style braised wheat gluten. The abalone was Megan’s highlight, and she went quiet over it in the way she only does when something is really good. My own favorite was the crispy garlic chicken, all crisp skin and garlic. The boys, meanwhile, were completely taken with a homestyle baked omelette, thick and fluffy, with tiny whitebait and a little chili running through it. So much of the table was new to them that they spent a good chunk of the meal just staring at everything before digging in, and that omelette was the one dish they kept reaching back for.
The rest of the set kept up the same standard, from a clear-broth beef noodle soup to a steamed sea bass in Hua Diao wine with crispy soybean crumbs, with a salted-egg-yolk pumpkin in the mix too.
Then dessert arrived, and the hotel’s service robot rolled it over to our table. The boys had already met the robot up in our room, so seeing it turn up again carrying dessert sent them over the edge in the best way. Dessert itself was almond tofu and a chilled brown-sugar rice cake scented with osmanthus, both about as traditional as it gets and a good way to close out the meal.
The room is on the smarter side, with a great view and some really good art on the walls that I kept noticing through dinner. What I appreciated most is that none of that came at the expense of feeling welcome with kids. The service was warm, nobody so much as blinked at two excited boys, and the whole thing felt like a proper sit-down dinner without ever feeling stiff.
We’d happily eat here again on a return trip. If you’re staying at COZZI Blu with a family and wondering whether the in-house Chinese restaurant is worth it, for us it was an easy yes.
Good to know
- It leans a little upscale and comes as a set menu, so it suits a sit-down family dinner rather than a quick casual bite, though it’s still very welcoming with children.
- Dessert came out on the service robot, which the boys loved, so save a little room and let the kids enjoy the delivery.
- Book ahead for your first night if you can, especially if you’d like a table with the view.