[Shanghai] Café Dan

Café Dan

Add: No. 41, Lane 248 Taikang Lu, near Sinan Lu / 泰康路248弄田子坊41号后门, 近思南路
Tel: 6466 1042
Hours: 10:30am~10pm
Price: 100~150 RMB/person
Website:  www.idancoffee.com
Visited: Sep 2010

Café Dan is small cafe in Tianzifang filled with an abundance of sunlight and the alluring aroma of freshly brewed coffee. Luxurious iced latte, desserts, and down-to-earth Japanese comfort foods that warm you up from the inside.

Dan Cafe is a 3-story structure. The 1st floor has no seating area and seems to be filled with coffee and coffee brewing apparatus. After climbing the dangerously steep stairs, you will arrive at the 2nd floor with half a dozen counter seats and a few 2-person tables that can be combined for bigger parties. The in-between floor and the 3rd floor have additional tables and tatami seating, but the space quickly fills up on a Saturday morning. We arrived before 11am to snatch the 2nd floor window seats because reservations are apparently not guaranteed.

The menus, both for drinks and food, are extensive with plenty of appealing choices. After perusing the menus for a good 20-minutes with plenty of flipping back and forth, we finally settled on the following dishes, starting with breakfast set 3 – Japanese style (60 RMB). The Japanese style egg was fluffy and moist, served with perfectly cooked organic rice.

The western breakfast set (50 RMB) was nothing fancy but delicious nonetheless.

The special “healthy” chicken set (98 RMB) is one of my favorites at Cafe Dan. The grilled chicken is tender and juicy, with crispy and perfectly seasoned skin. The set comes with soup of the day, your choice of spaghetti (+10 RMB for Mentaiko spaghetti), coffee, and dessert of the day.

Dessert of the day was a creamy rare cheese cake with bits of orange zest. A little piece of heaven.

This Hokkaido soup curry had a unique flavor from unknown spices, and tasted slightly more pungent than the usually mild Japanese curry.

The only dish I was disappointed with was the overcooked oden. Too soft, too bland.

The special roast pork miso ramen (78 RMB) comes with heavenly roast pork and handmade kelp noodles, which, though very delicious, is quite pricey at 78 RMB for a medium bowl.

The spinach hamburger steak Japanese style set (78 RMB) was good but not impressive. Go to Big Apple for the unhealthier but better tasting hamburger steaks.

And of course, the iced latte (50 RMB) with ice-cubes made from coffee so that the flavor isn’t diluted as the ice melts. Smooth and aromatic coffee combined with frothy milk that still bubbles as the latte is served to the table. My favorite.

A lovely lovely space. Click here to see my second review of Cafe Dan.