I must admit that if asked to think about likely spots for some excellent food of any kind (let alone seafood), then Chepstow would not be the first place to come to mind. Situated at the unfashionable end of the old Severn bridge (now called the M48 and presumably even more of a back water than it used to be), this border town actually turns out to have some interesting narrow streets once the brave traveller leaves the main road and avoids the hideous Tesco near the centre. It also boasts a fine castle.
We were there to celebrate the birthday of my brother-in-law, and had been invited to join him and his wife (my sister, aforementioned on these pages) at a favourite restaurant. Somewhat to my surprise this turned out to be a Chinese. The Shangri-La has been at 17 St Mary Street for two years now, and seems to be very popular indeed - we visited on a Tuesday night, and just about every table was taken. There is even a nicely cordoned-off area near the door for customer awaiting takeaways (so the sit-down diners aren't troubled by them asking for 10p for a cup of tea, one half thinks).
Actually, the Shangri-La is a pleasant and invigorating find. It's run by (at least) two generations of the Ong family who come originally from Malaysia, and so the menu features plenty of Malay-style options which comes as a nice surprise. Having visited Malaysia several times, I can also confirm that it's pretty authentic! Mmmmm...chilli (in Homer Simpson voice). I had heard good reports of the crab here, and we had pre-ordered two lobsters for this particular birthday feast.
But wait... we started off with a nice range of starters. Salt-and-pepper fried squid with marvellous green chilli sauce, pork and prawn dumplings, smoked chicken with spicy salty chillies, lettuce wraps with prawns and hoisin sauce... And they have draft Sun Lik beer too, all the way from Hong Kong. All these were excellent.
But the lobsters - they were sensational. The first one arrived cooked in ginger and spring onion, cut into pieces and served on a bed of crispy noodles. It was easy to eat (you just pull away the meat from the shell), and the way the sauce dripped through onto the noodles was outstanding. The second lobster arrived 'Shangri-La style', which means served in a spicy and sour sauce rather similar to the sauce accompanying chilli crab in Singapore - brown, with egg stirred into it, and a nice step up from the more delicate ginger flavours. Wow!
Taking this in our stride, we followed on with scallops sliced and stir-fried, delicious prawns with egg (fried into tiny yet crispy strands - how DO they do it?), pak choi with oyster sauce and rice. An excellent seafood-based blow-out, and one well worth sampling. The Shangri-La is at 17 St Mary Street, Chepstow NP16 5EW, telephone 01291 622959. They do have a website at http://www.s-la.co.uk/, but at the moment it's a triumph of rotating logo over content. Just get along and try it out - it's much better than it should be, if you know what I mean.
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