Folks from Shanghai have, well, certain expectations. Therefore, when they rock into town, it’s time to get out the big guns. After all, we don’t want them headed back to the “Hu” blagging about how uncouth Nanjing is.
With its business card that is two millimetres thick, The Malt Room sets out from the start to install a sense of quality. That it sits atop the premier Irish bar in Nanjing; Finnegans Wake, is also a help. Even the most demanding “sanhaining” is sure to be impressed.
Downstairs, Finnegans Wake serves up an array of signature British dishes, all so obvious it is very surprising they are at best sparse on the menus of other international restaurants in town; classics such as Roast Beef, Steak and Guinness Pie plus Fish and Chips. Then there is a Full Breakfast; again, there are sufficient party animals in Nanjing in need of sustenance on early weekend afternoons that you would think a few more places would be offering it.
I digress.
That the menu also offers more than a nod to the land north of the England-Scotland border, in Haggis and Clootie Dumpling (surely the only place serving this delight in all of China?), serves as a hint to the fact that the owner is Scottish (staff are also impeccably dressed in tartan) and a preview of what lies in wait up the stairs when it comes time for that all important digestif. Elsewhere on the menu, and in the case one has gone for “The Daddy” that is a triple decker burger (a snip at ¥150), the tipple invented as an aid to digestion may be a more than necessary evil.
Opened towards the end of last year, the Malt Room follows the same discerning sense for standards that has stood the ‘Wake in good stead since 2008, standards that, to be Frank, leave one feeling as if one has stepped out of China. Big old fashioned armchairs, dark wood and soft lighting mean one could be in a book shop in colonial Singapore. Throw in an unrivalled selection of Scotch whisky and, were it not for these days of political correctness, a cigar would also likely be mandatory.
The Malt Room boasts a collection of whiskies from the finest and oldest single malt Scotch whisky distilleries in the world, one that springs from every corner of the little country, each with a character as rich and complex as its history, and as fresh as the landscape that surrounds.
As well as hanging around in hopes that one may ask for a refill, staff at The Malt Room are also happy to introduce this enchanting world, and guide one through the what, why and how of whisky; all facilitated by a back room dominated by an overbearing map of Scotland and its distilleries that feels about ready to leap off the wall and challenge one to a drinking contest.
From a personal perspective, The Malt Room passes my not so acid test; the mere stocking of Talisker, one of the six Classic Malts, chosen as being best representative of Scotland’s principal whisky producing regions. What it all boils down to is the local water and the choice of wood for the barrels that do the “finishing”, in Talisker’s case a Spanish sherry.
For water is indeed the key; Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns, himself claimed that should one meet the devil, one would only survive if fortified with “uisge beatha”; whisky, the water of life.
