There are restaurants that feed the body. And then there’s Prada’s Shanghai restaurant, which lingers like a scene from a Wong Kar-Wai film: elusive, loaded, lacquered with longing. War-Kong Wai, the fashion house’s cinematic tribute to the auteur, exists in that vaporous space between memory and desire, between mood and meal.
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Opened in the heart of Shanghai’s Jing’an District, the Prada-owned restaurant—named ‘Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai’, with Mi Shang meaning ‘to be obsessed with’—is a collision of mise-en-scène and mise-en-place. Enter, and it’s 2046. The velvet booths lean toward you instead. Mirrors catch your reflection at odd angles, like someone remembering you differently from how you were. There’s a feeling that Maggie Cheung might have slipped into the powder room and never left.
The space takes its name from a playful, deliberate transposition: “War-Kong Wai”. Not a typo, but a mise en abyme. A film within a film, a room within a dream. Each corner references the stylized melancholy of Wong’s cinematic worlds—from the grainy warmth of In the Mood for Love to the sticky afterglow of Chungking Express. The palette—deep reds, jade greens, and cigarette-stained gold—feels aged in heartbreak and nostalgia. Light hangs like a curtain drawn too soon; cutting the scene short, mid-thought.
There’s theatricality in how one dines here. Martini glasses clink under Art Deco sconces. Dumplings arrive arranged like a costume fitting. Noodles glisten under the dimmed hush of indirect spotlights. A Prada lookbook could be shot here without a single garment—just lacquered chopsticks, soft-focus glances, and that unmistakable feeling of being seen and unseen at once.
The opening also marks another step in Prada Group’s deliberate ascent. With Miu Miu currently crowned the “world’s hottest brand” and the recent €1.25 billion acquisition of Versace from Capri Holdings, the company is asserting itself toe-to-toe with luxury legacy giants, LVMH and Kering. Once the thinking person’s luxury house, Prada is now a full-spectrum force, bridging arthouse and hype, minimalism and maximal moves, as it meets a new generation not just in numbers, but in narrative.
What makes a Prada restaurant inspired by Wong Kar-Wai memorable? You don’t go there to eat. You go to feel. Or at least, to feel like someone else might be thinking of you while you eat.
Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai is now open at 186 North Shaanxi Road, Jing’an District, Shanghai, China
For bookings and menu list, visit the Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai webpage
Photos: PRADA
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