Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai, Beyond the Logo

A critic’s look at Prada’s Shanghai restaurant one year on, with an exclusive chef interview

Full story coming soon
迷上 Prada 荣宅的素颜：一周年、主厨专访与厨房直击——它是否真正成为一间好餐厅？

Originally published in the Chinese edition of Epicure China on June 1, 2026 / Access arranged with Prada

Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai marks its first anniversary.

The name itself is a pairing: Mi for Milan, Shang for Shanghai. From the start, it suggested more than a restaurant. It proposed an encounter—between Milan and Shanghai, Italy and China, Prada and Rong Zhai—held inside one carefully restored house.

When Mi Shang opened a year ago, the Prada-ness of it was impossible to ignore: the architecture, the restoration, the concept shaped by Wong Kar-wai, the celebrities, the investment, the aura of the brand. One year on, Epicure China returns to ask a simpler, sharper question: if the Prada name were removed, would Mi Shang still be a restaurant worth seeking out?

For its first-anniversary dinner, Mi Shang brought together its resident chef, Riccardo La Perna, and Lorenzo Lunghi, chef of Torre in Milan. Since Lorenzo’s arrival, Torre—the restaurant inside Fondazione Prada’s tower—has grown into a dining destination in its own right. Its progress offers a useful precedent for Prada’s ambitions in hospitality: how a branded space can earn culinary respect on its own terms.

In Shanghai, that task now falls to Riccardo.