[Chef's Table] A Secret Door on Yongkang Road Leads to 'Eight'

Yongkang Road has gone through many iterations. If you've been in Shanghai for at least five years, you remember it as the city's rowdiest "organic" social street, anchored by the raucous French crowd spilling out of Café des Stagiaires. And boy, were we noisy. And naughty. Those poor neighbors living above the shopfronts never did get their beauty sleep.

The party went on until enough complaints piled up at the neighborhood committee, the louder venues got relocated to other corners of the city (hello, Found 158), and, interestingly, some businesses were allowed to stay. The street has been evolving ever since, but never stopped being a place to go.

What Yongkang Road has never had, though, is a proper destination restaurant. There are good spots, sure. The Thai place is solid, and the Irish pub does decent pub fare. But Eight is, arguably, the street's first institution headed up by a named chef. And it's a bit of a hidden secret too: a lone wooden door that hardly calls attention to itself. It is, indeed, a very cool find.

Behind that door is Chef Gabo, who once stood outside a restaurant for two days straight just to get a job washing dishes, who slept on his own kitchen floor to open the next morning's service, and who will tell you, without blinking, that chefs are hawkers, not artists of some other oral tradition. His restaurant has changed names five times, its menu gets erased and redrawn every few weeks on purpose, and its whole origin story traces back to a drunken conversation above a beloved, now-shuttered Shanghai institution. This is that story.

That door, I learned within minutes of arriving, came from a temple.

"Gabo got it years ago," says Kun, one half of the 20-something couple who partnered with Chef Gabo on this latest incarnation of Eight. "He's carried that door to every location. It's the symbol of Eight."

The other half of the couple is Aliz, who runs marketing and curates the art on the walls, and who gives me the tour while Gabo bangs around in the kitchen. The restaurant is split in two: upstairs is Cantina, or 八 (上) ("because bistro is too French for us"), an à la carte room built for sharing plates the way you'd share dim sum. Downstairs is Under, 八 (下), the eight-seat, eight-course, no-menu chef's table that started all of this. The names riff on qi shang ba xia (七上八下), the Chinese phrase for being all over the place. Which, as you'll see, is also a fair description of the chef.

(Aliz points at the floor. Two sets of tiles, nearly identical.)

"We call these the grandma tiles; they've been here since the old days. We didn't touch them. Then we sourced new tiles in the same design for the rest." Old meets new, east meets west, the whole concept underfoot. The dining table we sit at is a century-old mansion door from a vintage market. Another table is built from seven real mahjong sets, with an eighth set kept nearby so guests can actually play. On the wall, a piece from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). "Not a famous one," Aliz shrugs, "but old enough to be precious."

Then Kun pops over back to our table, Coke in hand (I'm driving today), and the interview stops being an interview.

Anarkia Was a Madness

CNS: Walk us through the restaurants. How many lives has this thing had?

Gabo: Before this, it was 8. Before that, it was 8 by 8. Before that, 8 by Anarkia. And before that was Anarkia. Anarkia is like a boogeyman in Shanghai, if I'm being honest.

CNS: I remember Anarkia... opened post-2020... Tell us the story.

Gabo: Anarkia happened because I was working for a very, very big company, I don't want to say the name cause they are really weird, let's call them Budweiser...haha, but I had just finished opening Goose Island, and I didn't believe in the trend, I didn't believe in what they do with this mass consumerism, and I decided to leave all this corporate... stuff...

CNS: Speak your mind, Chef Gabo!

Gabo: So I opened Anarkia as a solo project. My first solo restaurant in China. And it was insane. We did a hundred people a day, à la carte, out of a 5-square-meter kitchen. It opened at the worst possible moment. When we came back to business, I was ready to close it. I thought, this is dead; this isn't working. And one day I arrived at the restaurant, and there was a line of people waiting outside.

CNS: That was an unusual time for F&B in the city. How did that happen?

Gabo: Until today, I didn't get it. We were very popular for the roasted pig. But Anarkia was madness. We arrived in the morning, we put the menu together, and we opened until the coolers were empty. I woke up on the floor of the restaurant to cook the next day. That was Anarkia.

(A woman passes our table, and Gabo says hello and lights up. A customer from the Anarkia days, eight years running. This will happen twice more before dessert, which never arrives)

Everything Is Eight

CNS: So where does "Eight" come from?

Gabo: Sadly, guys, I need to say it: my daughter. She was born in 2018. The 8th of August. At 8 o'clock. That's the reason for 8. She is the love of my life, my daughter. She's even done the interior design. I'll show...

But... anyway...I was taking a break, doing consulting, and I was drinking with the old owner of Diner. He says, "You want to open a restaurant again?" Sure. "What do we call it?" 8. Why? Because everything is 8. Two weeks later, we were setting up the business. The first 8 was on the second floor of Diner. Really experimental. No decoration. Just a table, a kitchen, and we cooked what we liked.

CNS: A chef's table.

Gabo: Ehh... with me, it was more like A cook's table. Because at the chef's table, normally the chef is taking pictures in Bali while you go to his chef's table. That's how it works here. The chef is never in the house.

The lineage after that gets complicated, even by Gabo's own accounting. There was 8x8 ("You know when you try to be pretty and you are not pretty? That was 8x8. I was trying to be a decent person, and I found out, no, I cannot be a decent person"). There was a second 8, hidden so thoroughly you took an elevator through a construction site to find it. He has, in his words, very bad luck with locations: two of them were taken back by the government.

Which brings us to Yongkang Road, which was actually the plan B. Plan A was a smaller spot off Huaihai Road.

Honestly, I don't even remember why we liked that one first. This has been amazing. I think it's the best fit.

(The current Eight opened on June 1. They put reservations online and, two days later, three months of bookings were gone.)

And inside me, I'm thinking: my menu is not ready.

(Laughter)

Chifa, Not Fusion

(A plate lands between us. Something flat, glistening, with a red sauce on top)

CNS: What's this one?

Gabo: Skate wing. This is my British side of the blood. Skate is one of my favorite fish, so complicated to cook, so easy to eat. We cook it in a chupe sauce, but with our homemade fermented gochujang. I lived in Korea for a year and I fell in love. So it's like a chupe slash curry. All cooked over charcoal. Go ahead, the bone is edible.

(It was my first skate ever, for the record. It's a protein unusual in that it is more akin to a shark or stingray. It doesn't have a true bony skeleton the way a salmon or sea bass does. Instead, its "bones" are cartilage: softer, more flexible, and far less mineralized than calcified bone. For this dish, the red slick on top is a chili oil he learned to make in Xi'an. "I don't believe in balance," he says, watching me eat. "I believe in contrast."

I can't think of another restaurant in Shanghai where skate wing was on the menu.

This dish is the thesis of the whole restaurant, and the thesis has a name.)

Gabo: Two years ago, I was reading about Peruvian cuisine. Everyone knows Nikkei from Japan, but no one talks about Chifa. Chifa is when the Chinese immigrated to Peru, the same process as the Nikkei. Lomo saltado is Chinese immigrants using local ingredients to cook the dishes from their memories. So what happens if you flip it? If a foreigner comes to this country and treats it like home? I eat this food more than any other food. That's what I call Chífané. I don't want to say fusion, because it's not a fusion; it's a reinterpretation. The noodles are homemade; the sauces are made the traditional way here in China. Keep the core.

Gabo: Chífané, for the record, is spelled 吃饭 on the menu. A cuisine named after the most useful phrase in the Mandarin language: chīfàn. Eat.

Where is the best food? Michelin star? No. The taco truck on the corner. Street food has soul. It's for working people. My food comes from the streets of Asia and the streets of Spain, and is put together here in Shanghai.

Kun, it turns out, is partly responsible for lighting this fuse. They met when Kun was a customer at 8x8, in a former life as a finance guy who'd drifted from investment banking into renewable energy and then sustainable agriculture, visiting farming villages with his mother's foundation and getting deep into the traditional Chinese calendar (and making good money along the way). Their very first conversation was about the 72 micro-seasons, the old system where the year turns over every five days, and you eat what each turn gives you. We've been writing about them every two weeks.

Kun: And he told me his lifelong dream was to create a 72 micro-seasons menu. I was like, this laowai knows more about Chinese culture than most of us.

Gabo: The menu exists! The menu is ready. It never repeats. But it's an impossible menu, crazy to actually realize. I pulled it out for one week, once. One day, when I'm old and I don't care about money, I'll go do that menu. Because the 72 thing is very popular in Japan, but it actually comes from China, and China forgot about it. The new chefs are so busy cooking French food, or Chinese food that looks like French food, instead of going back and saying, let me learn how to make a fucking noodle from scratch.

'I Stood at That Door for Two Days'

CNS: So, you're from Spain, no?

Gabo: A quarter. I am mixed-race. I grew up in the Basque Country, around San Sebastián. I was actually born in Venezuela. I was a nomad. If I wanted to learn Italian food, I would fly to Italy and work for free. I've been doing this for 28 or 29 years. I started at 15. I'm 40 now.

Gabo: When I decided to cook, it was: get into the kitchen, wash plates, figure it out. I went to culinary school after I was already a chef, because my company said, "We want to give you more money, but you need a title." Done. But for five years before that, I would literally show up at the door of the best restaurant in Spain, the best pastry chef in the world: "Can I work here for free?" "No, we don't have a position." "I'm not going to leave until you give me a role." At one restaurant, I stayed two days at the door.

CNS: Two days. Really?

Gabo: Yes. "I don't care if it's dishwashing or cleaning the floor. You can give me a place." And he did. That's what F&B is missing these days: the sacrifice. I don't consider myself a chef; I am a cook. Chef is a big word. Now people come straight out of culinary school, open a restaurant, "you are a chef." Yes, man, but can you use the dishwasher? No. When I started, gastronomy was: you're a loser, you can't do anything with your life, go work in a kitchen. That was the old school in Spain. We were like pirates.

And why could I do it? Because I have ADHD, I have OCD. When I was young, you didn't have ADHD, you didn't have OCD, you were just dumb. Now I find out I have a lot of those words. (laughs)

Neverland

CNS: So how did you end up in Shanghai?

Gabo: By accident. Sixteen years ago. I was working in Santiago de Chile, I was tired, and I was looking for a plane out. I got in contact with Diego, who later opened El Bodegón, and he was working for Eduardo Vargas. "You want to be the new chef of Azul?" The one on the rooftop, off Wukang Road.

But China first didn't want me to arrive. I lost all my connections and it was a human mess. Santiago to Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires to Auckland. Auckland to Melbourne. Melbourne back to Auckland, because I love the connections. Hong Kong. Hong Kong to Shanghai. That was my flight.

(He did three months at Azul, then appeared around town: Chicha, the Peruvian spot in Sinan Mansions ("the first Peruvian restaurant in Shanghai, it was amazing"), the original opening team of el Bodegón, a stint in Korea, consulting all around, a broken arm, a daughter all in between.)

Gabo: We all arrive in Shanghai the same way. We don't have another place to go, so let's just go. Shanghai was like Peter Pan. "Oh, you're lost? Come with me." And they fly you to Neverland. And I fell in love. I know Shanghai better than I know my hometown. You live here long enough, you go to the Family Mart near your house, it's out of what you want to buy, and the cashier just tells you, "tomorrow, tomorrow."

(laughter)

That's Shanghai. Shanghai is a black hole. You come, you cannot leave. The relationship is: I love you in the morning, I hate you in the traffic jam, I love you again at lunch, I hate you when the delivery gets late. Every day is a new Shanghai. Every day, it tries to kill you and make love to you and you need to either fight back or take the kiss.

And the food. China is an entire universe. I fell in love with the size of this country's food history. Not the famous restaurant, not the famous chef. "Oh, this is the famous chef who made the Beijing duck." Okay, but where does he eat? You find the guy cooking in the back of a lane and you go, fuck yes, give me that. That's what kept me here.

We Are Hawkers, Not Artists

(Noodles arrive. They smell really good.)

CNS: Oh... now, what's this?

Gabo: Dandanmian. But it's not a dandanmian. It's a carbonara dandanmian with pork char siu and brown cheese. There are no Italian restrictions in this house. It's very simple food. It's food for fat people!

(Laughter)

(The noodles have a kick, and they were the table favorite; you should order two. The sauce is voluptuous; there is no other word.

Then, in quick succession, the other dishes arrive.)

Next was the savory youtiao churro topped with crab salad, green apple and avocado, and a Korean garlic bread that exists purely because Gabo lived in Korea and liked it there. Both are good, but the Korean Garlic Bread is also worth a double order, one for the table and one to have for breakfast the next morning; it travels well. Practical dining advice here.

"It's not rocket science," Gabo says. There's also a croquette of "pure ham and fat," with fermented eggplant. "People tell me you're fat. No, I'm yummy."

(But we ask him what Eight actually is, and the answer isn't a dish.)

Gabo: I stopped cooking for the customers and started cooking for myself, and I share it with the customers. Some customers don't like it, great. Some customers like it, great. Food is not for the pictures. Food is not for Instagram. If I don't get a bad comment once a week, I worry about it.

And I hate when people say chefs are artists. We are hawkers. What is a chef's job? To make people... I don't know ...happy, for a little money? And if I have a bad day, it's not your problem that I have a bad day. I come from a service industry. I'm here to serve. But I have a line. I'm going to serve you, but I'm not going to do just anything a customer asks.

[Laughter]

Gabo: What restaurants need is real feedback. When a customer tells me "I don't like this" and gives me a right explanation, I love it. It's like, fuck, you're right. This dish (he gestures at the noodles) went through five people before it got to this level. That kind of criticism makes me a better cook. Not "I don't like it because it doesn't look pretty." Sometimes we chefs are arrogant, because we need to be. But tell me why. What technique is wrong? What flavor is wrong? Sure, write about your criticism of Dianping, but hey... tell us in the restaurant too before you leave. You might teach us something!

(The menu, accordingly, is a living thing. Two months in, he's already planning new iterations for September. Dishes appear, evolve, vanish.)

Gabo: In China, I like the Buddhists. They do the painting, and after, they erase it. That's my menu. People say, "Gabo, but this dish works! And you got rid of it!"

CNS: You're a heartbreaker.

Gabo: All dishes become like the toxic ex. You want her back so bad, but you don't need her back.

This is, funny enough, the second venue owner I've interviewed with this exact affliction. A year ago, we profiled a young baker whose entire menu turned over in three weeks; we couldn't publish the article because nothing we'd photographed existed anymore. I told Gabo I'd become addicted to one of that bakery's items, that the baker discontinued it, and that he refuses to bring it back. Gabo nodded like a man being told about a fellow soldier.

Tinder, Actually

About the couple. Aliz and Kun met on Tinder, which they cheerfully acknowledge is the app's best possible advertisement. Neither is originally from Shanghai; she was born in Guangzhou, and he's been here since elementary school. Both did the international-school-then-overseas circuit, her in London, and both describe themselves as people who physically cannot sit still. She quit L'Oréal two years ago and now splits her days between art content creation and a GIA jewelry course; he trades from home. The restaurant is, technically, the side hustle.

CNS: So why add an entire restaurant on top of all that?

Aliz: We love eating. We're definitely foodies. And we wanted a place in Shanghai we could always come back to, where we could host our friends. Your own social space.

Kun: And coming from a hospitality perspective, I see an imbalance here between the people serving and the guests. The mutual respect is not there. It's too transactional. When we encounter guests who are intentionally creating problems, we do refuse service. Gabo worked in New York, and they had a sign: "We reserve the right to refuse service. That's missing in China.

Gabo: This sounds a little aggressive, guys. "Why did you start this business?" "We wanted to kick customers out."

[Laughter]

(To be fair to them, the room doesn't feel aggressive at all. It feels like someone's very loud home. "Soon you're going to see me run downstairs to have a whiskey shot with a customer and come back," Gabo warns me at one point. "That's the atmosphere here. There is no such polite person in this house." And it's fairly true. All throughout the interview, Gabo was chatting with other tables. This is one of those places in Shanghai where the venue feels like the creator's house, and you've been invited.)

The Last Restaurant

CNS: You've said this is your last restaurant as a chef. What does that mean?

Gabo: We're going to keep creating new things, but I've arrived at the age where I want to step back. I have a new guy, fresh off the boat, training downstairs. I want to see what the new generation of cooks can do, and get them the best we can. Before, people came because of Gabo. "Eight equals Gabo." Now I want Eight to be Eight, and Gabo to be Gabo.

But Eight is not only me. Let me introduce you to my Ayi. She's the real boss. She's a legend. She's been with me for eight years, at every restaurant since Anarkia. She doesn't speak any English, my Chinese is bad, and we have full conversations. Everyone asks, "How?" We have a special chemistry.

I try to bring back what the restaurant was before. No reviews, no pictures. You go with your family, you go with your friends, you sit, you have a connection. If someone dies, it's food. If someone is born, it's food. If you have a date, it's food. If you break up, it's food.

CNS: That's true. Can we try the cheesecake?

Gabo: Over my dead body.

[Laughter]

(Dessert on the menu is titled "Don't overthink, just order." They sold out, so Chef Gabo was able to leave the restaurant alive.

Before we left, Chef Gabo reminded us, "By the way, should I tell you about our interior design? My daughter was in charge. Make sure you take some photos". So we did.)

So that's Eight. A temple door on a street that used to keep the whole neighborhood awake, a mahjong table, a Venezuelan-born Basque cook who slept on his own restaurant floor, and a menu designed to be erased. Go before your favorite dish disappears. It might. If you see these three pirates, say hello...

If you go

Eight is at 73 Yongkang Rd, split between Cantina (八「上」, à la carte, upstairs) and Under (八「下」, the eight-seat, eight-course chef's table, downstairs).

Oh, and how much does it cost? The Chef's Table is always 888 yuan per person. For a la carte Cantina, prices aren't published and are adjusted based on seasonal fare, but in general, they go up to about 300 yuan per person on food alone.

Reservations are currently booked out for August, so try to make one for September.