Most top downtown steakhouses in Shanghai serve high-quality Western cuisine, but the lack of veteran chefs has become a big headache for the city's growing number of restaurants serving non-Chinese food, industry experts said yesterday.

The Shanghai Cuisine Association secretly visited major steakhouses - including Red House Restaurant, Wang Steak and Monty's Steakhouse - on Huaihai Road to check food and service quality in the past few days.

"We are glad to announce that no major quality problems were found although there were some minor material and technical problems," said Chen Juanjuan, secretary of the association.

For instance, one steakhouse claimed to serve New Zealand beef. However, all raw steak in the city is imported from Australia.

Association officials said they ordered the steakhouse to correct its menu immediately. They declined to disclose the steakhouse's name.

There were more than 1,200 Western restaurants in 2004, accounting for 4 percent of the city's restaurants. Western restaurants are growing about 15 percent a year.

(Shanghai Daily January 6, 2006)