It's a 400-seat restaurant offering a diversity of food including barbecue and pizza.

The Las Vegas references are on the walls and ceilings. Diners can sit under pictures of 11 top Las Vegas hotels on the walls and look up at the roulette wheel light fittings.

If diners are tall enough, the roulette wheels can be turned although they're impossible to play.

Roger Zen, the restaurant manager, is a Brazilian who has long stayed in Las Vegas. He said most hotels in Las Vegas boasted similar large restaurants on their ground floors.

To bring out authentic barbecue and pizza flavours and taste, the ovens have an important role to play. Unlike barbeques grilled in electric ovens, diners in the restaurant can watch a huge charcoal oven in operation with great clumps of ribs turning over the fire.

Zen said that larger roasts will be put in the oven for more than 10 hours of slow cooking.

And the pizzas are cooked in a wood-fired oven.

For those who don't want one of Las Vegas' superbly barbecued roasts or pizza, a wide choice of seafood, Chinese dim sum, noodles, vegetables, fruits and desserts is also available.

Lunch on weekdays costs 37 yuan (US$4.50), and dinner is 77 yuan (US$9.30).

3F, Shanghai Plaza,

138 Huaihai Zhonglu

Tel: 021-6375-6111

(Shanghai star October 24, 2002)