Overview

• The Shanghai Rainforest Restaurant offers a 15-course meal priced at 3,888 yuan (US$550), featuring unconventional dishes inspired by Yunnan’s rainforests.
• The final course, a dessert named 'Flowers Inserted into Elephant Dung,' uses sterilised elephant faeces as a crunchy base, topped with herbal perfume, jam, pollen, and honey sorbet.
• The dining concept, called 'ecological fusion cuisine,' includes interactive rituals like eating raw leaves and licking honey from ice cubes.
• The restaurant’s founders, one from France and one from China’s Blang ethnic minority, spent seven years researching Yunnan’s rainforests to develop the menu.
• Regulatory clarity is pending on whether the sterilised elephant dung dessert complies with China’s Food Hygiene Law, sparking debate over the boundaries of culinary experimentation.