What: The first serious project at the South Bund’s Cool Docks development is from chef Stefan Stiller – a cooking school on the sixth floor and a modern Euro fine-dining restaurant on the seventh.

Look: The views from down here are a draw – Pudong, the Pearl Spaceship, and the river from a new angle – particularly with the wall of windows that lines both floors. The seventh floor dining room is mod in that clean, white geometric way, with angled cubes of brown leather chairs, sharp white tablecloths, and a cool gray open kitchen for finishing dishes. The main kitchen is a glassed-in area of gleaming stainless steel on the sixth floor, where the school’s cooking stations are. It’s the kind of space you find in expensive homes – flat induction burners that use magnets (not gas) for energy, inset ovens, and black granite kitchen tops.

Food: How many times can we say modern Euro? That was the last one – it’s the theme that underpins Stiller’s menu. The fractional dishes Stiller favored when he was cooking at Mimosa are out (almost; there’s still a Tomato and Goat Cheese, 5 Textures); contemporary cooking with German overtones is in. But let’s stop with the tired schnitzel and sausage cliches – there’s a world of fine German cooking beyond the stereotypes. The country has nine three-Michelin star restaurants. These are lighter dishes like black cod with grain mustard and a warm jelly of roasted potato, or a Rhine-style braised beef reworked into a 36-hour braised beef cheek, with a traditional sauce of raisins, pumpernickel bread, and bitter chocolate. But that’s just part of the menu. The rest – seared scallops with tahini, bacon, and leek “air”; turbot with crayfish and peach; lamb loin in a thyme crepe with artichoke barigoule – could be from anywhere. The wine list is also of note – quite a diverse selection, much of it ¥400-700.

Bill: ¥350-550 per person, without drinks. When cooking classes begin in the fall, they’ll also be in the ¥300-400 range.

Hours: Tue-Sun, 6-10.30pm. Come fall, seven days a week.

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