The Verdict
EL WILLY has occupied the fifth floor of 5 The Bund since 2010, and in a Bund dining landscape that has seen restaurants open, close, and transform around it, the Spanish kitchen's consistency has become its primary credential. Chef Willy Moreno constructed the restaurant on the premise that Spanish tapas culture — sharing, informality, the repeated ordering of small dishes that allows the meal to evolve over hours — is particularly well suited to the Bund setting, where the point of an evening is as much the view and the company as any single dish.
The menu is built around the Spanish tapas tradition with Chinese and Southeast Asian ingredients applied where they enhance rather than obscure the Spanish flavour architecture. The jamón Ibérico is sourced from Spain and sliced at the counter. The patatas bravas — an argument that the simplest preparations are the ones that reveal kitchen quality most clearly — arrive with a salsa brava that the kitchen has been refining since the opening. The paella, ordered in advance for groups of four or more, is cooked over open flame and arrives with the socarrat that distinguishes the genuine article from approximations.
The fifth-floor terrace, when open in the Shanghai climate's hospitable months, is among the Bund's most sought-after outdoor dining positions: the river below, Pudong's towers across the water, and the colonial facades of the Bund's heritage buildings visible in both directions. The sangria trolley, wheeled to the table with ceremony, is the visual signature of an evening at El Willy that the room's regulars have incorporated into their understanding of the Bund.
Why It Works for a Birthday
The combination of the Bund terrace, the Spanish sharing format, and the sangria trolley creates a celebratory atmosphere that the more formal Bund restaurants cannot replicate. The sharing format means the table orders broadly — returning to the kitchen multiple times as the evening develops — which sustains the energy across a birthday dinner of two to three hours. Groups of six to fourteen are the natural constituency. El Willy handles celebrations well.
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