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First up, the Fidel Castro family. They have built in Lujiazui, the Gran Melia, which is slowly and quietly opening. The glass-and-steel tower is a joint venture between the Cuban gov't (51%) and the Chinese gov't (49%), managed by Sol Melia, the world's largest hotel resort chain. (Apparently, the deal included a reciprocal hotel in Cuba, in which the Chinese gov't owns the controlling stake.) It's 600-and-some odd rooms, and it's been a long time in the works -- back to 2002, I believe. It's up on the north shore of Lujiazui, towards the aquarium, and its views are across to Hongkou and Yangpu, not Bar Rouge. The staff do a funny thing when you enter, covering their heart with their right hand and bowing slightly.

Food- and beverage-wise, there's , Acqua, done up in a curious orange decor. A reliable outside source informs me that the Italian chef has an excellent track record, notably at Sureno, in Beijing's . There's a lounge/cabaret, Havana Night, with an underlit dancefloor, a cigar shop that will sell a range of Cubans, and, the hotel tells me, an abundance of expatriated Cuban management staff. There's also a tiny brick-and-stucco-and-arches Spanish restaurant of 30-40 seats scooped out of the floorspace of a massive Cantonese restaurant, which has 22 private rooms by itself (in addition to the main dining room.) None of this stuff is open to the public quite yet. Soon.

The hotel is looking towards the Expo right now, angling to become the Capital of Spanish-speaking Shanghai -- a sort of de facto command center for the diplomats and associated entourages of Spain and Latin America. To that end, Gran Melia is hashing out plans to bring very, very high-profile Spanish chefs to Shanghai for 16 one-week promotions. Nothing is confirmed -- still negotiating -- but I've heard Ferran Adria and Martin Berasategui mentioned.

Laris has his fingers in the Expo pies, too. In addition to consulting on the Aussie and US pavilions, he's going to be opening three new concepts, and another , in Expo Village: Yucca, The Pie Hole, and The Funky Chicken.

1. : "inspired contemporary Mexican cuisine.... will focus on the essence of regional Mexican dishes influenced by Yucatan to Baja Peninsula. (sic)" The decor, bar menu, design, etc., all take the Yucatan peninsula as inspiration. Chef is from Guadalajara.

2. : Pies. Sweet, savory, Aussie, not Aussie. Mostly a takeaway.

3. : Everything you can do to a chicken short of sashimi: grilled, rotisserie'd, fried, marinated, souped, saladed... Global flavors: teriyaki, rosemary-grilled, BBQ, etc.

From what I understand about the Expo -- and it's not much -- the Expo Village is basically off-limits to anyone but Expo employees living there. Like the Olympic Village in 2008 Beijing. So, you can't actually go to any of these places until the Expo blows over. Consider them a preview of what we might see in Shanghai, 2011. I imagine the Expo Village as a sort of proving ground for these concepts. If they work and survive there, they're likely to pop up in downtown.

Mi Tierra is going to being running the taco bar at the Mexican pavilion. You know, only in addition to opening a brand-new, four-story, massive, huge, humongous, tremendo, oversized, grandiose on January 29th. It is large. The official Expo taco bar is forecast to serve 1,600 people at lunch and dinner; their restaurant has 200+ seats. For a company whose primary business was, until very recently, selling frozen, homemade Mexican food and Mexi products, it's a dramatic change of pace.

It is beyond ambitious. I wish them the best of luck.

When I went down to the restaurant last week for a look, I thought its stark white facade was a church. Where the pews would be, there is a soaring interior courtyard, with daylight streaming through the glassed-in roof; in place of the altar, there is a bar, and a vertical rotisserie awaiting the Mexican chef/saint who will attend to the pineapple-topped tacos al pastor. The choir would sing from a balcony that's now set with just a few intimate tables, and the devil would probably lurk in the snowy VIP toilet -- a spacious private room with a sofa, a porcelain throne, lots of counter space, and a wink-wink from the management to bring in your friends and do whatever unholy things you do in a bathroom. With your rich friends. That might require counter space and privacy. Collaborative blueprint drafting? The single key to the room goes to the evening's highest spender. Mi Tierra tells me the VIP toilet thing is all the rage in Europe these days.

It's not a church, exactly, unless your religion is "authentic, regional" Mexican cuisine. That's where Gabriela Fernandez, the chef, is taking it. Her Shanghai trajectory has been steadily pointed upward. She started here at , and then did a spell at , between OG chef Brad Turley and current chef Sean Jorgensen, and now this, with space for 200 people spread across the lower two floors. (Offices on the third; free-space on the fourth.)

Downstairs, in the colonial-style courtyard and the bar area, it's casual. Her taco menu alone hovers around twenty items, from tacos of hibiscus flowers, onions, and chilies, to the tacos de trompo (known as tacos al pastor in some parts), and "taco-lites", which are basically any of the other tacos, but wrapped in a lettuce leaf, not a carb-heavy homemade tortilla. (Fernandez says the lettuce leaf is popular in Mexico these days.) And then you have a bunch of other small antojitos: sopes, flautas, quesadillas, chicharonnes, and other casual dishes you can snack on with cocktails, or craft a meal out of.

Upstairs, it's the more formal stuff. The plan is to have a waiter come to every table with a molcajete, the hefty Mexican mortar-and-pestle, and a tray of ingredients, and make salsa tableside. From there, the menu goes into cazuelas, parrilladas, moles, and classics like a whole snapper Veracruzana, and, if Gabriela gets her way in trimming down the massive rough draft of the menu, a few lesser-seen Mexican dishes. Chorizo, tortillas, cheese -- all homemade.

Eventually, there will be brunch, lunch, and a first-floor shop selling their homemade frozen products. To start, though, it'll be just dinner and drinks from 5pm, and no service on Sundays.

There's a five-story building on the corner of Julu Lu and Xiangyang Lu, with glass windows that curve around the corner. It's been home to any number of failed restaurants in recent years. Golden Bull is the only one I can remember. It is now home to another Grand Plan, courtesy of a newly formed F&B group, XY One.

The building is going to open from the bottom up, and it's going to open soon, soon, soon.

The first floor is , and they're dubbing it "New York-style Italian". It means it's a red-sauce joint, an Italian-American restaurant serving beloved bastardizations like Chicken Parmigiana and Veal Piccata, and a bunch of pastas, and pizzas. The decor is decidedly more upmarket than your average New Jersey Parm place. No red-checked tablecloths in sight, but there's plenty of marble. Prices on the menu draft I saw look like it's gonna be 150-200rmb per person for dinner.

Second floor is , and it's upscale Northern Indian food. The chefs are from the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi; they arrived on Tuesday morning. The manager is from Masala Art, and the decor takes a mild influence from the name, which, they tell me, means "camp" -- low ceilings, some draped fabric. Again, lots of marble. There's a small room tucked behind the hostess' desk for lounging and smoking hookah. About 200-250rmb per person for dinner.

Both of those are nearly finished. They'll be open before Chinese New Year.

Third floor is -- named after the drunken Tang dynasty poet. In his honor, they say, the restaurant will have the largest selection of baijiu and huangjiu available in Shanghai. I haven't seen the menu, but XY One says the place will have a "Sichuan framework, plus Cantonese dim sum, and Peking Duck". A generalist, then. It is fairly intimate, as are all of spaces. None of them seat more than 100 people.

Fourth floor... events space, wine cellar, nothing of interest to the average customer.

Fifth floor is the , and its hook is "more whiskys than ." It's projected to be a loungey bar, with as-yet-unseen-in-Shanghai single cask, single malts; Japanese-level attention to detail on the cocktails (the appropriately current buzzword... ); and an excellent view of low-rise Jing'an from those wraparound windows. It's a construction space at the moment, so the ratio of hype to reality on the first two claims is anyone's guess, but the bit about the view is true. It's a clean line to the Shanghai Exhibition Center over the red lanehouse roofs, and the neon blue slash of the Yan'an Lu expressway. The sixth story -- the roof -- will likely become an extension of this bar, but the details are still being worked out.

Floors three and five are slated for a spring opening.

Also, I overheard someone's conversation about building a bar out of an airplane fuselage, with a dj in the cockpit, and sections for Economy, Business, and First Class. He's looking for "flight attendants" at the moment. It is already under construction. The virtues of eavesdropping...

And finally, in a secret shake-up at the Expo, the U.S. Pavilion has been yanked and will be replaced by..... The People's Federal Republic of Eduardo Vargas.

Grand Plans indeed.