Area: Flair, the indoor/outdoor bar on the 58th floor the IFC Ritz Carlton, occupies the same airspace as only one other venue: the Pearl Tower's revolving restaurant. It occupies the same psychic space as VUE (32nd and 33rd floors), Jade on 36 (36th floor), and Cloud 9 (87th floor). It's physical space is in Lujiazui. That's the skyscraper forest of Pudong. If you tossed a coin off the side of Flair, it'd fall on Shanghai's proud new Apple store. The Jin Mao, the bottle opener, Super Brand Mall, and the Pudong Shangri-La surround the IFC and its own (partially finished) superbrands mall.

What it is: Shanghai's latest and greatest View Bar.

Atmosphere: Five-star patio deck and rustic residential luxury. It's done by Super Potato, the Japanese design firm who seem to be the five-star go-to. Among many other things, they've done Nadaman at the Pudong Shangri-La, and both the VUE Bar and VUE Restaurant at the Hyatt on the Bund. Flair looks like a combination of the three. Inside, it's the plush residential sitting room of a wealthy Bund peeper. There is a sushi/bar counter and a telescope and fancy red furniture and a villainous second floor platform (from which you can see nothing). Super Potato delights in using rustic elements -- reclaimed beams, roughly textured stone -- to fashion fantasy living rooms in hotel spaces. That proclivity, and the elevator, adorned with a wall of stacked wine bottles, is where it looks like VUE.

Flair's magic is outdoors. It's a split-level patio deck with expensive patio couches and chairs, and then it's polished and/or rough-hewn granite. That's where it looks like Nadaman. The view is spectacular. The Pearl Tower dominates. You can see the individual diners in the restaurant, as it slowly spins around. The pink rocket also serves as a bit of perspective, and gives scale to the scene laid out from Flair's stage.

When Jade on 36 opened, it proved to Cloud 9 that maybe 36 floors is high enough. Flair pushes that train of thought 22 stories up. Fifty-eight floors is the new 30-odd floors. It's not too high.

At this elevation, the air gets thinner and the prices heavier. It's achingly elite. Proper Shanghai.

Damage: You are going to spend a lot of money at Flair, of course. Their signature cocktails are all 90rmb plus 15%. There are lots of things that end in "-tini." A sake-tini is 90rmb. So is a Hoegaarden. And a mojito. Flair's menu says it "specializes in Asian cocktails as well as vodka." Bottles of flavored Absolut, of which there are many, are 800rmb. A single pour of Level vodka, top of the list, is 120rmb. Glasses of wine average 110-150rmb.

The natural way to do Flair is with Champagne. You really should be buying Champagne here. It's just how to do someplace like this. Entry-level is a Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial for 850rmb. Not that bad really. Thirty grams of osetra caviar go for 1,200rmb, if you can stretch to Champagne's sidekick.

There's a pretty large food menu. It is southeast Asian small plates and expensive seafood. First item on the first page is an 1,800rmb Australian rock lobster sashimi with truffle-soy vinaigrette. The raw bar page reads like an international conference: Maine lobster, Hokkaido scallops, Bouchot mussels, Manila clam, Alaskan crab. A California roll from the sushi counter is 140rmb. So is a platter of Singaporean chili crab claws. A pomelo salad sells for 90rmb, pan-fried Shanghai dumplings for 70, and a miso soup for 50. They're five-star prices.

None of that necessarily means the staff has much idea what they're doing yet. The signature cocktails are lumped together in a paragraph on the first page of the menu. Their names don't give much of an idea about what's in them (Crystal Blue Shanghai; Diamond Dust; Pacific Dream), and frankly, neither do the servers. The wine list looks like it was laid out in 1992 desktop publishing software. Inquiries to two servers about what time the Bund lights up gave three opinions (7pm; after 8pm; no, no, definitely 7.30pm). It can be painful, particularly when you remember you're at the Ritz. That all happened yesterday. Saturday evening was better.

Remember to smile, and concentrate on the view.

(A footnote: When the bar opened last month, there was a minimum spend policy after 8pm. That's quickly been abolished.)

Who's going: Rich men, beautiful women, and splurging normals.