Lunch at ManWah

I’ve been to Man Wah for lunch twice since I’ve started living here and it is one of the best dim sum places that I've been to. Fook Lam Moon is a very close second for me, and what makes these two places that I have had really good dim sum at is simply really good execution of food.



My first lunch here was just a small sampling of their dim sum and to my surprise everything that we had was really good. I expected it to be good and for some dishes to fall short but I’m glad to report that everything that we had was GOOD. One of the best things that we had was their signature Black pepper beef puff pastry and this was probably the best thing that we had that lunch. The beef is pepper with a bite and pastry is paper crisp and not greasy, and well layered to for enough textural bite but light and airy, really amazing.

 

 My second lunch here was during the hairy crab season where they featured a hairy crab menu. The menu featured some of their signature dim sum – black pepper beef puff pastry and hairy crab dishes. Whilst the roe is the most prized of the crab and was featured against a bowl of white rice – I felt that there wasn’t enough of it to enjoy it because much of my hairy crab fest experiences are more like "death by hairy crab until the next season", the other dishes used the overlooked parts such as the crab legs that were sautéed with Shanghainese rice cakes. In addition to the menu, we ordered a serving of crab meat and roe tart and this was the highlight for me. A little over the top tiny tart, flaky pastry cup packed with probably the amount of roe and crab that almost equated to a crab. Concentrated hairy crab flavor, now this is what I’m more used to with hairy crab – excess, over the top and now I had my fill to the next hairy crab season. Man Wah didn’t disappoint.





The food is excellent and the XO sauce condiment is something that I could pile on to most things. In addition to that, it is a room with a view and with fabulous service. All in all this is a very good restaurant.

Man Wah
(at Mandarin Oriental HK)
5 Connaught Road West
Tel: +852 2825 4003

Fook Lam Moon's Little Roast Piggy

Fook Lam Moon's roast suckling pig was one of the top yum things that I had in 2012. Perfectly evenly roasted crisp skin and sliced with a good meat, skin and fat ratio. Best little roast piggy I have eaten.

Fook Lam Moon
35-45 Johnston Road
Wanchai, HK
Tel: +852-2866 0663

Choi’s - Good Old Skool

We came to seek some solace from the cold weather in some good old claypot rice but we were 5 minutes too late - we had just missed the last empty table and formed the first in the line that came after us. It was torture! We stood outside feeling a little cold and took in the sights and smells of the claypot rice that were being cooked to order.

The wait, thankfully, wasn’t that long and when we sat down – the food came fast and hot and it was really good.



Sweet and sour pork that is fried deliciously crunchy and glazed with a vibrant sweet and sour that well balanced in both sweet and sour rather than the ketchup dominated sauces that we generally get – it felt like I was re-discovering sweet and sour pork for the first time all over again.



The fried squid with white pepper also fried to perfection, light crisp and squid tender.



Their claypot rice sums up the cooking here for me. Each claypot looks deceptively simple but it takes experience and skill to cook everything to order precision that extracts taste from the ingredients and creates the right texture for the rice and a crusty bottom.

Good Cantonese comfort food.

Choi’s KitchenShop
A1, G/F, 9-11 Shepherd Street
Tai Hang, Hong Kong
Tel: +852-34850501

Learning Chinese: 你吃了吗?

Even though I’ve been eating Chinese food all my life, I feel like I barely know anything about it. I’ve spent a few brief weekend getaways in Hong Kong and Shanghai in the past 18 months and I’ve been eating a discovering the larger world of Chinese food.

In fact, the more I eat, the more I realise how much I don’t know. And this is what I’ve been learning …

Perhaps the reason why we can’t taste the range of dishes anymore is simply because there are just some ingredients that aren’t available anymore! I remember going to the wet markets as a child and staring wide-eyed at those cubes of coagulated pigs’ blood and not so nasty bits of brain and lung which I haven’t seen in last 10 years or longer!



In Hong Kong, I was introduced to Almond and Pig’s Lung soup. I slurped down on a delicious version at Luk Yu Teahouse, one that has been popular and approved by the locals for many years. The almond soup is delicately flavoured with mandarin peels and is creamy and has a gentle grainy texture from the almond puree that gives it a good richness. The pig lungs were a lot milder than I expected. They looked a little strange but they had an airy and spongy texture that was pleasant to eat.


Shrimp with Longjing tea

fishballs with watershield

I’ve also learn about Zhejiang cuisine at a recent meal at Hongzhou Restaurant and I was surprised at the delicateness. We ordered shrimp with Longjing tea unfortunately was a little lightly flavoured for me. It sounded wonderful but it was a little bland, so I suspect I was just served a poor version of it. The homemade fishballs served with water shield, were very seductive. Pillow soft, they danced around my mouth as I chewed down on them. As for the accompanying water shield, I’ve yet to learn to appreciate.



I was never a fan of Sichuan food and I never quite understood the draw of the mouth numbing experience. But that is starting to change. I think part of the draw and thrill of it is that it is a mild form of extreme eating. It is about eating and being at the edge and not falling over and surrendering to those chillies and peppercorns.

Fuschia Dunlop’s Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper, has made me reconsider sweating and it out for a full spicy meal.

The shui zhu yu at San Xi Lou pushed me further in that direction.

The name, “water cooked fish”, evokes images grease-free, health and weight conscious cooking but the actual dish is far from it. In fact, oil is used in cooking the fish. And not just oil, but a lot of it. And don’t be alarmed by the chillies, there are only about...a hundred of them in the bowl? But they will remove most of it before you dive in with your chopsticks, and they are large enough to avoid. What you need to watch out for are those peppercorns. I crunched down on the first one and it really kicked me in the face. I was unprepared. Overwhelmed, I had to put my chopstick down. Then as I was recovering, “crunch”, I bite into the second one, and I had to stop eating again but the sensation of pain and pleasure that started on opposing ends started to inch closer to each other. And before I knew it, I found myself loving and hating those sensational little bastards. Oh, and the fish licked with the fragrant oil was very tender.

So I’ve been exploring and re-discovering a whole new world of Chinese food. Other than that, I’ve also been really fortunately in meeting local foodies whose wealth of knowledge I’ve learnt a lot from. I feel really humbled by this whole experience and in awe of this old and diverse cuisine.

Luk Yu Teahouse
24-26 Stanley St
Tel: +852-25235464

Hong Zhou Restaurant
1/F,Chinachem Johnston Plaza
178-188 Johnston Road
Tel: +852-25911898

San Xi Lou
7/F, Coda Plaza
51 Garden Road
Tel: +852-28388811

On the hunt for more piggy ...

The result of having great food is that you have a benchmark and you are constantly measuring everything else against it searching for something of equal greatness.

So ever since the roast pig at Kimberly, I’ve developed a slight obsession with finding the good roast pig in Hong Kong. Josh or the dude better known as Char Xiu Bao, recommended the Celestial Court roast pig, and so that rose to the top of the eat list for my next trip to Hong Kong.

A great part of making an occasion of eat a roast pig is idea of community and feasting. It is mandated that you gather more than four, unless you have a great appetite for pig because the law of diminishing marginal returns kicks rapidly after the second sliced roll and some restaurants demand it.



So we are gathered here today at Celestial Court to celebrate the life of another pig. This pig stuffing - pearl barley, black truffles, glutinous rice and wild mushrooms – is delicious. The mushroom and (China) truffles lend fragrance and the barley mixed in with the glutinous rice give it texture – together, it was a good contrast to the crispy skin.

The pig vs. pig – in terms of crisp skin, Kimberly wins but Celestial Court wins it with their stuffing.



Another highlight from Celestial Court was the fortune chicken – a deboned chicken stuffed with ham and mushrooms, wrapped in lotus leaves and then baked in a dough crust to seal in all the flavours and moisture. As the staff break through the crust and peel away the layers of lotus leaves to reveal the succulent chicken treasure below, the aromas that burst out of the parcel is exceptionally delectable. It was fork tender and extremely tasty but unfortunately it was a tad on the salty end.

We ate through a few other dishes on the menu but for me was that pig. It was not too complicated or “truffled” for the sake of it – although the mushrooms rather than the truffles really gave it that edge - and importantly, the execution was good. Good piggy.

Celestial Court
2/F Sheraton Hong Kong Hotel & Towers
20 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
+852 2369 1111

Double boil, more toil and trouble?

The heat here is nothing less than sweltering and earthen jars that the soups sit in are over a meter tall. Working here, if you ask me is no easy feat. But nonetheless, the good people at Earthen Jar here get up everyday to make great soup and they do everything with a smile.

There is soup and then there is double-boiled soup. Here I would say it is great double-boiled soup. Double-boiled, is like double the trouble but the flavours are twice as bold. When it comes to soup, slow cooking prevails and I think the Cantonese have patiently mastered the art of 老火湯 “old fire soups”. The superiority of the double boil is that the ingredients are slowly allowed to relax in their watery environments and to gradually release their nutrients into the soup. Very little moisture is loss in the process and because of the gentler heat as compared to boiling. This is how I would explain it ... imagine the molecules of liquid dancing around and making merry with the other molecules (please use your discretion; the chemical basis of this argument is my imagination) it is by this unhurried process mutually intensifying the overall flavour.

Here at Earthen Jar, they serve six healing soups: Healthy chicken soup, ginseng chicken soup, pork with or without lotus root, black chicken and duck soup… Correction. Not just soups but good precious soups done the old fashion way that preserve delicious and won’t break the bank.

Amongst the six, we tried four. Between the ginseng chicken and healthy chicken soup, the first had a slightly herbal flavour lent by the fresh ginseng whilst the essence of the chicken was clearer. The black chicken soup was by far the sweetest from dates not in a saccharine manner but a little too much for me. The pork I expected to be the sweetest of all turned out to be the most delicate and soothing like its calming benefits. What was surprisingly good was serving of rice the mushroom and dried shrimp, a fragrant sidekick that supports the bigger flavoured soups.

This place is likely to be overlooked. It sits a corner and is overshadowed by its neighbouring eating house which houses heavyweight hawkers such as Rong Cheng Bak Kut The, Hup Seng Braise Duck Rice and a smaller outfit of Ah Orh. We only chanced upon it because we were pointed in that direction by fellow foodies that we met eating at the neighbouring eating house. Well, now that we’ve found it, I’m satisfied and gratified.

Earthen Jar Treasure Herbal Soup
Blk 22 Sin Ming Road
#01-244, 77 Eating House

Sum's Somewhere in Sembawang

Sum’s Kitchen & Hong Kong Roasted Meat
3 Jalan Legundi
Tel: 67572118



The roasted duck meat here is juicy and perfumed with aromatic traces of the fire and crowned with a layer of fat and crisp skin. Alongside the customary plum sauce, they offer pounded chillies and a ginger and spring onion concoction that lifts the taste of the meat.



Other than the roasted meats, this slightly off the beaten path humble family restaurant offers other dishes that will feed and nourish the family without breaking the bank. We went as a group of 3, so I can’t tell you much about all the dishes. I, however, have an irrepressible desire to order dishes that seem odd or things that I have not tasted before and in this restaurant, I was introduced to Hong Kong-styled fried squid with prawn paste. Despite their repeated warnings that the dish very pungent, I refused to be fazed and ordered it anyway (bring it on!). Pungent, yes but delightfully so: it had the same heady aromatics of ha cheong kai (prawn paste chicken), but was at no point overpowering.

Depending on where you live, it might be bit of a drive, but there were enough merits in the meal for me to make the distance again.

The Stylish Gloss on Chinese Food

After a lunch of grazing on a few communal plates at The Majestic Chinese restaurant, I had some thoughts about modern Chinese food in Singapore today.

The idea of modern Chinese cuisine was initiated in Singapore by Club Chinois, Tung Lok Group of Restaurants. Nouvelle chinois cuisine painted a stylist gloss on Chinese food. Individual portions and stylish platings alongside a ‘fusion’ style of cooking incorporating ingredients from other cuisines that were traditionally not used in Chinese cuisine. More restaurants have taken on this label of modern Chinese, innovating and pushing the flavour boundaries. That, however, has also lead to a near duplication of some dishes, such as the now ubiquitious wasabi prawns.



Nouvelle chinois cuisine has also caused a minor revolution in Chinese restaurant décor. Forks and spoons were no longer just serving utensils, they made their way to the standard table setting alongside the soup spoon, chopsticks and the nifty holder that prevented them from making any contact with table. As Humble House, which was designed by Zhang Jin Jie, an established artist, Majestic Restaurant finds its home in the über chic restored Majestic hotel. The much talked about décor here and the swimming pool ceiling did not do much for me, but what I liked was the huge kitchen window that allows you to privy into the matters of the kitchen and to watch the cooks dancing to their own kitchen rhythm.

The food although elegant and delicious, read Chubby Hubby’s and colin's mouthwatering review here, lacked some sort of distinctive identity. My case in point is the foie gras and Peking duck skin pairing served with a wasabi prawn, which was a well executed combination of rich sweet flavours and crisp textures did not really offer any interesting interpretation. The strength of this restaurant lies in the mix of contemporary and classic offerings that can be paired and served without much confusion.


Foie Gras with Wasabi Prawns, Taste Paradise

Another modern Chinese restaurant that I have recently dined at is Taste Paradise, where I thought the food was excellent. We started off with a similar rendition of foie gras with wasabi prawns as the one in Majestic Restaurant, it was just as indulgent even without the extra silver of crispy Peking duck skin.


Homemade carrot cake, Taste Paradise

Our next plate was their signature homemade carrot cake. I don’t have a clue how Chef Fong made it, but its texture was exquisite—soft, smooth and slightly springy. I’ll agree with Wong Ah Yoke that to date the best plate of carrot cake I’ve had, and at that point in time, I was sure I was going to come back for more.

A plate of Thai-styled deep fried white bait arrived next. It was an interesting hybrid of a Thai mango salad and the conventional deep fried white bait served as a dim sum or appetiser in a Chinese meal. I liked this for its refreshing flavours and its play on the cold and hot crunchy elements on the plate.

From the meat department, we sampled the popular baked lamb rack in red wine and beef cubes cooked French style, which were tasty and tender. The only disappointment was very unfortunately the finishing bowl of homemade mee sua with seafood in superior broth that was too starchy. But other than, Taste Paradise offers some creative sounding and interesting tasting dishes, while others such as the homemade carrot cake in particular, are simple and refined that taste like paradise.

Majestic Restaurant
31-37 Bukit Pasoh Road
Tel: 65114718

Taste Paradise
48-49 Mosque Street
Tel: 62262959

I Heart Crystal Jade

Crystal Jade Golden Palace
Paragon, #05-22
Tel: 6734-6866

Other than the sometimes tedious long queues, I really love Crystal Jade. Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao or Crystal Jade Kitchen usually the names that surfaces when I have a craving for noodles. Despite its ever extending Chinese restaurant empire, where we have witnessed The Crystal Jade group set up shop in most shopping areas of Singapore and slowly taken shop space on almost every floor or Ngee Ann City, making their food more easily available for the masses, the standard of the food has remained consistent.

My last visit to Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao was similar to my other return visits. Without having to flip the menu, I usually grab the pencil and start ticking off my usual “set menu” that I have, zha jiang mian, xiao long bao and crispy eel. I personally prefer the food here, in particularly the zhar jiang mian and xiao long bao, to Ding Tai Fung. The crispy eel, is a must have, crispy and coated with the sweetish sauce, it is simply irresistible. Other dishes that I like here are the double-boiled chicken soup, the consommé is light and flavourful, very simple, very elegant; the prawns with salted egg yolk, the salted egg yolk covering is very rich, so do not order this if you are eating by yourself; and then finish off with the soufflé with red bean and banana filling. In my recent visit, I tried other things on the menu that I would order again: la mian with shallot oil, the fragrant shallot oil laces the noodles, it looks pale, but the flavour that the noodles and shallot oil pack is rather fantastic; and kuo shui ji (salivating chicken), the moist chicken parts were dressed with crunchy garlic bits, crushed peanuts and chilli oil. Lunch that afternoon was as always, satisfying.




We recently visited the higher tiered Crystal Jade restaurant, Crystal Jade Golden Palace, where they offer a mix of fine Cantonese and Teochew food cuisine. Unlike the more informal Crystal Jade Kitchen and La Mian Xiao Long Bao joints, Golden Palace is posh. The food is finer, even the regular dim sum items tasted better and more refined. The menu is extensive with the expensive options of sea cucumber delights, abalone indulgences, BBQ grilled quail or lamb shoulder, and Teochew dishes such as Teochew marinated octopus, pig ears, pig knuckles, trotters, duck or pigs tongue. We were there on a tighter budget and so no sea treasures of abalone or sea cucumber for me.

On our order chit consisted of minced meat congee with baby oyster and minced meat, goose meat, baked prawns with salted yolk, braised 4 vegetables with ham, stewed braised brisket and orh nee. The congee was out of this world good. My food associations with congee and porridge are of me being ill and weak, but this was something else. The rice used must have been something like a basmati or something along those lines, long grained and cooked till they retained a slight bite as they bobbed around in the broth with the oysters and minced meat. The baked prawns with salted yolk is much like the one that they serve at La Mian Xiao Long Bao, but the prawns are larger and executed with more finesse, the crust is crisper and the sauce is not as thick overwhelming. The braised vegetables were subtly favoured by the slow braising in the broth and what I think is Yunnan ham. In general, it was a great lunch; the food was excellent and the service staff are gracious and efficient. This is currently my favourite Crystal Jade.

Canton Wok's New Home

Canton Wok by Chef Kang
382 Joo Chiat Road
Tel: 6285 6919

This man keeps moving! Now situated in an old Peranakan bungalow, this place seems more fitting of the innovative Chinese cuisine that Chef Kang serves. In its old shell at Serangoon Central, parking was less of a hassle, but the setting and the food were out of sync – elderly women were fanning themselves with their makeshift or home packed fans in between dishes as some tables were stuck in an enclave in the void deck devoid of an wind flow. With the new location, that has changed! No need for the makeshift fan anymore! With the new compound, came its own parking space and an attendant, air-conditioned dining room and a large kitchen for chef Kang to perform his magic.



Nosh: The food is still as mouthwatering as it used to be. We must have been suffering from withdrawal syndrome from Chef Kang’s dishes as we over ordered. The lunch started with the serving of mocha pork ribs. They serve two types of pork ribs, one with a sweet fruit sauce and the other with the mocha sauce. I’ve tried both and prefer the mocha ribs for the rich syrupy mocha sauce that it comes with. The ribs are crispy and the predominant chocolate flavour in the mocha sauce is absolutely seductive. The next dish to arrive was the bacon prawn roll mayo cream. The prawns were wrapped with slices of fatty bacon and deep fried, creating a crunchy, smoky and sweet morsel that was made even richer by the gentle dressing of mayonnaise. The last of the deep fried delights to arrive was the eggplant with pork floss. It was as good as I remembered it to be. Now that we were done with the crunchy dishes, next came the winter melon soup, served in its own shell and filled with soup treasures of shiitake mushrooms, dried abalone, melon shreds and ham, it had gusto and a clean taste.

With already four dishes for the four diners, the lunch was not done. The steamy bowl of special lobster ee-fu noodles arrived. The lobster was a little overdone, but the ee-fu noodles were swimming in a rich hot butter sauce. The sauce was so simple, but luxurious as they felt like velvet strands as slid down my throat. Next up was the steamed crab with glutinous rice and garlic, the crab was well endowed with roe, which we mixed up with the glutinous rice and garlic, it was chewy, aromatic and slightly pungent with the garlic.

I hope Chef Kang is staying put in his new home. If he does move again, someone please send me his new address.

Pay: $20 a person

Service: They are not the friendliest bunch, but they get the job done efficiently.

Imperial Herbal Restaurant: yin and yang, where the west will never meet the east.

Imperial Herbal Restaurant

3rd Floor Metropole Hotel
41 Seah Street
Singapore 188396
Tel: 63370491

I’m Chinese and I think this is one of our philosophies on food:
We the Chinese people, we eat weird things.
We the Chinese people, we like to eat weird things.
We the Chinese people, we love and take pride in eating weird things.
We the Chinese people, we constantly look for weirder things to eat.

This place is something. It’s Chinese for lack of a better word. It’s a pretty fun place to come if you are in the mood to spend some money (about S$30-S$50 per person) and to eat random things that would balance out your yin and yang. Some things on the menu have these fancy pansy names after being translated that I had no idea what it was so maybe someone who is more proficient in the language might be able to help me out.

Example one: Quick Fried Egg White with Dried Scallop, Polygonatum and Ladybell Root served in a potato nest.

Example two: Double-Boiled Fresh Sea-Coconuts, Aloevera with Osmanthus-flower and Candied Sweet Potato and Taro.

Are you as lost at me? NO FEAR, the service staff if pretty good, friendly and helpful. They would be happy to rattle off dishes for you to try as well.


Quick Fried Egg White with Dried Scallop, Polygonatum and Ladybell Root served in a potato nest.

We had the quick fried egg (see example 1)/S$4 per piece. A must try. It’s very good. The crispy texture of the potato next it topped off with the very delicate light egg white which is has the dried scallop embedded within it that makes it’s a great balance. I however haven’t figured out what Polygonatum and Ladybell root is.

A second dish that I would recommend is the imperial Chicken with 8 precious herbs. This is priced at S$30. Unfortunately for us, they were sold out so we had to settle for a less herby experience and we went with the deep fried chicken with 4 treasures. I located 3 treasures: sesame, walnuts and pine nuts, I’m still wondering what the last one is.

Along with that we had some eel sautéed with garlic and baked lamb ribs with wolfberries. Very, very interesting. This restaurant is not for the fainthearted or the unadventurous, you have to be CHINESE-ish and YOU MUST WANT TO EAT STRANGE THINGS. Other things that they serve here are ox tendon, deer, ostrich, frog’s legs and other normal things like vegetables, seafood and meat. I guess if you are ballsy enough, you could also try the Panax ginseng deer-penis wine or seahorse deer antler wine. Ordinary is strange here and strange is ordinary.