Taste Paradise

Like Foodsmithone posted, some things have taken precedence in our lives although we’re back posting and blogging about our mini food adventures. This is a long overdue post on Taste Paradise, which is part of the ever-expanding Paradise Group. While I’ve not tried the food at the humble Seafood Paradise at Defu Lane, if the food at Taste Paradise is anything to go by, I’m sure the food at Seafood Paradise must be yummilicious.

Taste Paradise prides itself in serving contemporary Chinese cuisine – but in a traditional Chinese setting (though some may find it to be a tad OTT or kitschy, but to each his own). Check out the table setting:

In terms of food, Taste Paradise’s flagship dish must be the Stone Bowl Braised Sharks Fin with Crispy Spring Onion Roll. For conservationists, the restaurant serves a “green” version of the sharks fin – that is, environmentally friendly sharks fin. Full of flavour, the sharks’ fin soup is thickened with lower grade fish maw and leaves a sticky layer around your mouth (if you’re a messy eater like me). It comes accompanied with a spring onion wrapped in popiah skin deepfried to perfection. For me, I don’t quite get how the 2 are meant to be eaten together, but both are tasty delights individually so I’m not complaining about whether they should be served together. Be careful about the stone bowl the soup is served in though, since it keeps the soup warm for 20 minutes, you can imagine how hot it’s going to be!

Amongst the other dishes we had that night was a well executed Braised Abalone with Dried Oyster and a slightly oily Deep Fried Eggplant topped with Pork Floss (forgot about the pictures). The eggplant dish is not something that is new – quite a few restaurants serve it these days, whereas the abalone and dried oyster dish is also something that is common place on most Chinese New Year menus at many good Chinese restaurants. I suppose what sets Taste Paradise apart from many other restaurants is that the food is generally well executed and does not deliver any unexpected / unwanted surprises.

Our final dish of the evening was a Pan seared Scallop served with Conpoy and Mee Sua in Superior Stock. This was slightly more unusual, with the use of crisped conpoy as a garnish proving to be a good choice on the part of the chef. The mee sua was al dente, while the seared scallop was as scallops should always be served – browned on the outside, tender on the inside. The stock that it was served in, of course, could not be faulted. A fish based stock that was light yet flavoursome, the lightness of the dish made sure that we did not find it overbearing at the end of a heavy meal. (As a side note, I should also add that I also had the chance of sampling a fish noodle dish garnished with prawns (something like what I had at Jing) and it was also splendid with the flavour of the prawns accentuating the noodles perfectly.)

Overall, Taste Paradise serves up tasty, modern Cantonese cuisine that deserves the good hype it’s getting. While it’s not the cheapest of places to eat at, they serve up a 5 course set lunch at 58++ as well as dim sum each of which may provide a good introduction to the food at Taste Paradise. The restaurants (both at Mosque Street, as well as the more swanky Ion Orchard flagship outlet) are not huge, so I’d suggest getting a reservation if you’re keen on sampling the food.

If you’ve also tried the food at Taste Paradise, do drop a line to let us know what you think!

Taste Paradise

Ion Orchard, #04-07
Tel: 6509 9660

48 – 49 Mosque Street
Tel: 6226 2959

Open daily for both lunch and dinner.

Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck

The name itself is striking enough – Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck Restaurant. As one might expect, this Imperial Treasure group restaurant specialises in Peking Duck. The ducks have a waiting time of about 70 minutes – so if you know you’re going to be ordering the Peking Duck, you would be best off pre-ordering one when you make a reservation (recommended, on weekends especially).

During our lunch time visit one weekend, the restaurant was jam-packed, with families waiting outside for an empty table. Having heard so much about the Peking Duck (S$70 a bird), this was a dish that we had pre-ordered to cut the waiting time. The duck is supposedly roasted over lychee wood and the skin is meant to have a smokey sweet flavour from the wood. I didn’t quite taste the lychee flavour, but I must say that the duck was roasted to perfection – skin crisp and yet juicy. I liked the fact that they used the traditional-styled Peking duck crepe (and not the egg based yellow crepes that many restaurants use these days). There was also a “choice” cut (as the waitress explained) – this was served first, and was meant to be dipped in sugar (without the crepes) for maximum enjoyment.

Apart from the duck, we ordered a number of dimsum and dishes to share. We had the Tianjin Cabbage with Chinese Ham which was flavourful, yet simple. At S$20 for a small a dish, it was a touch expensive, though I suppose one could argue that in a restaurant like this, that would be the price one would expect to pay.

We also had a Cucumber and Chicken Salad with Sesame and Peanut Sauce which was a simple dish of poached chicken, on a bed of sliced cucumber and green bean sheets topped with a silky smooth sesame and peanut sauce. This hit the spot (taking into account the fact that I really like peanut / sesame sauces). If you’re not quite a sesame / peanut sauce fan like I am, it could well have been considered an above average dish only. I’ve seen a similar version of this dish jazzed up with a little apricot jam to give the sauce a slight tanginess and sweetness, but this wasn’t evident here. Still, being the “nutty” fan I am, I liked this.

Aside from the above dishes, we also sampled standard dimsum items like the Hum Sui Kok, Char Siew Cheong Fun, Lor Bak Goh and the Egg Tarts. All of these were well executed renditions of the items, and I particularly liked the Lor Bak Goh (or carrot cake), as it was nicely fried and stuffed with a good amount of lup cheong (waxed sausage).

Overall, I liked the food at Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck. The Imperial Treasure group generally serves up well-executed Cantonese fare that keeps closely to the basics, and the food here at Super Peking Duck is no different. While the prices are nowhere on the low side, the dim sum is well priced for the quality of the food. Ordering dishes will, however, push your bill northwards. I should also highlight that when the restaurant gets busy, service levels suffer a little and on occasion, we found it hard to get the attention of the servers. When things slowed down, however, the staff managed the situation much better and got back on top of things. Still, in all, the food here was the star, and while I am told the Peking Duck can’t quite compare to that served in Da Dong or other Peking Duck specialists in Beijing, this rendition is pretty good and worth a try if you’re in the mood!

Clay Abode

Roaming around Maxwell Chambers one afternoon, we decided to head to Clay Abode for lunch since there was less of a crowd at Clay Abode (this despite the fact that it is usually the crowded places that serve the better food).  For the uninitiated, Maxwell Chambers is a refurbished building housing state-of-the-art arbitration chambers, as well as a number of restaurants and interesting food joints, including a milkshake bar called Once Upon a Milkshake (to be reviewed soon!)

Clay Abode, as the name suggests, is a shop specialising in claypot dishes, and in particular, claypot rice. At Claypot Abode, the Signature Claypot Rice is an offering of chicken, chinese waxed sausage (or lup cheong) and salted fish served on rice in (you guessed it!) a claypot. There is an option of adding an egg to the dish, which I have to admit, I’ve never seen done anywhere else before. For those interested, the egg is a Japanese ramen style egg with a soft centre which you are apparently supposed to mix into the rice. (This didn’t quite hit the spot for me as the rice was already too wet to begin with (see below).)

Despite the decent reviews of the restaurant, I found the rice far too soft for my liking – it was very very wet, and certainly did not look nor taste like it had been cooked in the claypot, as is traditionally done. My guess is that they pre-cook the rice, and then ladle it into the claypots before adding the ingredients and re-heating the entire pot. Unlike other people who have reviewed this joint, my food came within 7 minutes of ordering, which indicated that the rice was certainly pre-cooked, and not cooked only on order. Another sign that the dish was ready made was the fact that there was no crispy rice crust at the bottom of the pot which one gets when the rice is cooked directly in the claypot.

In fairness, I have to say that the chicken was well marinated and very moist (despite it being chicken breast which often tends to be overcooked), and for me was the only positive aspect to an otherwise pedestrian claypot rice. The salted fish did not shine like it usually does in claypot rice dishes – while there was an ample amount of salted fish in the dish, the fish did not impart any flavour to the rice. What I was disappointed particularly with was that the sauce was mixed into the rice, unlike the traditional claypot rice stores which have the black sauce mixture on the side for the diner to add on their own.

For those who are interested, I should also add that Claypot Abode has a set lunch available on weekdays at S$9.50 per person. This comes with one claypot rice (I’m not sure if this changes weekly, but we were offered only the Chicken with Salted Black Bean Claypot Rice), a side of vegetables and a dessert (for us, it was a red bean paste). A good deal if you consider that their claypot rices range from S$9 to S$9.90 per pot (which I might add, is a tad expensive for the serving).

Overall, this wasn’t the best claypot rice I’d had in my life, and it certainly wouldn’t be a place where I would crave going back any time soon. I personally think there are much better claypot rice stalls out there, albeit in a less fancy environment and without the air-conditioning, but if you happen to be in the area and can’t find another place to eat, then the food at Claypot Abode will fill your tummy and keep you warm, but won’t do much other than that.

Clay Abode
32 Maxwell Road
#01-05 Maxwell Chambers
Tel: +65 6227 6137

Wo Peng Restaurant

I previously mentioned this little known eatery at MacPherson Road when blogging about Ming Kee Seafood and had promised a review on Wo Peng Eatery. In Mandarin, it shares the same name as the infamous Shanghai landmark He Ping Fan Dian (made famous in part by the one and only Chow Yun Fat) and one might easily mistake this joint for a Shanghainese restaurant. But it’s not. It’s really a small (about 15 tables?) Cantonese restaurant run by Chef Julian Tam that apparently specialises in Poon Choi (or Peng Cai) (which I should also add, is a big favourite during the Chinese New Year season these days in Singapore).

On our visit here, we weren’t quite in the Poon Choi mood (it wasn’t CNY ceason then) so we sampled a few of the dishes that were recommendations on the menu. First up, was the Crispy Fish Skin served with broth. I liked the crispy fried fish skin (I told myself it was my intake of omega 3 and collagen for the week, even though the skins were deepfried), but i didn’t quite understand how to use the broth. As explained to us, one was meant to dip the fish skin into the broth to maximise the flavour from the fish skins. For me, however, I liked the fish skins on their own – there didn’t seem to be a need for the broth and in truth, after the 2 baskets of fish skins were cleaned up, the broth was still left standing, virtually untouched. To avoid being wasteful, we drank up the broth like soup and it was delicious, albeit a touch too salty (perhaps as they really were meant as a dip, not a soup!).

We also ordered the Smoked Duck which had a nice semi-crisp skin on the outside, and a tasty, oaky flavour to the meat. The meat was smoked to a light pink hue, and was reminiscent of a western-style smoked duck dish. It also reminded me of a smoked ham, like one gets at Christmas – with a hint of honey at the tail end of the palate. Loved this dish and would not hesitate to order this again on my next visit!

Apart from the dishes above, we also did order a Fried Spinach which as with all vegetable dishes, really wasn’t quite anything to crow about. The final dish we had that evening was the Fried Crab Beehoon.This was really why we had come – someone had recommended this place to us for the fried crab beehoon. Well, the dish seemed to lack a little wok hei, as is really necessary for fried beehoon dishes. The crab was as expected, fresh (but nowhere near Mellben Seafood at Ang Mo Kio which serves the most delicious crabs ever, imho) but the beehoon seemed to lack a little flavour. Now I’ve been reassured that the reason why this is so, is that the restaurant was insanely crowded that night, hence the lacklustre beehoon. I guess that could be a reason for the lack of flavour, but I’d hoped for alot more from this dish, especially after what I’d heard. Nevertheless, I’m tempted to give this dish a second shot, just to be certain I’m not missing out on anything!

In essence, I think Wo Peng Eatery is a quaint little joint which deserves a shout out for it does really serve up good quality Cantonese food. While it’s not in the same ranks as Imperial Treasure or Hua Ting or any of the other restaurants that serve out fine Cantonese cuisine, one can certainly feel the heart in Chef Tam’s cooking (minus the crab beehoon on our visit) and he does make a special effort to check on the diners to make sure that everyone is happy. His sincerity does show through in his cooking, and I certainly would not hesitate to visit Wo Peng Eatery again.

Wo Peng Eatery
476 MacPherson Road
Tel: 6747 9892 (Reservations required on weekends, or be prepared to be disappointed)

Jing – Modern Chinese

Jing is award winning chef Yong Bing Ngen’s second joint venture with hotelier Loh Lik Peng. Chef Yong is well known for serving up excellent modern Chinese food and made his name first at Pan Pacific Hotel’s Hai Tien Lo, and then at the Majestic Restaurant (where he won many many awards). As I’d never had the opportunity of visiting the Majestic Restaurant, I was eager to visit Jing to sample Chef Yong’s food.

Lunch at Jing is a busy affair as many executives from the nearby Raffles Place area host their business lunches there. There are a number of good value set lunches, and the most basic of them (it’s called the Executive Set Lunch) clocks in at S$35++ for a 5 course meal consisting of an amuse bouche, a warm salad, a soup, a noodle and a dessert. We didn’t realise how filling the Executive Set Lunch would be, and we decided to supplement the set lunch with some dim sum from the a la carte menu (I know, gluttony rearing its ugly head again).

Amuse Bouche: Rice Paper Roll with vinagarette

To fill our stomachs before the real food came, the amuse bouche of a rice paper roll did its job. Combining Vietnamese rice paper with a western styled filling of raw crunchy vegetables paired with some Chinese roasted duck meat, this lived up to Jing’s “modern” Chinese reputation. It wasn’t particularly outstanding, but neither was it bland or uninteresting. This held our attention for the short span of time it sat in front of us.

Fresh Button Mushrooms with Fruits and Garden Salad

The button mushrooms were battered and coated with a wasabi-mayonnaise, which is today, a rather common sauce used in many Chinese restaurants. The salad leaves were standard issue mixed greens normally found in western restaurants, but to put a slight twist to the savoury salad, Chef Yong added chopped mango and strawberries for a little kick. While purists may scorn at the use of fruits in a savoury dish, I thought the use of mangoes and strawberries was an interesting touch to the dish that set it apart from a run of the mill regular wasabi mayonnaise mushroom dish you might find in a Chinese restaurant. Simple but elegant twist.

Chef’s Double Boiled Soup of the Day

On my visit there, the soup du jour was a dried vegetable (choi gorn in cantonese) boiled in pork rib soup. This was very very flavourful, just as traditional Cantonese soups are meant to be. The pork ribs were soft and tender, and dipped in soy sauce, they tasted perfect.

Dim Sum: Scallop Abalone Dumpling, Har Gau and Siew Mai

The dim sum were well executed, and each were plump with ingredients, whether it be prawns or scallops. The abalone in the abalone scallop dumpling was tiny (that’s the brown patch in the middle of each dumpling in first picture) and while you really couldn’t taste the abalone, for the price of the dumplings, I certainly wasn’t expecting an 8-head abalone!

Stewed Fish Noodles with King Prawns and Garlic

This dish reminded me of the lobster noodles that one often has in London. For some reason, the Chinese restaurants in London serve up some of the best lobster noodles that can be had in any part of the world. While this wasn’t lobster noodles, the fish noodles stewed in the prawn broth were flavoursome but remained al dente. (Perhaps the noodles managed to retain their texture because of the fish / protein content?)  While I’m not sure about how the noodles retained their bite, the combination of the noodles, prawns, delicious broth / sauce and the spring onions made for a perfect end to the (savoury) meal.

Mango Sago with Pomelo

Again, this dessert is beginning to be a common sight in the menus of Chinese restaurants these days. To set themselves apart, Chef Yong used a deliciously smooth vanilla ice cream to raise the profile of this common dessert. The vanilla ice cream is  home-made and when slightly melted, the dessert was perfect. Not too sweet, smooth, with the mango and pomelo balancing each other out.

The food at Jing was all well-executed and I’m quite sure I’ll be back here to try out more of Chef Yong’s creations. While people may use the term “modern” Chinese cuisine to describe the food served at Jing, I for one, found the food at Jing to be traditionally Chinese with just a slight twist to distinguish itself from other restaurants. I liked that the food was served in individual portions and that the plating was simple yet colourful at the same time. The Executive Set Lunch, on a plain reading of the menu, may not seem like it will fill you up, but from one glutton to another food lover, believe me, the 5 dishes together were more than enough to fill my big stomach up!

Jing
1 Fullerton Road
#01-02/03 One Fullerton
+65 6224 0088

Another HK post

Like FoodsmithOne, i’m a big fan of hong kong. What’s there not to like about Hong Kong? I know someone who can name you 10 things he hates about hong kong in a snap of the finger, but still goes back there whenever the opportunity arises. For me, one big lure is the f-0-0-d. From street food to the most refined of dining places, you name it, they’ve got it. This post, however, is dedicated to a Hong Kong institution (they even have a wikipedia site on them!). Serving only beef noodles (even the plain noodles is served in beef stock, so if you aren’t a beef-eater, stay away), Kau Kee Restaurant (it’s really a coffee shop) specialises in what’s known as “ching torng larm”, or clear soup beef brisket. As an alternative to the clear soup beef brisket, you’re also offered a choice of curry brisket, although i’ve never dared to try it in my many jaunts there.

The place is run like a nazi camp. You queue up, tell the “seat assigner” how many people you have in your party, and are bundled away into a table, squashed with a bunch of other hungry people. No reservations, no private tables. Your server then goes round and gets the orders (he repeats after your order, so don’t be alarmed. This is done in one continuous motion (for up to 20 persons!) when the store first lets customers in; you should see this, it’s amusing). It may be disconcerting when you see it happening, but it’s really very simple – you either have clear beef brisket soup or curry beef brisket / tendon (or a combination of both) with either hor fun, or ee meen. After a short wait, your bowl of steaming hot, tender beef brisket noodles is served up to you. Enjoy!

Kau Kee Restaurant (九記牛腩)

21 Gough Street, Sheung Wan.

Open: Mon to Sat, 1230pm to 715pm. 830pm to 1130pm. Closed between 715 to 830pm for cleaning.

Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays.

The Square

Hong Kong is one of Asia’s veritable food paradise – from the sidestreets selling all manner of finger food(fishballs on sticks, pig innards, egg balls, ten different types of fruit milkshakes, waffles) to the cha chan tengs to the best of Cantonese cuisine. Part of the difficulty in a short trip is deciding what to eat, and when to eat it. If you are like me, you try your best to squeeze in breakfast, lunch, tea, some more lunch, dinner and supper all through the course of a day and still leave HK with the distinct grouse that you have missed trying something yummy in the midst of all that food.

This is surely a happy conundrum for any foodie – there is never a moment of dullness. Tasked with finding a newplace to dine at, one of the places that came to mind when I made this trip in December 2009 was The Square located at II Exchange Square. Featured in the much talked about Michelin guide, The Square is run by the Maxim Group in Hong Kong and was awarded one Michelin star. Indeed, the publicity surrounding the Michelin guide did not go unnoticed; at the entrance of the restaurant, one instantly sees a special Michelin menu of the restaurant’s best gastronomic offerings.

What strikes you as you walk in is that the Square is not your atypical Cantonese restaurant – if anything, the feel of the place is decidedly more modern and this is perhaps a reflection of its menu as well. A trio of singers, one on an acoustic guitar played softly admist the diners. We chose to order from the a la carte menu and began with the recommended BBQ suckling pig with sweet sauce, on top of rice cakes.

I am of the view that while roasted meats can be found at any Cantonese restaurant, the test of a good Cantonese restaurant is how well executed the roasted meats are – whether it is roast duck, roast goose, char siew, roasted pork belly or bbq suckling pig. This suckling pig did not disappoint with the outer crispiness of the skin delicately contrasted with the coolness of the cucumber below. A sweet tangy sauce was sandwiched between the cucumber and the skin and this was a subtle refinement of the more commonly used sweet sauces. The rice cake at the bottom tasted firm and was a reflection of how The Square tends to adapt traditional dishes with a slight modern finish. I would have preferred if the chef had used a simple crepe or wafer thin skin but this was still very tasty.

The next dish we ordered was the lai tong – nothing beats a good double boiled soup, and the Square utilised water chestnuts, corn, pork, pork bones to produce a delightful concoction soozing to the throat, and at once sweet and rich.

After this, our foray into the main dishes began with The Square’s tangerine prawns. It’s quite easy to find battered prawns in any Chinese restaurant- but this was quite an outstanding dish by all accounts. A light crisp batter coated large tiger prawns, with a delicate tangerine sauce. The tangerine sauce was both sweet and sour, with the remnants of orange peel still apparent.

Following this, we decided to sample one of the Square’s dim sum offerings- in a menu of nearly 50 dishes and part of the Maxim group, the Square has a surprisingly modest dim sum menu with only four offerings. The Jumbo Prawn and Asparagus Spring rolls were beautifully executed- housed within a wafer thin spring roll, the fillings of the spring roll left us wanting more. Aside from a jumbo prawn, there were stalks of asparagus, mushrooms, chilli oozing out of a brown sauce.

The next two dishes were equally well executed: the first, crispy pork in dark vinegar sauce with almonds, was a subtle update of the conventional sweet and sour pork. The pork was fried lightly in batter and then doused with a honey dark vinegar-ish sauce and then crisp almonds were added to the top of it. The second, steamed cod fish with tiny salted fish, was drizzled with the common fish sauce used in Cantonese fish dishes but the little pieces of salted fish provided more bite.

By the end of the meal, we were convinced that The Square was adept in executing traditional Cantonese dishes with a slight modern twist but still preserving the original flavours of the dishes. Nestled among its sombre corporate cousins, The Square is an excellent choice if you still like your food traditional but with an updated spin.