Doesn't TaZte Like Chicken

Location: Hong Kong

Author: My Husband

Of all the different types of Chinese cuisines available, it is no secret that Christina and I like Cantonese best. While those who misunderstand the cuisine describe it as “bland”, we feel that good Cantonese cuisine is all about highlighting and enhancing the natural flavors of the main ingredients in a dish. This is best done by carefully balancing the textures and flavors in a dish to ensure that the main ingredient is not overpowered by the other things in it.

In good Cantonese dishes, you can always find harmony in the flavors/textures: the sweetness of fresh steamed fish is complemented by the subtle saltiness of a light soy, the heaviness of a thick stew is cut by a few drops of vinegar, the softness of tofu is contrasted with a crispy deep fried prawn paste, etc. Cantonese food can be subtly flavored, or it can be strongly flavored, but whatever the case, it is the balance found in those flavors that creates the depth and complexity in taste that so satisfies those of us who appreciate the cuisine.

On the flipside, it is difficult to cook good Cantonese food. The freshness of ingredients and the talent of the kitchen staff are of paramount importance in determining the success of the food, and cut-corners or missteps in the cooking process will result in a “faulty” dish. In North America where the majority of Chinese restaurant dishes are cooked to meet a price point, it is challenging to find good Cantonese food indeed.

But what happens if menu prices take a second seat to food quality? What happens when a chef decides to cook the best food he can by using the freshest ingredients without worrying about food costs? Lung King Heen happens, that’s what, and the inspectors from the Micheline Guide liked it enough to award this restaurant and its chef three stars.

On this Hong Kong trip, my foodie aunt insisted that we go to Lung King Heen to try the dim sum for ourselves. Will we find the balanced flavors and textures that we so prize? Read on to find out…

We were seated at a very spacious four-top next to a bank of huge picture windows. Some seriously nice china was used for the place settings.

Nice view of Kowloon from our table.

When the Michelin Guide awards a restaurant three stars, it’s not only about the food. That the food is excellent is a must, but service and ambiance must be also be top notch. And Lung King Heen delivered.

The service was excellent – warm hand towels and finger washing bowls magically appeared when needed, tea cups were kept filled (teapots were kept warm at a nearby service console, keeping our table clear for the dim sum), water glasses were constantly refreshed, and a simple glance at the waiter had him by our table in a jiffy. The two waiters assigned to our table anticipated our every need and brought us stuff we wanted before we could even ask. For instance, after I ate a bun without using cutlery, a silver finger washing bowl appeared by my side. After I washed, the bowl disappeared. Even more impressive was the unobtrusive manner in which the service was delivered; we spent the entire lunch chatting amongst ourselves and despite all the freshening of the drinks and china at our table, our conversation was not disturbed at all. Who says good service at a Chinese restaurant doesn’t exist?

A trio of sauces. Note the perfect alignment of the three teaspoons…

Steamed dumplings (潮州粉果). A thin and delicate thin skin holding a filling made with shrimp, pork, chives, and mushrooms. Very nice.

Prawn dumplings (I蝦餃). The prawns were fabulously succulent and fresh. One of the best I’ve had.

Pork/Prawn dumplings (燒賣). The bouncy pork filling was topped off with prawn. Looked pretty and tasted great.

Lobster and scallop dumpling. This is one of the more renowned dim sum dishes at Lung King Heen. The dumpling skin holds a generous portion of scallop and lobster, which are topped off by half a shrimp. Each dumpling is served in its own steamer. This was wonderful.

Grated daikon pastry. A flaky pastry shell enclosing a savory daikon filling. See how the pastry takes the shape of a daikon?

BBQ goose buns. Perfect sweet/savory balance in the BBQ goose encased in a delicate bread shell. This was fantastic.

BBQ Pork (叉燒). The presentation left a bit to be desired, but tasted decent. I’ve definitely had better BBQ Pork elsewhere.

BBQ Pork Jowl. Perfectly fried, each slice was beautifully crunchy. Best pork jowl I’ve had. This was so good, we ordered a second serving.

Deep fried squab. This is Christina’s favourite, and she loved it. She said it blew the Tai Ping Koon version away, and I agreed. Definitely one of the highlights of this meal.

[Dry] Fried glutinous rice. There was an optimal ratio of rice to other ingredients in this one, which gave the dish a wonderful texture.

Abalone fried noodles. This was fried with abalone stock and some slices of abalone. Good textural contrast, but the abalone rice at Thai Village in Singapore is still our favourite.

Toothpicks in a solid silver holder were offered after we finished our savory selections.

Osmanthus jelly (桂花糕). Very fragrant and not overly sweet, this was one of the better examples of this dessert.

Portuguese style egg tarts. Oh yeah Baby! Fabulous.

Double boiled bird’s nest served with almond & coconut cream. Very nice.

Mango flavored sago cream with pomelo. This one was a huge hit with all of us. It’s much nicer than the version available at Hung Fa Lau.

Complimentary desserts.

Suffice it to say, we were STUFFED after this meal. And yes, the flavors and texture of the dim sum dishes here were balanced, and overall food quality (save the BBQ Pork) was excellent. This is the best dim sum I’ve had in quite a while, edging out even the Shang Palace in Singapore. The food, service, and décor in Lung King Heen could not be faulted, and despite it being a Michelin three-starred restaurant, the price for the meal was not super expensive. This is another restaurant we plan on heading back to the next time we’re in Hong Kong.

To conclude this post, here are some pictures taken at (and outside) Lung King Heen:

Lung King Heen is located on the 4th floor of the HK Four Seasons.

Another view of Kowloon.

Nice view from the multi-storey atrium of the hotel.

Typical Hong Kong street scene. The trams are a good way to see the city, and cheap too, at only HKD $2 per ride.

Next post – my wife’s old stomping grounds.

Location: Lei Garden
#03-00 Orchard Plaza,
321 Orchard Road,
Singapore 238866
(65) 6734 3988

Author: My Husband

The last time Christina and I were in Singapore, we were invited to a dim sum lunch hosted by a prominent businessman. The timing was great – it was the day after we got off the plane, the venue was one of Singapore’s more renowned Cantonese restaurants, and we didn’t have to foot the bill. How could we say no?

When Christina and I are in Singapore, we tend not to eat Cantonese food. Since we have plenty of opportunities to eat good Cantonese meals in Vancouver and HK (our usual stopover point between Vancouver and Singapore), we usually try to maximize our intake of local “Singapore” fare when we are in town. As such, we had never been to Lei Garden and we were both a little curious as to the quality of the food there.

The décor of the restaurant can best be described as late-80s modern. Everything was in good repair mind you, but the décor did not seem commensurate for a restaurant that was supposed to be one of Singapore’s best. We later found out the reason why this was…

Our host and the rest of our dining companions arrived shortly after we did. Since the meal had been pre-ordered, the food started showing up very soon after everybody was seated. The quality of the food was fantastic – the dim sum dishes were creative and refined, both in terms of visual appeal and taste. They only “complaint” I could muster was that the dim sum serving sizes were a tad small, but I’m sure my perspective of dim sum size is skewed (seeing as how I’m used to North American portions). Before Christina could pull out the camera to snap some photos, other guests around the table had already dug into the food – so, no shots of the dim sum.

After the dim sum courses, other dishes were served. These were supposed to be some of the restaurant’s signature dishes, and despite being somewhat full, Christina and I were only too happy to continue eating. The following photos show some of the more memorable dishes:

Treasures of the sea. These dishes comprised abalone, conpoy (dried scallops), sea cucumbers, prawns, fish maw, duck feet, Chinese roasted pork (燒肉), and assorted veggies. The ingredients were braised in a Chinese brown sauce, and served in a hollowed out pumpkin. What can I say? This was AWESOME!

Golden Sand (金沙) Lobster. The lobster meat was dredged in a light batter made with the yolks of salted eggs, then deep fried. This was cooked to perfection. The sweet, succulent lobster meat played off really well against the savory, yolky crispy batter. The serving size was not huge, but it was a pretty rich dish, and it was just the right amount for our dining party.

Hairy crabs (大閘蟹). These were flown in live from Shanghai and were decently large. The crabs were steamed, and then served. I am a big fan of hairy crabs – specifically of the rich, sweet, unctuous roe. And these particular crabs had some really high quality roe in them. If I had to describe the taste and texture – it’s a little bit like eating semi-liquid salted-egg yolk. I will be writing a quick take of hairy crabs in a separate article, and will go into a more detail on how to eat these little critters. During our lunch, we were the beneficiaries of some really excellent service (our host is a very frequent diner at this restaurant), and our crabs were de-shelled and served to us by two waitresses assigned to our table. So we didn’t have to do much work at all. Nice.

It turned out to be a pretty long lunch, and we were the last guests to be ushered out of the restaurant. I would say that this ranks among the best Cantonese meals I’ve had. Some customers have commented that the culinary standards at Lei Garden have dropped over the years, but I wouldn’t know as I don’t have any basis for comparison. Suffice it to say, Christina and I were both impressed and we will be making it a point to go and have dim sum again here when we are next in Singapore.

Oh, as for why the décor of the restaurant is dated – well, during our lunch, the restaurant completely filled up and there was a long line-up of people in the waiting area. According to our host, it is pretty crowded even during weekdays. Given the average price per meal here, closing down for renovations would result in a huge impact on the restaurant’s bottom line. So as long as the crowds keep showing up, the Lei Garden @ Orchard Plaza will continue to have its décor firmly rooted in the 80s…

Location: Garden City Hotpot   
8788 McKim Way
Richmond, BC V6X
604-303-0909

When talking to people from my grandparents’ generation about dim sum, very often they would tell me, with a note of disappointment, that dim sum is no longer enjoyed the way it used to be. If you are like me who was a kid in the 80’s, then I believe you will remember in restaurants, dim sum used to be neatly stacked in a trolleys, which were pushed between tables. The anticipation for the next trolley was always exciting. You never knew when your favourite dim sum item will come. While devouring on the BBQ pork bun, you constantly kept an eye on the trolleys, fearing that you will miss your favourite items. For dim sum newbies, checking out the dim sum from the trolleys was the only way to avoid mistakenly ordering adventurous items such as chicken feet or duck tongue.

All this has changed. Dim Sum, like other things in life, has evolved. What surprised me was dim sum has changed not only in my generation, but it has changed even before that. The older generation tells me about the bird cages, the individual tea selection and servers carrying dim sum steamers on their shoulders. I was particularly fascinated by how tea used to be served at dim sum. Nowadays tea is served in a teapot which everyone at a table shares, which means everyone drinks the same kind of tea. In the past, tea was never served in a tea pot. It was served in a “cha zhung”, a cup with a lid and no handle. Each person picked a tea and let it steeped in the “cha zhung”.

Garden City Hotpot is one of the very few places that still serves tea in the traditional way. The tea is first put into the “cha zhung” with hot water, but the water is poured out of the “cha zhung” immediately. The first round of water is dispensed because it is used to wash the tea. Hot water is then poured into the “cha zhung” again. The tea is steeped for a few minutes and then enjoyed using the drinking cup.

In Chinese, dim sum is called “Yum Cha”, which means “tea-drinking”. This term signifies the important role which tea plays in dim sum since the term refers to the tea component. Garden City Hotpot offers a good selection of fine tea: there is the elegant and clean tasting green tea “loong jang” (龍井), ET’s favourite, and my favourite fragrant red tea “lychee hong” (荔枝紅). Other selection includes jasmine, “bo yi” (普洱), “teet guun yum” (鐵觀音) and many others.

Garden City Hotpot makes an attempt to recreate the experience of enjoying dim sum in the old days. Although dim sum is still ordered with a piece of paper (I doubt many restaurants nowadays can afford the expensive labour of pushing trolleys), Garden City Hotpot offers quite a few dim sum dishes that are considered as lost dishes from the old times. The “pork liver siu mai” is an example of these dishes:

“Pork liver siu mai” did not look anything like the yellow skinned “siu mai” that we eat nowadays. Meatballs made from pork were steamed with pork liver. If you like pork liver like I do, then you will like this dish.

The spareribs were very delicious; they were steamed with Japanese pumpkin, which soaked up all the meat flavour.

We ordered other usual dishes such as shrimp spring rolls (which were perfectly deep fried), stuffed eggplant with fish paste and chicken rice served in a pot. Every dish was yummy. The menu has many more dim sum dishes from the old days and we are committed to try those in our next visit.

I’m fascinated by the way in which dim sum was enjoyed in the past. I was told that I can find the experience in a few well known restaurants in Hong Kong, and one of these restaurants is “Luk Yu Tea House”. Opened since 1933, “Luk Yu” is one of the most classic teahouses in HongKong. I’m committed to paying it a visit in my next trip to Asia. Before then, Garden City Hotpot is my dim sum place for now.