3rd stop in the MIGF train

Was detoured to Chynna to meet two sisters who want to try out the festival menu. So whee!!!! to me. This one turned out very different from Ling's experience.

The moment we were seated. Out comes the teapot with the long neck to pour us a cup of 'Welcome Tea'. It ended up tasting more like a herbal soup than anything else (prepared 1 day in advance, according to Chef Lam, just to dissipate the flavours of the herbs so that most people won't find it too pungent. Thos who have taken Chinese medicine know what we are referring to.)




Being offered the choice of the mocktail vs the cocktail, I went for the non-alcoholic option simply because I will be driving the girls back to their home. Simply put, it is Mango juice + Sprite (but not balanced enough for my liking), since it is probably layered: Mango juice at the bottom tasted cordial sweet and Sprite on top just fizzled out by the time you taste and it is just flat. (Or perhaps it was soda water?)



Appetizers: Double-happiness combination platter - Peking Duck In Authentic MoMo Pastry & Oven-baked Tomato stuffed with Seafood Hotchpotch and
Cheese
Since one of the girls could not take prawns, we managed to needle Chef Lam into providing an alternative: Peking Duck in MoMo pastry. And it is as traditional as you can get, with a few new stuffings like century eggs and pickled ginger, this one is a throwback to a genuine chinese icon. Instead of the (often wrongly used) egg pastry, we get the genuine MoMo pastry, which has a lighter taste that doesn't overwhelm the duck. Definitely something that reminds me of Beijing 2001 trip there.

Inside the Oven Baked Tomato, the seafood hotchpotch include mussels and scallop hidden under the cheesy lid. To quote Tolkien: "One mouthful to have them all". Nothing was overdone, after your initial cheese hit, the shellfish meats will slowly rolled across your tongue, parading around like a catwalk en route to your gullet. The tomato is probably a good background flavour, always hiding there, never in the limelight but you just know that it is there.

Mains: Duet combination of Tutti-Frutti platter - Honey–glazed Pineapple with Gherkin & Crispy Sliced Chicken Breast and Golden-fried Polenta Roll filled with Risotto and Durian accompanied by refreshing Lime Sorbet with Sour Plum

Very different presentation from Ling's. My guests and I found the crispy vermicelli more attractive(?). I do like the Polenta roll with durian filling. It taste very very funky, with a mild hint of the risotto or rice. now if only they could make it very pungent and stink it to high heavens. Nothing much on the chicken breast and pineapple combo. Although tender and flavoursome, it ended more like a hit-and-run experience.

Chef Lam introduced the lime sorbet as a safeguard against the durian-breath for foreign gourmands but I would like mine with more sour plum sauce to balance out the overwhelming lime.

Soup: Doubled-boiled Superior Shark’s Fin Broth with Wild Ginseng and “Pipa” Bean Curd
Instead of the usual mishmash you get at chinese banquets (those mixed with egg flowers and assorted rojaks), you get something like a consumme. Taste pure and deep just the way we chinese like our soup. One of the sisters commented that it taste almost like the welcome tea we got but Chef Lam assured us that the preparation was different. The beancurd though tasted a bit more complex than what I have come across before (must sharpen my tongue somemore), so I couldn't really describe it but I do have a hint: be a idiot and dip it in the soup for maximum effect








Mains: Stewed Duck Leg Confit with Abalone and Sea Cucumber in Brown Sauce & Steamed Glutinous Rice with Barbecue Duck, Chicken and Dried Shitake Mushroom
From the onset of the presentation, I almost thought that I was at a chinese wedding banquet, the illusion only dispelled by the present of 'wax meat' on the plate. This is definitely one of the tenderest duck meat I have ever tried. No need to mention that the accompany sides are very much superior to what you would get at chinese wedding banquet: less if more especially when the broccoli is crunchy, the abalone is just right and sea cucumber is springy than your home trampoline.

The rice dish is so chinese rice dumpling-ish, but we did find that the accompanying red tangy-spicy sauce (szechuan dou ban jiang, according to Chef Lam) lightens up what would have been a heavy dish. All the flavours just seem to stick to the rice itself making it quite a fantastic treat.



Dessert: Homemade Yellow Wine Cheese Cake with Ginger Flakes
Yellow Wine is the traditional drink given to women after childbirth and was used to make the sauce with pistacho nuts and strawberry jam. The cheesecake and its base were soft but firm, much better than the cakes out of the freezer that you get from the specialist cake shop. The hit was probably the oven roasted ginger flakes sitting atop the cheesecake, very very pungent to say the least.


Chef Lam is the chattiest chef I have met so far in the festival and has the patience to explain anything and everything we directed to him. Definitely a worthwhile night and a good menu for people who have never tried chinese fine dining before.

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