The Line at Shangri-La
Went to The Line at Shangri La for lunch on Friday. A similar concept to Straits Kitchen at the Hyatt – a buffet where there are several counters for different cuisines, except that SK serves up local hawker fare, whereas The Line has Italian, Jap, Indian, Chinese and a huge dessert selection. It even had a giant chocolate fountain! But by the time I made it to desserts, they’d run out of strawberries. Isn’t this supposed to be a buffet?! *disgruntled*
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喜喜 宴
Saturday evening, we managed to secure a table at 喜喜 宴, the private dining kitchen experience from Hong Kong which made its way to Singapore a few months ago. The food was excellent! (Hils described it as the Asian version of Fat Duck) It was modern Chinese, a little fusion-y, but well done. We started out with “Prancing Lobster in Dual Sauces”, followed by a whole host of innovative starters – most with some Japanese flavour. Some of my favourites were the fresh Japanese tomatoes drizzled with a creamy sesame sauce and the 2-week old chicken. Heh… It’s marinated and stored in the freezer for 2 weeks to “simulate the cold climate in Northern China”, and steamed before serving.
The main courses were a riot of flavours – Orange peel beef, Salivate Pork (口水肉), and 虾酱鱼 (as opposed to har jeong gai <虾酱鸡>).
The beef was tender, almost melts in your mouth, and the preserved mandarin skin was tangy and fragrant.
We asked for the “original level of spicy-ness” for the 口水肉, thinly sliced pork prepared with fiery Szechuan peppers, served with Japanese koniyaku noodles and century egg on the side. The translucent noodles soaked up the spicy gravy, while the century egg helped to soothe the palate.
The fish was crisp on the outside, fresh and succulent on the inside and came with an interesting Vietnamese style gravy and fresh pomelo.
Glutinous rice in lotus leaf, topped with hairy crabs, complete with roe. Very fragrant... mmmm.... lotsa carbo and cholesterol, but we just couldn't get enough!
Of course, fruit wasn’t JUST fruit at 喜喜 宴. Tropical fruit soaked in plum sauce took the place of sorbets as palate cleansers….
….before Ginseng chicken soup and mushrooms were served.
Three kinds of mushroom used here: Japanese shitake, Chinese abalone, and Italian Portobello, accented with pickled cucumbers.
Dessert was喜喜 宴 汤圆. Not your usual ahboh-ling… or even your black sesame-filled dumplings. These contained a lovely concoction of sesame, honey, peanuts, salted eggyolk and preserved winter melon. Interesting!
Dinner closed, with a shot each of whiskey, infused with honey and lime – brought to us by the Chef himself, who stayed to chat a while, and whom XJ recognised as his church friend. (If we’d known earlier, who knows, we could’ve jumped ahead of the usual 2 month long waiting list for a seating!)
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Christmas Lunch
Annual Christmas lunch at Chez Leonard’s… started out with a welcome drink. Looked innocently enough, like any other jell-o, but turned out to be Vodka Cranberry trifle. A foretaste of the alcoholism to follow.
As usual, Leonard outdid himself – roast turkey, plump sausages, 3 kinds of pasta, the creamiest & yummiest garlic mash I’ve ever had, and his own homemade truffle butter. Yumz! No one goes home hungry – or ever needing a meal in the next 12 hours for that matter.
Highlight of the afternoon, however, was the Jeroboam of Champagne, courtesy of Hanwai and Cindy – a whopping 3 litres worth. We had to chill it in a kitchen pail...
If you think that’s huge, I’m told there’s something called a Nebuchadnezzar bottle which contains a good 15 litres (20 bottles) of plonk. Leonard doesn’t take too well to bubbly, you see… and hmm.. it didn’t help that we all decided to toast him one by one. Haha. He didn’t hold up for very long. Well, he did get back at us with his shots of tequila-lime and mulled-wine jellies…
