Hi there,
Remember one of my post about the Heavenly Feast menu by Canton Recipe House, the new restaurant that is opened by the award winning chef – Chef Kang? I went over the other day to try out this heavenly feast menu & decided to do a restaurant reviews on this.
Canton Recipe House located at Parc Soverign Hotel, the new hotel that is just next to Lasalle School of Arts. Inside the restaurant, there are a few tables, which should able to sit about 70 – 90 people. It is hidden at the corner of the Parc Soverign Hotel, next to 7/Eleven.
Outside the restaurant, there are many posters showing many meal sets they have for 2 pax, 4 pax, etc. I was expecting it to be a quiet lunch but to my surprise there are actually quite a few customers in there.
Well back to this Heavenly Feast menu which they advertised, original price of $698+, now this “Chef’s Exquisite Set Menu” 50% off at $349+.
Dishes include :
- Superior Shark’s Fin in Hot Stone Bowl
- Abalone in Chef’s Special Sauce
- Deep-fried Garlic Soon Hock Fish
- Chickenwith Spring Onion
- Pork Ribs in Wasabi Plum Sauce
- 3-Egg Garlic Ensemble with Vegetables
- Lobster Ee-fu Noodles
- Dessert Delicacy
The side dish to snack on is the usual braised peanuts, the braised peanuts were tasty & cooked just nice, unlike some that are served in some Chinese restaurant that can be over salty & overcooked.
#1 Dish – Superior Shark’s Fin in Hot Stone Bowl, it came in a large hot stone bowl, which are still piping hot. Every one of us get to have a decent piece of shark fin in our bowl of soup, you won’t find any crab meat in here, just pure shark fin in it. The soup is not as starchy, actually a bit runny which I like a lot. They also served with a plate of boiled bean sprout to add some crunch to the shark fin soup.
#2 Dish – Abalone in Chef’s Special Sauce, this comes in sliced abalone on a bed of finely sliced cucumber, onions. The sauce drizzle on it is some Thai sweet sauce. This is an appetizer so it is served cold. One thing which we find rather strange was how tender the abalone was, it tasted like tin can abalone actually but without the abalone chewiness.
I personally prefer it to have some bite and a little chewy, and the sauce was nothing much to shout about because it taste like normal thai style sweet sauce. But then if you eat it with the sliced cucumber & onions, the crunch from the veges & the freshness of the corriander, compliments the abalone dish well. It will fair so much better if abalone is not as tender or better still, if a small whole abalone is being served to each diner, rather than in slices.
#3 Dish – Deep Fried Garlic Soon Hock Fish, this is one of my favourite dish in this set meal. The Soon Hock fish was very fresh, the fish was firm & cooked just right, the outside layer was all deep fried so it is very crunchy, which managed to make a very good contrast. The garlic soya sauce that was drizzle over the fish was excellent, every one at the table was raving about this dish.
#4 Dish – Chicken with Spring Onion, this dish was a total let down, 9 out of 10 of the diners agreed with me. It is simply poached chicken and drizzle with some dark sauce (perhaps oyster or soya sauce), and some roughly cut spring onions. We managed to have 2 pieces each per person, but we didn’t like this at all, some of us even comment that we can cook this better at home.
#5 Dish – Pork Ribs in Wasabi Plum Sauce, when this is served, I was delighted to see it, as the dishes are colorful, golden deep fried pork ribs with plum wasabi sauce, decorated with bits of strawberries. Looks like a happy dish to me!
Anyway, as we tuck in, it seems like rather than pork ribs, it is a dish mostly made up of pork belly pieces, so this dish is rather similar to sweet & sour pork to me. The tangy strawberry bits goes well with the sweet sauce coated deep fried pork. But one thing really did missing – I cannot taste any hint of wasabi in it. Only plum sweetness, which is probably from bottle plum sauce. Overall, I enjoyed this dish, and I think this will goes very well with white rice.
#6 Dish – 3-Egg Garlic Ensemble with Vegetables, the other favourite dish of this dining experience. Baby spinach cooked with salted eggs, regular eggs & century eggs. It is served in a hot pot & the spinach was cooked just right, the broth is excellent, but of course any soup or dishes with salted eggs always taste good.
I can find cubes of century & salted eggs in each serving, and there are also bits of whole deep fried garlic in it, may be that’s why the soup tasted so fragrant? I even couldn’t resist popping couple of the deep fried garlic into my mouth, this goes so well with the broth. One of my favourite dish, usually restaurants serve it in dry form, but this is in soup form, so is something different, and also you can savor every bit of the essence of the ingredients.
#7 Dish – Lobster Ee-fu noodles, this is supposed to be one of the highlight of the dishes, each diner were served with couple of pieces of lobster pieces with noodles. I am not sure if they ran out of ee-fu noodles or they indicate wrongly in the menu, the noodles they use was egg noodles, those HK wonton noodles you find in Crystal Jade.
I personally will love to have this with ee-fu noodles, as the sauce that has absorbed the essence of the lobster will goes oh-so-well with it. So I was a bit disappointed by the use of egg noodles, which does not do a very good job of complimenting the sauce. The sauce base is actually lobster with spring onions and ginger, so I think this is really more cantonese style of cooking. Stir fried ginger & spring onions with lobster. The sauce tasted good & was infused with all the good stuff in the lobster, too bad the let down of the noodles.
#8 Dish – Dessert!!! Finally! We were really full when the dessert reached our table, they serve Cold tau suan with water chestnut. Over at the table, we were discussing if serving another kind of dessert like mango pudding or hot red bean soup will be a better choice.
For the tau suan, taste wise is ok, but because it is served cold, the beans in this dessert tasted like it was under cooked which in fact it shouldn’t be. I think perhaps, if this is served hot, it will not tasted like uncooked beans. The water chestnut added a nice bite & crunch to the dessert, but I think if we are served with mango pudding or hot red bean soup, the meal would have finished off with a bang.
Service was prompt & they seemed to have only couple of waitress (1 in uniform, so I think the other one may be the lady boss?), as 4 of the tables are occupied, I see them rushing here and there to cope. Tea were being refilled promptly, althou, they do not have a choice of chinese tea (only pu-er), it might be good if they add a variety of tea for customer to choose from.
During this visit, there are quite a few customers on a friday lunch session, and it seems like the customers are more of regular customers or friends of Chef Kang, as he kept coming out to entertain & drink with them.
Overall meal cost $415.25 Nett which include $2 per pax for tea + $0.5 for wet tissue, $3 for one side dish.
If you ask me if the Heavenly feast is really worth the $698+ price tag they show on the ad, I do have a consensus among the diners that it does not exactly worth that amount, but for the bargain price of $349+, I would think it can be.
If you were to compare authentic cantonese Hong Kong dishes, I think I still prefer the HKG fare. But compared with many chinese restaurant in Singapore, some of this dish does fare better, may be we were expecting much more as we heard a lot about the rave reviews of Chef Kang’s past restaurants. You know…over expectation sometimes really kill the joy even if the product is still above average. But at this price, where it serve Shark Fin / Abalone / Lobster Noodles, you can say this is a meal we are happy with.
Oh by the way, I didn’t need to drink a lot of water after this meal, which is a good indication that there is not much MSG in it or may be because of the 7 full cups of chinese tea that I downed during the meal…
Promotions : Chef’s Exquisite Set Menu
Locations : 175 Albert Street, #01-02, Singapore 189970
Tel : 63363611
Operating Hours : 1130am – 11pm
Date : until end of October 2011
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Cheers!
Dawn