The Lunar New Year is just around the corner and I got the chance to indulge in a tasty set menu featuring some items I have never had before. All in all it was a great experience and I hope the dishes bring me prosperity as they’re meant to…
Chef Low at Summer Palace always manages to come up with an innovative menu featuring traditional ingredients…which is why it is always a pleasure to sample his creations. At the start of the meal we tossed to health, prosperity and wealth with a crispy salmon yee sang. Refreshing shredded vegetables, crunchy fried pieces of dough, and smooth slices of salmon are all brought together with a citrusy dressing. Chinese dinners should always start with a salad like this as it stirs up an appetite.
A slew of dishes promptly followed after that. There was a roasted crispy chicken with spinach, baked mandarin fish rolls, grilled prawns with mayonnaise. The crispy chicken dish takes a day to prepare and it was certainly appreciated. The skin is left intact and baked to a crisp while the meat has been minced, then mixed with spinach, then cooked and put together under the skin giving it a lot of moisture and flavour. The baked fish rolls are served with a butter cream and egg floss making it resemble butter prawns. Finger licking good! The large grilled prawns with mayo were good but I’m not a mayo fan so I found it a bit rich…but to each their own.
"We tossed to health, prosperity and wealth "
An especially interesting dish for me was the braised African baby Abalone with sea cucumber and sea moss. I’ve never tried any of these before and I’m told that Sea Moss is a must at any CNY meal because its Chinese name Fat Choi sounds the same as money or get rich. I’ll certainly eat to that.
For the final dish before dessert a special fried rice with preserved wax duck and eight treasures was served up in a lotus leaf. Chef Low told me that the wax duck is actually marinated in salt for about half a year before it is ready to eat. The meat was fall apart tender and about as salty as salted fish. The eight treasures were mushrooms, Chinese parsley, carrots, broccoli, lily buds, spring onion, dried and fresh shrimp…8 of course being a lucky number.
Finally for dessert we had the chilled lemongrass jelly with a lime sorbet. This was super refreshing and not too filling especially after a big meal.
The Chinese New Year set menus start at RM888++ and go to RM 1188++ per table of 10. With all this prosperous eating I’m sure to have a great year ahead!
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