SUMPTUOUS SAMPLING
Surveying the 16-course degustation menu at Mei Jiang Chinese restaurant
The Peninsula hotel brand, established in Hong Kong almost a century ago, has long been the epitome of 5-star Cantonese dining. Thus when one of its Chinese restaurants makes any kind of move, the change is typically not fundamental.
Mei Jiang is the Chinese restaurant of the Peninsula Bangkok.
Recently the restaurant has welcome the hotel’s new Chinese cuisine executive chef Ball Yau, an award-winning cooking virtuoso born and raised in Hong Kong’s famous fisherman village, and armed with more than two decades of world-class experience.
An elaborate degustation journey is thus chosen to present to diners a sneak peek into the kitchen aptitude of its new chef and his take on tropical cooking.
A 16-course menu (4,900 baht per person) is exclusively crafted for the first time and offered with a special tea-pairing option (888 baht per person).
Starting off the gastronomic journey was a crispy bean curd roll, prepared with a housemade soya bean sheet wrapped around an assortment of mushrooms before being deepfried until the bean curd exterior develops a flaky bubbly golden crust.
The simple and very addictive starter was followed by a plate of what’s listed on the menu as pumpkin with home-made preserved plum sauce.
Crisp in colour, texture and taste, this pickled snack featuring thin slices of raw pumpkin cured in sweet, sour and salty plum-infused syrup demonstrated the chef’s ingenuity in converting common local produce into a very different yet tasty treat.
The third course was represented by Chef Yao’s special pride that took him years to perfect: double-boiled soup.
For Bangkok diners, he opted for sea conch and morel in chicken broth. The crystal-clear soup was a result of steam-boiling, as opposed to cooking with direct flame, offering a very soothing feel to the taste buds. Enhancing the mild-tasting soup were the aromatic and naturally flavoursome sea conch and morel mushroom.
No beverage choice would better complement these first three courses of the meal than a cold-brewed Long Jing tea. Served chilled, the lovely champagne-hued tea has the marvellous and profound taste of Japanese matcha green tea. Yet instead of soothing, it provided refreshing delight to the palate and prepared one for the dishes to come.
Next up was a rendering of stir-fried Phuket lobster with light and fluffy cloudlike egg white, crab coral roe and green asparagus, closely tailgated by a delicious helping of pan-fried Hokkaido scallop in minced shrimp veil with port wine glaze.
The chef’s creation of organic cocktail tomatoes and young vegetables with pumpkin sauce gave the seafood-centric meal a nice break. In a hollowed fresh tomato were tiny pellets of vegetables wok-fried to absorb a smoky whiff of cooking flame before being poached and enjoyed with savoury pumpkin purée.
Stewed snow fish with spring onion, shallots and roasted chilli sauce was another dish I much liked.
It was, however, won over by a sweet-andsour, crispy carabineros prawn, specially battered and deep-fried to yield a flaky crust before the supple meat inside. The sauce, meanwhile, provided a familiar flavour profile of Hong Kong-style sweet-and-sour sauce.
Fish delight continued with stewed red garoupa fillet with black mushrooms, tofu skin and garlic in aromatic rice wine-seethed gravy.
Dishes four to eight were paired with white peony tea infused with rose buds.
As with the seafood, only prime-quality red meat and poultry were used.
The beef, which came next, was represented by a marbling score 6 wagyu. Sizeable pieces of braised wagyu brisket came rolled with paperthin turnip slice and served in beef consommé soup that reminded me of the warmth and comfort of home cuisine.
The beef was matched with a piping-hot Taiwanese oolong tea specially grown on the cold mountaintop.
A piece of braised bamboo fungus in homemade bean-curd skin, 11th in the line-up, may look homespun to the eyes, but the taste was luxurious thanks to a garnish of black truffle sauce.
Steamed free-range chicken, which arrived next, came in succulent morsels and tossed with ginger and red dates to represent a poultry course.
There were also noodles with honey-glazed barbecued Iberico pork, spring onion and ginger, along with fried rice with lap cheong (Chinese sausage) and taro.
Even if you’re not a fan of dessert, I’m sure you will be satisfied by the pumpkin and coconut cream with a topping of bird’s nest, as well as sweetened tofu, meticulously cut to mimic a chrysanthemum flower, with ginkgo and water chestnuts in lightly sweet chilled syrup.
The 16-course degustation menu is available for both lunch and dinner, but only upon reservation.