Double flavors:
Singapore chef Justin Quek explains why his restaurant in Beijing is split into two distinct dining spaces
Singapore chef Justin Quek explains why his restaurant in Beijing is split into two distinct dining spaces.
For 21 consecutive years, Justin Quek cooked birthday dinners for the late Singaporean leader Lee Kuan Yew, the first in 1993.
He says no matter where he was in the world, he would fly back to Singapore on that date.
“Mr Lee was very nice, and a simple, and disciplined eater. He liked a good salad, a nice consommé, especially a tomato consommé, and lobster pasta. He ate no cream and butter,” says Quek.
In fact, the 57-year-old chef has served numerous politicians and dignitaries including former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
“You don’t try to show off your culinary skills when you cook for politicians and dignitaries,” he says. “They have more important things on their agendas than food.”
“Usually they travel from different parts of the world and are new to the city, and what they want is highquality comfort food,” he says.
However, arguably Singapore’s most well-known chef does show his culinary prowess at his own restaurant in the Chinese capital.
Quek’s Beijing restaurant is actually split into two independent dining spaces, with distinct concepts — one serving fine-dining FrancoAsian cuisine called Justin and one other that Quek deems “a canteen for Singapore classic dishes” with the name Flavors of Asia.
Quek says that the concept is a representation of who he is: a Singapore-born Chinese Teochew, who loves Asian food, and culture, yet who trained in France and pursues the spirit of French haute cuisine.
Quek says that “young people have not grown up with fine dining” so a casual eatery that caters quality food is essential.
“Fine dining takes too long,” he says, “Nowadays, people are too impatient. A cellphone on table is not rude anymore, even talking on the phone is common. The whole world is accepting a more casual dining experience.”
On the other hand, Quek is trying to refine fine dining, as a means of pursuing his culinary passion.
“Young people are very open to new concepts, and fine dining establishments are the places to celebrate special occasions,” he says.
Therefore, he wants to offer approachable haute cuisine, that is “simple, elegant, and fun”.
“The food can be very classic and serious, but the experience should be fun with modern music, and a livelier atmosphere,” he says.
Although his restaurant with its two distinct dining spaces has been open for slightly more than a year in a busy Beijing office building, it remains something of a hidden gem for those in the know as it gets little publicity.
Based in Singapore, Quek flies to Beijing once in a season to experiment and craft seasonal menus. When he is not there, the restaurant is helmed by Quek’s favorite “apprentice”, veteran chef Dan Chen.
Quek’s most recent stint at the elegant restaurant Justin left patrons in awe with his Franco-Asian dishes.
Topped with a shaving of Spanish Iberian ham, and a morsel of edible gold leaf, dainty soupy dumplings are a shining example of his skill in blending Western and Eastern flavors, and finding a balance in the fusion.
When you nibble his signature foie gras xiao long bao, the broth wrapped in the filling is a French style truffle consommé, full of umami flavors.
The palatable filling stuffed with a mixture of truffle, foie gras and pork mince, is then to be relished after sucking out the silky soup. A mouthful of this xiao long bao is undeniably intense, but still well balanced.
Another signature dish the mushroom cappuccino is an interesting and savory soup to whet the appetite.
In fact, Quek is good at stimulating the taste buds with the fragrance of the food. The wagyu beef cheek with pot-au-feu, black truffle shavings, smoked mashed potatoes and wild mushrooms suffuses an exquisite aroma all around when served.
Most of his dishes are redolent with Asian flavors, but the style and presentation is European.
One of his other fusion dishes is sticky rice in lotus leaf stuffed with chicken, truffles, foie gras, mushrooms, which he roasts French style.
“Fusion comes in many forms. But you need a good foundation, you must have a good appreciation of the different cuisines to know how to mix them,” he says.
“My fusion food is not about molecular cuisine, not even mixing. It’s all about history and the foundation.”
“When you eat, it’s like listening to music it should rise to crescendo,” he adds. This is how the chef hopes customers will understand his dishes.
Singapore-born chef Justin Quek’s culinary journey can be traced to the two years he spent as a ship’s steward, before following his passion to cook. In 1994, Quek started to do French-Asian fusion after spending his life savings in the early 1990s to train in France to improve his culinary skills.
“My professional background is French but my palate tells me I’m Asian. I take both cultures and combine,” says Quek. Having been in this career for 30 years, he says he has now acquired the culinary know-how of the East and the West.
“Chinese cooking is special. The Chinese are very good at steaming, very good at marinating, and very good with the wok,” he says.
“European ingredients are good, and their techniques are simpler,” he adds.
The chef also notes another cultural difference: “In Western culture, food is never boiling hot, 80 degrees centigrade is fine. In a French restaurant, a soup can never be too hot. But in a Hong Kong restaurant, people enjoy slurping soup that is so hot it burns the tongue,” he says.
“So when serving European fare in my restaurants in Singapore and in Beijing, it is usually served a bit hotter,” he says.
In the global restaurant scene, one success that Quek says he is happy to see happening is that the status of Chinese cuisines and restaurants has greatly been elevated over the past 40 years. He says that Chinese food is no longer thought of being just sweet-and-sour, cheap and inferior.
“This is particular notable as you see a host of Asian restaurants corporations are heading to the West, such as Din Tai Fung,” he says.
Back in Singapore, he is taking care of a new fine-dining restaurant that has been opened for four months at the iconic Marina Bay Sands. There, a new level of Chinese food is presented with the panache and savoir faire of European-style fine dining under the restaurant’s name — Chinoiserie, a name evocative of Quek’s Chinese Teochew roots and his professional French culinary background.
Above: Appetizers assortment including mushroom Left: Banana fritters with salted gula java ice cream.