CANTONESE CUISINE BUT NOT AS YOU KNEW IT
Bored with the usual Cantonese culinary fare? Fancy some contemporary, innovative Cantonese cuisine in the heart of Bangkok? China Table at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel (Sukhumvit 27) might be right up your street. Opened into the cut-throat market in May 2014, the restaurant has decided to differentiate with a perspective-shifting choice of creative yet classic dishes.
Behind it all is Bruce Hui, a 20-year-experienced chef who has mastered Cantonese, Sichuan and other regional Chinese cuisines, including from his hometown of Wuxi, Jiangsu, while also being immersed in some of the new waves sweeping the more adventurous 5-star kitchens.
Thus his new menu breaks through culinary borders to blend Chinese wisdom with new world tastes in a fusion revolution, with eye-catching plating, ranging handcrafted noodles to glazed-roast, teasmoked duck.
Around 80% of the menu was reconceptualised while keeping old favourites from roasted Peking duck, to Chinese BBQ, Hong Kong fried noodles, sweet & sour pork ribs and pan-fried snowfish with special soy and garlic unscathed. You’ll also find some powerful Sichuan favourites and a specialty herbal tea bar.
Signature items include:
Fresh mixed vegetables and shrimps with Japanese style roasted sesame salad dressing in Ice bowl.
Crispy spicy taro slice with golden prawn dumpling. In China the dish uses eel but supplies are not reliable here so chef goes for taro instead. Sticks of deep-fried taro form a kind of bird’s nest with sugar floss reminiscent of cuckoo spit on top and deep fried shrimp har gow nestling like eggs below. The complex sauce is a little spicy and sour and very sticky.
Homemade okra cuttlefish ball served with fragrant satay-style peanut butter/black vinegar sauce is what Cantonese fine dining is all about: excellent product, delicately prepared to preserve the natural flavours, teasingly enhanced by subtle spices and slightly tart okra formed into an ornate sphere.
Cigar prawn with hot sweet sauce is a cohiba-like spring roll with gold foil at one end served as if over an ashtray which in this case contains hot and sour sauce. The shrimp is finely diced to create an even textured steak. Dip the end in the sauce and the cigar is sort of lit.
Also eye-catching is mushroom buns with oyster sauce. The life-like buns are filled with an aromatic mushroom confit. Presented on a log section with faux snow mushrooms and ground chocolate soil, it’s appropriately wintry as well as delicious.
Braised coconut milk & cuttlefish noodle served with red curry sauce, cherry tomato and shrimp is reminiscent of Kanom Chine but tantalizingly different.
The décor design is top drawer, too. Modern but heritage rich and indicative of excellent taste in Middle Kingdom art and artefacts, the large space is arranged into relatively private nooks by shelves ornamented with newly minted Ming-like vases and lacquerware. Walls are hung with modern Chinese impressionist art. Floor to ceiling windows impart a silvery sheen during the day. Comfortably upholstered chairs and banquets sit up to elegant tables. An elegant apothecary chest serves as a reception counter and a chef’s table in front of a fine blue and gold tapestry is populated with stunning yellow chairs from another design rich Chinese era. Floors feature lustrous wood, as they should. Private parties are accommodated in four similarly sumptuous separate rooms with outsize Shanghai-deco overhead lanterns adding drama.
CHINA TABLE, 3rd fl. Radisson Blu Plaza Bangkok, 489 Sukhumvit Rd. (BTS Asok). Tel. 02 302 3333.