Celebrated the man's mom's birthday at the newly opened 藝 Yì by Jereme Leung at the refurbished Raffles Hotel. The menu looked refreshing and we tried to order slightly different things from the parentals' usual choices and limited palates. The menu offers more than your usual Cantonese fare. Food was pretty decent, and flavors were well presented.
We ordered a little bit of dim sum, and had more mains with rice. The spicy twice cooked goose (回锅辣酥鹅) in casserole was quite delicious. Goose isn't often seen on the menu in restaurants here, so I really didn't mind a bit of poultry. The beef cheek, tendon, oxtail in sorghum grains and wine (高粱酱焖烧牛魔王) was beautifully balanced and superbly tasty. I was curious and ordered the S$26 steamed pork patty with 5-year vintage turnip 'lao cai pu' (五年陈老菜脯蒸肉饼). Yah I know, S$26 riiiight!!?! It was good, and it was as good as I'd have made it myself at home. HAHAHAH.
I skipped the fish because the only choice was a pomfret or a cod, both of which I didn't fancy that day. Nobody liked cod and nobody else wanted pomfret. Importantly, the option for pomfret is only a Taizhou-farmstyle braised milky thing, which didn't appeal. I prefer fish steamed. The nai bai stir-fried with garlic was not nice. It was also overcooked. I rarely order vegetables at restaurants because they always spoil it, even when I requested for the vegetables to be lightly cooked and to remain on the hard side. Ah well.
The kitchen really made good on that promise of serving steamed white rice at the table, straight out of the cooker on the trolley. That's cool, but to be honest, that effort is lost on me. I don't particularly care about steaming hot jasmine rice in a bowl. :P And my request for iced water wasn't met. I asked for "冰水". Wasn't that a little obvious? More than "冷水", at any rate. The glass of water came at room temperature. Zzzz. I have a special dislike for tepid water. Next time I would be very specific and request for ice-cubes to be placed inside the glass of water.
We ordered a little bit of dim sum, and had more mains with rice. The spicy twice cooked goose (回锅辣酥鹅) in casserole was quite delicious. Goose isn't often seen on the menu in restaurants here, so I really didn't mind a bit of poultry. The beef cheek, tendon, oxtail in sorghum grains and wine (高粱酱焖烧牛魔王) was beautifully balanced and superbly tasty. I was curious and ordered the S$26 steamed pork patty with 5-year vintage turnip 'lao cai pu' (五年陈老菜脯蒸肉饼). Yah I know, S$26 riiiight!!?! It was good, and it was as good as I'd have made it myself at home. HAHAHAH.
I skipped the fish because the only choice was a pomfret or a cod, both of which I didn't fancy that day. Nobody liked cod and nobody else wanted pomfret. Importantly, the option for pomfret is only a Taizhou-farmstyle braised milky thing, which didn't appeal. I prefer fish steamed. The nai bai stir-fried with garlic was not nice. It was also overcooked. I rarely order vegetables at restaurants because they always spoil it, even when I requested for the vegetables to be lightly cooked and to remain on the hard side. Ah well.
The kitchen really made good on that promise of serving steamed white rice at the table, straight out of the cooker on the trolley. That's cool, but to be honest, that effort is lost on me. I don't particularly care about steaming hot jasmine rice in a bowl. :P And my request for iced water wasn't met. I asked for "冰水". Wasn't that a little obvious? More than "冷水", at any rate. The glass of water came at room temperature. Zzzz. I have a special dislike for tepid water. Next time I would be very specific and request for ice-cubes to be placed inside the glass of water.
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