Ah Yat Harbour View Restaurant

File: 49-food-re-(main)

Section: food

SubSect: review

Hed: Ah Yat Harbour View Restaurant

Subhed: Abalone king

P/Q: This is a place for dining, not just to eat.

Star: 4

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Chef Ah Yat knows his abalone. So famous for his edible sea snails, Singapore Airlines carries his critically acclaimed brand of abalone delicacies on the in-flight menu.

So when Chef Ah Yat opened his newest place in iSquare, it was not going to be a small deal. Many elements goes into making a fine Chinese diner: An intimate dining space like Man Wah; the seamless service of One Harbour Road; and the proud procurement of specialty ingredients like Fook Lam Moon. With its top floor city views, cosy dining room, Hyatt-trained floor staff, and with a menu of braggable abalone from around the world, Ah Yat is surely ticking the right boxes.

The environment here is right for dining I thought as I sat down; a quiet level of conversation, mind-clearing views, undisruptive service, and calm blue and gold setting. This is a place for dining, not just to eat. Plan for a sit down. And plan to try their Yoshihama abalone set menu if you are a first timer. Five courses, a glass of wine, and dessert for $1,388.

The dried Yoshihama abalone is prized for its shape and musky taste. On another occasion we tried fresh abalone from Australia and preferred this tender meat and clean sea flavours to the Yoshihama. But this is a personal preference. Both were equally meaty, unblemished, and glossed with velour sauce made of Yunnan ham and dried mushrooms and accompanied by goose’s web.

“Have you ever refrigerated abalone sauce?” The former chef I was dining with asked. “When the sauce separates, about half of it is fat.” Maybe that’s why it is so smooth on the tongue. The supervisor overheard our conversation and broke in, “Ours is made with very little oil. You can take some home if you’d like.”

A pair of rock lobsters arrived, steamed with a mount of garlic and green onions. These petite crustaceans were beautiful objects to look at and took no more than two sweet bites to finish. Good time to note Chinese food here is eaten with fork and knives. There are chopsticks, but most of the courses require western tools.

The Ah Yat deep fried crispy chicken was simplistic and technically perfect. The skin was paper-crisp, the flesh smooth and tender though not a hint of blood was visible. The taste was heightened by a small saucer of lemon juice.

There is a saying in Chinese called wok hay (wok-heat). It refers to the blessing that transmits from the wok to the ingredients if your fire is fierce enough. When a wok breathes energy it brings the breath of a wok to whatever it touches and carries forward past ingredients that have seen this wok. In other words, there are dead woks and woks full of life. The latter is evident here with the next course: Ah Yat’s famous fried rice. First it is prepared in the kitchen in their lively woks where eggs, shrimp, dried scallops, and char sui are tossed in a wok, then brought out in a clay pot and finished to your liking. Our waiter asked us if we like our rice wet or dry then cooked the fried rice accordingly at tableside. We enjoyed the dolsat bibimbap-like crisp of the burnt rice, and the extracted flavours in the soft grains.

On fine china, course by course was laid out seamlessly and with little interruption but the views beyond us. We’ve visited twice now, and both times it has been consistent in food and service. It’s true craftsmanship, and you’ll pay the price for it. Angie Wong

29/F, iSquare , 63 Nathan Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui, 2328 0983. Daily from 11.30am-11pm.

The Bill

Yoshihama abalone set menu x2 $2,776

Service charge 10 per cent $277.60

Total $3,053.60

Como Shambhala

File: 49-food-UTT

Section: food

SubSect: under the table

Hed:

Subhed:

P/Q: I was skeptical at Demi Moore, Sting, and Woody Harrelson for endorsing such life choices, but I was surprised to find myself a believer.

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After months of fattening my liver with the ills of deep-fried objects, tasty animals, good wine, coupled with little sleep, little sunlight and little exercise, my boyfriend deemed me toxic. He surprised me with a week of detoxification in Bali. If staring at palm trees, waddling in sun-kissed lap pools, and listening to the gentle trickles of afternoon rainfalls won’t pull me out of this waste-filled city lifestyle, then I don’t know what will.

I downed my welcoming drink, a blend of cucumber and mint, nature’s healer, while taking in Ubud’s layer cake rice fields from our villa. I read and read, and I slept and slept until I woke up with the birds and geckos. Though it felt like a week’s worth of slumber, it was only 7am the next morning. I dressed and made to it to morning yoga.

The thing when you treat your body well is you don’t then want to fill it with crap. At the resort’s raw food restaurant, Glow, I read delicious descriptions of raw food dishes written by skilled wordsmiths as cut-up lettuce leaves can’t possibly taste as good as this read. This sounded promising: heirloom tomato, semi-dried tomato, zucchini lasagna with pine nut ricotta made with ingredients grown on the resort’s estate. It sounded like a cake of sliced vegetables, but more importantly a safe choice. What came out was a stack of paper-thin vegetables dressed in peppery olive oils and blessed with stone-pounded pesto so green it looked alive. And that’s the point of a raw food diet; nothing on the plate is “dead”. The jicama, pine nut and shiitake maki roll with wasabi tofu was not as hippie as it sounded. It had the texture and complimentary flavours of a good sushi roll minus the expensive protein that usually makes sushi rolls worth eating. Lastly, a young coconut was shaved to resemble noodles, the same treatment was done to carrots and daikons and the strands were turned into a beautiful mess of spicy “noodles”. If ever there was a meal to be thankful for, this is it.

I was skeptical at Demi Moore, Sting, and Woody Harrelson for endorsing such life choices, but after trying raw food, I was surprised to find myself a believer. I continued with morning yoga overlooking a crater filled in by palm trees, floated in pools of sacred spring water, hiked in Jurassic jungles and studied the behaviour of butterflies all while thinking about my next raw food adventure.

We didn’t miss meat at all. That was until we took a ride into town and stopped by the barbecue shack Naughty Nuri's, made famous by its ribs and praises of Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert (who met her husband there). The clouds of smoky tender ribs on a hot grill hypnotised us in; the inapposite pairing of New York-style Martinis served here were better than ones served in New York; and sitting in the setting of a best-selling chick-lit was too much to pass on. Sat on a bench, we ate platters of wet ribs and sipped gin martinis. Here, I realised my love for pork and alcohol.

The next day, I got back to my yoga and raw food diet. I ordered something that was completely foreign to this city dweller: nut “bread” made with nothing cooked over 40C. The “bread” was compressed wheat and nuts, which formed a hard cracker, unbreakable with the blade of our table knife. Bite by bite, I cut my gums with sharp raw nuts while enjoying the burn of the lemon-dressed avocados in my wounds.

Day four, it rained and mosquitoes came out for their dinner. One leg into my jeans and I could tell they wouldn’t fit. How could this be? They fit just four days ago. I buttoned up and an instant muffin top appeared. I’ve been eating vegetables all week (sans Naughty Nuri's), how am I getting fat?

Back at Glow, I drank my papaya sunrise with a plate of fruit. The acid stung the cuts in my mouth. I told the general manager about my jeans and my swollen mouth. It’s probably bloating, we offer colon therapy (read: colonic) to alleviate the problem, he suggested.

A constant city diet of fast foods, rich dinners, white sugars and gin and tonics didn’t make me puff up, so why the hell would fresh fruits and vegetables do it? The next day I stepped on a scale. I was two kilos heavier. I couldn’t fit in my pants. I was gassy. I was the fattest I’ve ever been.

I sat meditating at one of Begawan Giri’s waterfalls to forget my troubles and thought about life as a woman of leisure. They sleep as much as they need, read as many books as they want, and had time for things like sitting under waterfalls… Then it came to me as I exited my alternate state: all this inactivity and relaxation is getting me porky.

Stress and city life burns calories, while blue skies and butterflies brings on fat-bliss. Vanity wins this round. I like my skinny jeans too much. I’ve got to get off this healthy stuff and retox.

Restaurant reviewers vs. food bloggers

A publication once sent a writer to review a brand new Japanese restaurant in Causeway Bay. The reviewer wrote that the food was very small, the flavours very light, the pricing very expensive, the service too fussy and the lighting too dark. The publication ran it and the restaurant closed down two months after print.

What the readers didn’t know was the review was done by an intern. Someone who was new to the city, had little experience in critical writing, and didn’t have the budget to spend much time at white-table clothed restaurants. The consequence was a $2 million project, the couple’s life savings, down the tube.

In journalism, what you say comes with responsibility. This story came to mind when New York University recently held a forum asking: Are restaurant reviewers still necessary? The floor was divide where professional reviewers on the panel enthusiastically said yes and food blogger, in real-time, blogged, no. And the imagery of celebrated food journalists on an elevated stage nodding their heads verses bloggers angrily challenging professional’s every thought on their keyboards is a good illustration of where we are today. What was really being asked during this forum is this: Should opinion writing be democratised? After a quick scan of food blogs around Hong Kong I have to throw myself into the yes camp.

Many blogs fall into one of three categories: the ego-driven nobody who power trips with his iPhone writing negative knee-jerk reviews if they are not fawned over at restaurants; the “I took my mom to ____ and we liked ____ very much” variety; or the worst of the bred, the marketing tool disguised as a personal blog.

The last category is harder to spot if you don’t do due diligence. Some of the most respected food blogger keep their identities hidden for creditability, but if you cover the food beat, then you’ll know instantly they are the grandsons and daughters of the city’s food industries. One recent blog criticised a new restaurant in Soho, never stating he was the marketing manager for the restaurant right above the one he was criticizing. You see how this could get messy.

When I used to take press meals, that is free meals paid by restaurants in exchange for press coverage ( a good time to insert that Time Out reviews anonymously and pays for meals), tables would be seated by free-loading journalists and bloggers looking for a king’s feast. What I didn’t understand then, but clearly see now is that the acceptance of a free meal creates the classic journalistic conflict of interest: how do I judge a restaurant when they have to be on their best behaviour? Hosting free meals allows restaurants to control how it will be portrayed in the media. This is a wildly hedonistic occupation, and anyone, it seems, can be bought.

I’m not trying to throw scare tactics to wain readers away from food blogs and put their trust on the professionals. Food blogger are not the bad guys in this write up. As Little Cream Book’s author and blogger Winne So says in support of blogs, “You are more likely to trust your friend’s opinion than a professionals.”

And as your friend’s blog turns in six-figure book deals such as This is Why You're Fat, Gourmet Glossary, and Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression, and a Hollywood movie deal (Julie & Julia) come to a book dealer or movie theatre near you, you think why not give it a go? And even in this over-saturated market of food blogger, there will always be room for more proses as everyone eats, and everyone can use puffery to sing to the masses.

I can easily jump camps and state the reasons why food blogs will take over my job. The main reason being they don’t have to print on dead trees. Print media have lag time between collecting the information and when it is released, sometimes months after restaurants are opened. Bloggers have instant publishing tools. In fact, all they need to do is whip out their iPhone tableside. This of course has problems as well. Often the outcome is the writing is spontaneously, unedited, hasty opinions. In this day and age, a restaurant critique is not just a record of been there, ate that, but also a reference book, a history lesson, a travel log, a celebration of food vernaculars, all while sounding delicious or grossed out. There is baseline standard that comes from understanding and investigation. That only comes from years of disciplined eating, referencing, traveling, tracking talents, and food poisoning.