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I've organized an eating trip to Guangzhou this weekend, with the primary aim of hitting 2 restaurants I wanted to tick off my list. Luckily I have managed to rope in a few others to join me, so that we can do some proper ordering at Chinese restaurants. This would be my first time back in the city since I spent an unscheduled day in 1998 on account of missing a connecting flight...
The trip on the high speed rail was pretty uneventful, as it should be. After getting off at Guangzhou East Station (广州东站), we grabbed a 6-seater van to
Mandarin Oriental Guangzhou (广州文华东方酒店). Our rooms weren't ready yet, so we dropped off our bags and walked across the street to
BingSheng Private Kitchen (炳胜私厨).
The manager had actually messaged me while we were still at the hotel, and warned me that most of the dim sum items had already sold out. By 12:30 p.m. I'm wondering if they share the dim sum supply with the sister restaurant a few doors down, and they have been taking customer orders since 11:00 a.m. So when we arrived and shown to our private room, we were literally asking for the last portion(s) of less than a handful items still left...
Homemade sachima with olive kernel (超級欖仁沙琪玛) - we did ask for them to serve us the dim sum items first, but HELLO? You serve us the dessert first?! Well, we waited until all the savory dishes had been finished, and this thing had gotten kinda limp. In any case, the flavors weren't very interesting.
Dim sum platter (锦绣虾饺皇三拼) - they only had ONE serving of this
har gau left, which came with three different types of fillings: scallop and shrimp (玉带虾饺皇) in white; shrimp with homemade yellow pepper paste (炳胜辣虾饺皇) in yellow; and shrimp with thelephora ganbajun (干巴菌虾饺皇) in black. That meant we had to share...
...so Foursheets and I shared the one with yellow pepper paste. This was actually pretty good. I wish I could have tasted the one with
ganjabun (干巴菌).
Stir-fried shrimps with 9 year's lily bulbs, ham (九年百合清炒手剥大虾) - the prawns had their shells removed after cooking, then stir-fried again to deliver a more dehydrated and lightly shriveled texture as well as deeper flavors. The olive kernels (欖仁) were a nice touch.
Braised chieh-qua with female mud crab (斗门膏蟹焖黑毛节瓜) - the mud crab itself was kinda meh, but the jointed wax gourd (節瓜) was nice.
Pan fried dumplings with Sichuan pepper, abalone, and beef (鲜花椒鲍鱼牛肉煎饺) - we ordered the last 2 servings of these pan-fried dumplings, and counted ourselves lucky. They looked very pretty.
We knew the filling was made with beef, but I didn't realize it also included abalone. These
were pretty tasty.
Crispy pigeon in lemongrass flavour (玻璃脆皮香茅石岐乳鸽) - we got 3 pigeons for the 5 of us, and they looked pretty good.
In fact, they were very, very tasty! The lemongrass in the marinade was very strong, so that was nice and fragrant. The birds were also very juicy and tender. We were pretty happy.
Roasted lamb chops with three kinds of sauce (三味酥皮高原羊排) - these were pretty fatty and tasty, so this was definitely a good call. We had three different sauces, including a mix of cumin and chili powder.
We forgot to tell the restaurant to pace our food, so of course most of the dishes we ordered came within 15 minutes of each other. I finally asked the kitchen to pause and not send us anything else for a while after this dish. One would think that at a high-end establishment called "private kitchen", the service level would be different... but nay.
Boiled goji berry leaves with fresh scallops and sliced meat (鮮瑤柱肉片浸枸杞苗) - pretty decent with clean flavors.
So the waitstaff wheeled a cart into our room, with a clay pot of multi-colored rice sitting on a portable gas stove.
Signature fried rice with ham, ganba mushroom (云腿干巴菌啫熊猫米饭) - she proceeded to mix the
ganbajun and Yunnan ham sauce into the rice so that the whole thing sizzles over the flames. The amazing fragrance of the fungus filled the air, and I started to salivate...
This was an eye-opener. I had never heard of "panda rice (熊猫米)", but this long-grain rice had such an interesting texture! It clearly absorbed a lot of water, and even after additional frying in the clay pot, it was rather soft and jelly-like - but not mushy. Actually, it was more akin to rice vermicelli in that sense. Very, very tasty.
Sweet soup with lotus seed, 30 year's dried tangerine peel (新会东甲三十年陈皮炖莲子) - I needed some dessert, and I was curious about the 30-year old dried tangerine peel from Xinhui (新会). Having warm, clear dessert soup at the end of a meal makes me happy.
I happened to flip through the restaurant's promotional offerings on wine, and noticed that besides an interesting collection of German rieslings, they also showcased a red from one of the most popular (or is it hype?) wineries in China. The pricing seemed reasonable, so it piqued my interest a little...
This was a decent first meal for our trip. Next time, though, I need to try one of their signature giant-ass pineapple bun /
bolorbau (菠蘿包) that is apparently the size of one's head...
We walked back to the hotel, but our rooms still weren't ready... So we tried to kill off some time at
Taikoo Hui (太古汇). We did eventually managed to get into our room, and I desperately needed a nap before heading out to dinner...
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