Well if you're short on
moolah (like me) and still want to pamper yourself with some
atas (high class) Chinese restaurant fare, look no further than Zi Yean.
Taking up the whole ground floor of Block 56, Lengkok Bahru (just behind the Redhill MRT station), this is really the place to go for
Haute Cuisine in the Heartlands.
Opened by Chef Fok Wing Tin, 48, who made his name in the '90s at The Empress Room in Raffles Hotel and later Xin Cuisine Chinese Restaurant in what is now the Holiday Inn Atrium Hotel, the whole eatery is divided into two parts.
An informal kopitiam-type setting where the menu is more..err...informal but still high-class
zi char (cooked food).
And a glass-panel enclosed, air-conditioned restaurant where the usual up-market fare like Bird's Nest and Sharks' Fin is served.
The two sections are partitioned down the centre by a kitchen and tanks of fresh live seafood. Although I think I took this picture at a rather depleted state of affairs =))
So now for the taste-test. At the cheaper (without GST!) kopitiam setting of course.
K's been here a few times with friends and they all swear by the Herbal Chicken stuffed with Preserved Vegetables. So the both of us ordered one. Yes, a whole blardy chicken! It doesn't come in 1/2 or 1/4 servings. You think this is Kenny Roger's ah? =)) But oh it was worth it. The fragrant herbal sauce was infused with a tinge of Chinese wine and the chicken flesh just peeled off the bone in such savoury delectable morsels. Heavenly! Needless to say I couldn't finish my bowl of rice because I was...erm..stuffed like a chicken =))
And then we had the Boiled Watercress with Century Egg and Vermicelli. Its not done the way they do it at Crystal Jade, where the dish comes chock-full of normal/salted egg pieces. Here, Chef Fok does it the simple way, combining the slight bitterness of the vegetable with the pungent, uric-acid aroma of the Century Egg. No-frills and lovely. Take it from me, I'm not a Vege person but still lapped up every strand of Watercress.
The Szechuan Sweet and Sour Soup was a trifle dissapointing though. Not that it wasn't tasty. It just felt that to justify the 12 dollar price-tag, the cooks put too much stuff into the dish. Every spoonful of soup was literally dripping with slivers of bamboo shoots, black fungus, tofu and mushrooms. Where was the liquid? We had to eat the damn thing rather than drink it =))
So there. Good stuff for less than 1/3 the price you would normally pay at a good Chinese restaurant in town.
In the most unusual of places to boot.