Restaurant Review: Yellow Pot Offers Pure And Wholesome Chinese Cuisine

What does a stylish boutique hotel need? An equally stylish restaurant, of course

Photos: Yellow Pot/Weekender

If our visual tour of  Six Sense Duxton has impressed you with its ridiculous style, then it’s fine time you head over to the three-month-old city boutique hotel, even if it’s not for a sleepover.

We’re talking about getting bites at Yellow Pot,  a contemporary Chinese restaurant and bar located within the hotel’s Chinoiserie-clad quarters.

Keeping in theme with its city hotel host, Yellow Pot is a true beaut.  The 50-seater restaurant is splashed out in shades of  yellow, gold and black, further embellished with mod-oriental accents such as large fans, black lacquered wooden fixtures and varying quirky pots and pans. The space also includes two semi-private dining enclaves.

While a true stunner that it evidently is, Yellow Pot is more than just a pretty place.

The restaurant, like most of its Chinese brethren, is breaking gross stereotypes that point to Chinese cuisine being ridden with monosodium glutamate (MSG), additives, and flavour enhancers. Instead, the restaurant sticks to only using natural and sustainably-sourced ingredients from both local and regional farms.

Chilled Organic Vine-ripened Tomatoes ($8)

This approach is promptly exemplified with the first serving of Chilled Organic Vine-ripened Tomatoes ($8), a sweet starter of peeled organic tomatoes that have soaked in a plum mixture of herbes and licorice roots from three days. The dish is a fitting palate-cleanser for the heavier and heartier delights to come.

After warming the belly with the spicy fermented bean broth-based Hot & Sour Soup ($12), we chewed through the Seared Pork Cheek ($12), the first introduction to Yellow Pot’s take on modern Chinese food. The meaty appetiser is first tenderised with a marination of lemongrass, garlic, shallots and celery, before seared with cumin chilli powder. Fresh green mango slices top the dish that hint of a familiar Thai element – something we didn’t mind to lighten the flavours.

Roast Duck ($32 for half)

A scene-stealer at Yellow Pot is its Roast Duck ($32 for half), perhaps brought out a little prematurely as dishes that followed after were rendered unmemorable.

What maketh a superb roast duck is its beautiful crisp, crimson-red skin that cloaks meat that is tender, gamey and plump with juices. Yellow Pot’s offering checks off all the boxes, and then offers an extra oomph from luxuriating in a spiced beancurd marinade for two days, before hitting the flames, fueled by hickory wooden chips, for a smokey aroma.

Organic Grass Fed Beef Tenderloin ($36)

For non-duck eaters, there’s the Wok seared Organic Grass Fed Beef Tenderloin ($36) to keep you satiated. Here, beef cubes are seared in a honey-pepper sauce to a medium-rare doneness perfection, and then served with showers of dried garlic. Another worthy of an order is the Steamed Kühlbarra Barramundi ($22), steamed and dressed with housemade scallion ginger pesto. Fresh as a daisy, the fish is served swimming in a soul-soothing fish stock of anchovies, fish bones and trimmings.

Other complements to the Chinese meal are the Braised Sweet & Sour Eggplant (think a vegetarian version of a sweet and sour pork dish) and the Stir-Fried Mee Sua ($18) that holds a smoky wok-hey flavour amidst treasures of Hokkaido scallops and tiger prawns.

Escape to Kaifeng ($22)

But if you’re looking to knock back on drinks, Yellow Pot’s bar is at your service with innovative cocktails of Escape to Kaifeng ($22) house-made oriental chrysanthemum cordial and herbal Tanqueray Gin and the locally-inspired Kaya, featuring the suspects of pandan, egg yolk, before spiked with rye.