Looking for an extravagant, worthy feast this Chinese New Year? Here are our top picks for each trademark dish
Chinese New Year is approaching quickly – less than two weeks away! We are looking forward to the festive songs, the generous ang paos and most of all, the food. With such an endless selection of Chinese New Year feasts to choose from, it becomes quite daunting to choose one and stick to it. Well, kick back and let us do the quality checking for you!
Here are our choice picks for each trademark dish for your feasting pleasure:
Min Jiang’s Kanpachi and Tuna ‘Yu Sheng’
This platter features a lofty stack of mesclun greens, strips of radish, carrot, red ginger, jellyfish and fried silver cod fish, pine nuts, topped with sweet potatoes and yam chips and finished off with ground peanuts, sesame seeds as well as “pok choy” (crunchy crisps) tossed in a balanced wasabi-lime juice sauce.
For me, the differentiating factor is the juice sauce. Most yu shengs taste pretty similar, save for the different add-ons, such as the fresh kanpachi and tuna in this case. Hence, the sauce provided a tangy touch that brought the dish together.
They even offered a refillable teapot of wasabi-lime juice, for the daring!
Available at Min Jiang, 22 Scotts Rd, Goodwood Park Hotel, Singapore 228221
Cherry Garden’s Luxurious Pen Cai
This is Cherry Garden’s Luxurious Pen Cai – Singapore’s largest traditional ‘basin dish’, weighing more than 25 kilogrammes and measuring up to 45 centimetres in diameter. No, we are not kidding!
Overflowing with an abundance of fortune, the pot is filled to the brim with superior ingredients, such as braised eight-head abalone, lobsters, scallops, sea cucumbers, prawns, dried oyster rolls, conpoy, dace fillet, roasted duck, soy chicken, crispy pork belly, waxed sausages, mushrooms, cabbage as well as black moss to represent a year of endless wealth and prosperity.
Available at Cherry Garden, 6 Raffles Blvd, Marina Square, Singapore 039797
Joyden’s Signature Soy Sauce Chicken
Meat dishes are an integral part of every Chinese New Year dinner. At Joyden Canton Kitchen, a must-try is its Signature Soy Sauce Chicken ($12/18/32), which comes in different sized servings. Gently steeped in a secret blend of superior light sauce and other herbs, the chicken is skilfully poached to achieve a silky skin and tender, pulled-apart meat.
Rosewater, a traditional ingredient used in classic roast techniques, imparts a refreshing and subtle floral sweetness to this dish.
Joyden Canton Kitchen, Hill V2 Shopping Centre, 4 Hillview Rise #02-21 Singapore 667979
Mitzo’s Koi Fish Nian Gao
Can you bear to tuck into this? Mitzo’s chef pulled all the stops for this piece, taking painstaking efforts to make sure each detail of the dish is intricately done. Crafted with great finesse from fins to scales, Mitzo’s Koi Fish Nian Gao is a work of art.
A gentle slice reveals the slightly chilled nian gao. This exquisite dish tastes as good as it looks, with a nice, chewy texture and complete with a sweet aftertaste. Our only concern is that it looks too good to be eaten!
Mitzo, 270 Orchard Road, Grand Park Orchard, Singapore 238857
Brizo’s Golden Fortune Prawns
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