The Beijing Onion cake was a little different from what I've had before. A thicker batter and unlike the usual pancake styled dish, this was a lot more crispy and lot thicker, though the unmistakable hit of the scallions is hard to miss. The rice paper rolls were refreshing and gave a healthy looking twist to the spring rolls at GD. The thin sauce beautifully complemented and tied the rather simple dish together. But the juicy crab dim-sum was the dish to beat. Stuck between a dry dim-sum and a xiao long bao (soupy dim-sum), the crab inside the dim-sum were indeed juicy and moist, but without the soup. It was almost like having a xiao long bao without burning your tongue! A full blown crab flavour with no soup to distract was a bonus.
A spicy peanut butter soup was both memorable and comforting. Warm, spicy and duh, peanut butter, in a soup is hard to find fault with. Taking away no flavour from the peanut butter and not serving a sweet excuse for a soup showcased the chef's intricacy in keeping flavours and the essence of the dish intact. With ice creams coming from every savoury dish these days, making a savoury dish out of a sweet base in a Chinese restaurant was nice to see.
Fried lamb shanks arrived in style. Plated beautifully in a glass with crisps, seeing a visually appealing dish with modern plating was refreshing. The photo does no justice to the dish, which fell off the bone. I'm not sure if I did burn my tongue a little bit or not, but there was no distinct Chinese flavours to this dish. But a simply delicious one.
Among the many main courses served, two stood out for me. One, a classic Beijing style pan fried chicken which had the Golden Dragon stamp all over it, with the classic flavours of Chinese that most of us are used to. With some bite to the chicken, teaming with comforting and familiar flavours, this with noodles is all you will need for a day you crave good Chinese. While you are at it, it may make sense to try out the Due of Asparagus, a modern dish with both white and green asparagus. The very fact that the restaurant uses the expensive white asparagus is nice, but this dish was more than just expensive ingredients. While you don't have to do much to asparagus to make it tasty, the chef here has light white gravy soaking it and still leaving enough bite to the asparagus.
A green tea cheese cake with matcha green tea completed a night of laughter!
A meal for two will set you back by about Rs. 4000.
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