[Penang, Malaysia] Chinese fine dining at Maple Palace

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Another big get-together Chinese New Year dinner, this time at Maple Palace, Penang’s premier Cantonese restaurant. Proprietor-chef, Mr Tan Loy Sin, is a consummate perfectionist when it comes to ensuring quality produce are used for his well-executed dishes at this restaurant, which has set the benchmark for Chinese restaurants in George Town since it opened back in Sep 2009.

1. Yee sang with abalone, jellyfish and pear - only available during the Chinese New Year period each year, this salad is a must-order as the first course of any Chinese New Year meal. The version here substituted poached abalone for the traditional raw fish slivers (which I’d much preferred).
   Taste-wise, the “yee sang” here was good, but nowhere near those that one finds in Kuala Lumpur or Singapore’s top Cantonese restaurants.
   
   

2. Braised seafood soup with crabmeat, cordyceps and whelk - my favorite dish this evening: very rich, thick broth made from slow-boiling of pork, chicken and dried scallops, enriched with crab-meat and crab-roe, and chockful of fish-maw, etc. It’s served with a side-condiment of dark vinegar, which undercut the richness of the soup.
   
   

3. Marbled Goby (“Soon Hock”) with cuttlefish balls, steamed Cantonese-style - singularly the best Cantonese steamed fish we’d had in a while. Steamed whole, perfectly-timed to achieve the ideal texture, the fish was drizzled with an aromatic, aged soy sauce and hot oil.
   
   

4. Braised Iberico pork-ribs with coffee sauce - sticky melt-in-the-mouth pork-ribs, covered in a coffee-cocoa-flavored sauce, then topped with toasted almond slivers for an added crunch.
   
   

5. Braised South African abalone with sea cucumber, dried oysters and broccoli - one of my favorite Chinese banquet dishes: I love the juxtaposition of a braised abalone’s deep flavors (achieved from slow-cooking with oyster sauce, soy sauce and dried scallops); braised, rehydrated dried oysters; and braised thick caps of shitake mushrooms, with crunchy, blanched broccoli.
   Again, I found the rendition here in Penang, whilst good, to be nowhere near as tasty as those I finds in top Cantonese spots in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, or even Ipoh. Cantonese cuisine is never a forte of Penang chefs.
   
   

6. Steamed lotus leaf-wrapped rice with Chinese sausages - aromatic and tasty, although the rendition here had only two types of Cantonese sausages: the usual pork one, and one which also incorporated pork-liver.
   
   

7. Chilled sea coconut with honey peach and coco de nata - a chilled clear soup, like many Chinese desserts tend to be. Simple and rather refreshing.
   
   

8. Sweet coconut dessert rolls - pandan-scented mung bean paste, rolled around mango, then covered with desiccated coconut.
   
   

Address
Maple Palace Chinese Restaurant
47, Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah (Northam Road), 10050 George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Tel: 604-227 9690
Opening hours: 12noon-2pm, 6pm-10pm daily

[Harters (John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)]

Gong hei fat choy, Peter.

(Which I hope is an accurate enough spelling - it’s how our local Cantonese heritage folk usually spell it)

Good looking dinner you had. Interesting to see the Iberico pork there done in what felt a very Southern European way

[klyeoh (Peter)]

@Harters

Gong hei fat choy, Peter.

(Which I hope is an accurate enough spelling - it’s how our local Cantonese heritage folk usually spell it)

Thanks, John! Yes, you got the spelling correct! It’s indeed the Cantonese form of the CNY greeting, much used in Hong Kong, and Chinatowns all over the world: London, New York, San Francisco, etc. I used this greeting, too, when in Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh, where the Chinese are mainly Cantonese.

In Penang, where the Hokkiens or Fujianese are the majority, the same greeting is pronounced & spelt Keong Hee Huat Chye. It translates as “Congratulations, may your wealth grow”.

@Harters

Interesting to see the Iberico pork there done in what felt a very Southern European way

Indeed, a rather “un-Chinese” way of cooking it. I could be wrong, but I think the “coffee-flavoured pork-ribs” was first pioneered by Malaysian-born chef, Sam Leong, when he was helming Jiang Nan Chun, the Chinese restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel Singapore back in the late-90s. There were subsequently so many copycats of that dish all over Singapore and Malaysia.

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Back at Maple Palace yesterday evening for our annual Lunar New Year family dinner. Always fun to meet everyone who’ve returned for the gathering in Penang - from Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Kuala Lumpur, etc. There were more than 30 of us spread over three tables of about 10 pax each.

1. As always, the dinner started with the ritual tossing of the raw salmon salad, yee sang.
   
   

2. The soup course: braised seafood soup with crabmeat, cordyceps and fish-maw.
   

   

3. Shallow-fried grouper with pork lard and garlic-shallot oil - I’m not a big fan of fried fish in a Cantonese restaurant: an indication that the fish used might not be as fresh as one would like it to be. This dish was quite tasty, with a complex sauce and lots of golden-fried pork lardons.
   

   

4. Roast duck with black truffle sauce - very well-executed dish, with perfectly roast duck: crisp-skinned, moist meat, and an aromatic truffle sauce/dressing.
   

   

5. Braised pig’s trotter, with South African abalone, sea cucumber, fatt choy and black garlic sauce - this was my fave dish for the evening. The gelatinous pig’s skin was especially tasty. The accompanying broccoli was slightly undercooked and quite hard.
   

   

6. Steamed lotus leaf-wrapped rice with Chinese sausages - the rice was very flavorsome. It was topped with two types of sausages: pork and duck-liver. Both had strong Chinese wine aroma, and very tasty.
   
   

Desserts:
7) Chilled lychee rose tea with peach jelly and chia seeds. It’s one of those Cantonese desserts that fall under [tong sui](literally meaning: “sugar water”).

8. Nian gao with freshly-grated coconut & crushed peanuts.
   
   

No big surprises in this year’s dinner, as to be expected of a traditional Chinese Lunar New Year banquet, where each dish carries some auspicious meaning in their names or content.

And Maple Palace left do doubt that it is still Penang’s No. 1 Chinese fine-dining restaurant, by a mile.

Here’s to good food hunting in the Year of the Dragon.

[Saregama]

Happy new year, @klyeoh! Wishing you good eats, good health, and good times in the coming year!

Looks like a wonderful feast to share with family!

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Thanks, @Saregama !

Before we had this big Chinese blow-up meal at dinner-time, lunch was at Shobana’s Kitchen: crab biryani, long beans thoran, avial and dry mutton fry.

[Saregama]

Omg that looks amazing too!
How did you manage to do justice to TWO meals like that in a day?!!

[klyeoh (Peter)]

@Saregama

How did you manage to do justice to TWO meals like that in a day?!!

We graze, instead of trying to finish everything!

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Back to Maple Palace for dinner. Penang may be regarded as Malaysia’s street food capital, and Singaporeans make food pilgrimages here for the street food. But when it comes to Chinese fine dining, Penang lags far behind Singapore, or even Kuala Lumpur. There is really only one restaurant of note in George Town that does a respectable job of Chinese fine dining: Maple Palace.

The three men behind Penang’s No. 1 Chinese fine dining spot, 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗣𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁, (left to right): Head Chef James Lee, Chef-Mentor Chai Chee Sieong, and Founder-owner Tan Loy Sin

Our family dinner this evening consisted of the menu’s more basic items:

1. Salted Egg, Century Egg & Hen’s Egg, in Superior Spinach Soup, topped with Crisp Whitebait
   

   

2. Signature BBQ Iberico Char-siew
   

   

3. Wok-fried Prawns with Soy Sauce
   

   

4. Signature Roasted Spanish Iberico Pork Loin Rib
   

   

5. Deep-fried Marble Goby with Broccoli, and Shallot-Garlic-Lardons & Soy Sauce
   

   

6. Poached 4-Month-old Corn-fed Chicken, with Ginger and Scallions
   

   

**Dessserts:
7) Chinese Pancake with Lotus Seed Paste

8. Glutinous Dumpling in Almond Tea
   

   

9. Chilled Mango Sago with Pomelo
   

   

10. Chilled Black Glutinous Rice with Ice Cream served in a Coconut
    

    

This is definitely the best in Penang, although its standards still lagged far behind what one finds at Michelin-starred places in Singapore, e.g. Imperial Treasure Fine Teochew Cuisine, Putien, Lei Garden, Summer Pavilion, Summer Palace, or even well-established ones like Crystal Jade Palace or Taste Paradise @ ION Orchard.

[Harters (John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)]

Iberico pork. My favourite piggy.

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Only the best, John

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Sunday lunch at Maple Palace this afternoon. Some very good options today: whole boneless Cantonese-style roast chicken with glutinous rice stuffing; prawn curry baked in a whole bread bun; 𝘩𝘶𝘮 𝘺𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘶 (salt fish and pork belly casserole), and yam basket with stir-fried mixed vegetables, black fungus and macadamias. Dessert were young coconuts with black glutinous rice and coconut ice-cream.

Cantonese-style roast chicken with glutinous rice stuffing - this was a classic Cantonese dish that’s hard to find nowadays, even in Malaysian cities with large Cantonese populations like Kuala Lumpur or Ipoh.
One needs to give a 24-hour notice for this dish here - and it’s worth it: perfectly roasted, crisp-skinned chicken, de-boned then stuffed with glutinous rice, robustly flavored with chicken-meat and an assortment of Chinese sausages.
We’d have preferred a lighter-flavored glutinous rice, though, rather than the assertive flavors here - but Maple Palace probably caters to Penang’s majority Hokkien populace, which favors strong, heavy flavors.

Prawn curry baked in a whole bread bun - the bread here was slightly sweet, which complemented the spicy-savory prawn curry perfectly.
The prawns were fresh - I’d requested the middle portions of the shells to be peeled before cooking. Blanched eggplant batons, ladyfingers and fresh mint leaves were added later before serving. The curry was much, much spicier than I’d envisaged, but was okay for my fellow diners.

𝘏𝘶𝘮 𝘺𝘶𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘩 𝘭𝘢𝘮 𝘱𝘰𝘶 (salt fish and pork belly casserole) - this dish has taken Cantonese restaurants all over Malaysia by storm in recent years. Try as I might, I still don’t “get” the dish, which I thought was greasy, overly-salty and oppressively heavy. But I have family and friends who swore by it.

Yam basket with mixed vegetables, black fungus and macadamias - on hindsight, I should’ve ordered one with prawns and/or pork/chicken-meat to add flavor and sweetness to the stir-fried vegetables. But the mashed yam/taro “basket” was totally delicious.

Dessert
Whole young coconuts, with black glutinous rice and coconut ice-cream

Maple Palace is, simply, far and away the best Chinese fine dining spot in Penang.

[medgirl]

That chicken stuffed with rice looks absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen that dish on any menu in the UK.

[klyeoh (Peter)]

Now that you mentioned it - I never did see this dish in the UK. But then, crispy duck served with pancakes is de rigeur in many British-Chinese restaurants - a very British-Chinese invention and something we don’t get in Asia.

[medgirl]

That’s interesting. I never noticed that, but then I haven’t travelled a lot in South East Asia.

Crispy duck with pancakes is now so ubiquitous in the UK most supermarkets sell it in their frozen foods section. You just need to buy your own cucumber and spring onions to complete the dish. We occasionally have this as our Sunday lunch at home.

[Harters (John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)]

@klyeoh

a very British-Chinese invention and something we don’t get in Asia.

Now, that is a surprise to me. As medgirl mentions, it’s everywhere here and I just assumed it must have been a dish that arrived with Hong Kong immigrants over the years. Is it based on an actual Chinese dish or is this a complete UK invention?

[klyeoh (Peter)]

@Harters

Is it based on an actual Chinese dish or is this a complete UK invention?

A complete British-Chinese invention, just as American-Chinese cuisine has its chop suey, chow mein, General Tso’s chicken, fortune cookies and mu shu pork.

But the concept - i.e. serving duck with pancakes - was derived from Peking duck. Whereas Peking duck is roasted to a lacquer finish and only the skin is sliced off for consumption, British crispy duck is deep-fried then shredded and consumed, meat & all.

[Harters (John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)]

Thanks for the explanation, mate.

[Saregama]

@klyeoh

only the skin is sliced off for consumption

Wait — the meat isn’t eaten in Peking duck?

[klyeoh (Peter)]

@Saregama

Wait — the meat isn’t eaten in Peking duck?

No. Although in Hong Kong, they do - that’s why when the carvers slice off the skin with the meat, they are said to do it “Hong Kong-style”.

Usually, the meat will be used for a stir-fried/braised noodle dish, to be served subsequently.