Cantonese restaurants have always set the benchmark for Chinese fine dining in Singapore. In the 80s, the Tung Lok Group of Restaurants dominated the market with their flagship Tung Lok Sharksfin Restaurant in Liang Court, plus their other popular dining options like Charming Garden (Hunanese) and Dragon City (Sichuanese), both located at the-then Novotel Hotel on Dunearn Road, Bukit Timah, besides Grand City (Cantonese) at the old Cathay Building on Orchard Road.
Standalone, Lei Garden at the Boulevard Hotel was another which sets the standard for excellent Cantonese fine dining.
There were also HK transplants like the formidable Fook Yuen at the old Paragon on Orchard Road, and Tsui Hang Village at the now-defunct Asia Hotel on Scotts Road, which offered the best Peking duck and dim sum options on the island back then.
But the turning point for Cantonese fine dining in Singapore truly came when the talented HK-born brothers, Alfred, Jimmy and Vincent Leung left Tsui Hang Village and set up their own eatery: Crystal Jade Restaurant in Cairnhill Hotel in 1991. It was the first eatery in Singapore which could offer authentic, HK-style cooking that could match those in Hong Kong itself.
Crystal Jade later moved to the-then newly-opened, brand-new mall, Ngee Ann City, on Orchard Road in late 1993 - they did it with much aplomb, with banner-waving members of the Kowloon Club Singapore (an association for HK expats living here) and HK movie stars leading a parade along Orchard Road to the new Crystal Jade Palace restaurant. They’d also opened a more casual Crystal Jade Kitchen on Isetan Scotts, across the road, which offered the best roast goose, HK-style noodles and congee on a level of authenticity previously unseen in Singapore.
But the Leung brothers, in need of funds, brought in their brother-in-law, Ip Yiu Tung, who provided much of the finance for them to maintain and grow their business. Crystal Jade Group Restaurants grew rapidly from those two initial outlets to a regional chain today.
But a fall-out between the Leung brothers and their brother-in-law in 2004 saw the trio leave the brand name which they had started. Alfred Leung then started Imperial Treasure, which grew rapidly into a popular chain that was practically a clone of Crystal Jade.
Thus, Singapore’s Chinese fine dining scene became a tussle for superiority between these two groups - Crystal Jade and Imperial Treasure, though we also saw some very good efforts from other upstarts like Taste Paradise, a former tze char eatery which went upmarket with their flagship outlet in swanky ION Orchard in 2009.
Today, I’d rate these restaurants as the top Chinese fine dining restaurants in Singapore, based on my personal taste preferences:
- Imperial Treasure Fine Teochew Cuisine, ION Orchard
- Crystal Jade Palace, Ngee Ann City
- Taste Paradise, ION Orchard
- Imperial Treasure Super Peking Duck, Paragon
- Crystal Jade Golden Palace, Paragon
- Yan Ting, St Regis Singapore
- Yi by Jereme Leung, Raffles Hotel Arcade
- Jiang-nan Chun, Four Seasons Hotel
- Lei Garden, Chijmes
- Summer Pavilion, Ritz-Carlton
- Wan Hao, Marriot Singapore
- Jade, Fullerton Hotel
There are, of course, many other Chinese fine dining places around town which I’d not mentioned here.
Last week, just three days before Christmas, I met two old friends for dinner at Yan Ting, St Regis Hotel on Orchard Road. It’s been more than 3 years since we caught up, because of the COVID pandemic.
Service at Yan Ting was exemplary: polite and attentive. The kitchen was very slow, but which we didn’t mind as our long wait for each dish allowed us to catch up on the news of the past three years.
Mind you, anyone else who wanted to hurry through their meal would be sorely disappointed: we had two of our dishes served to the table nearly 2 hours after we’d ordered, and the restaurant was only half-filled at its busiest that evening.
Our dinner that evening consisted of:
- Cantonese-style roast duck - this was excellent. The duck was very aromatic, served on a bed of stewed soybeans.
I’d always preferred the more refined Peking-style roast duck, with its crisp, paper-like glossy skin, juicier meat, side-condiments and pancakes, but I don’t mind a change every now and then. This Cantonese version was as good as it gets.
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Crisp-fried salt-and-pepper prawns - another well-executed dish, with sweet, succulent prawns cloaked in a crisp, salty-savory crust.
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Stir-fried sirloin beef strips with snow peas in black pepper sauce - very tender, well-marinated strips of meat. But it was rather overwhelmed by the sauce here.
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Stir-fried pea shoots with garlic and ginger juice - a classic vegetable dish in Cantonese restaurants. The version here was leafy, with a meltingly tender texture. Perfect.
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Braised seafood noodles - lightly spiced version. I liked the fresh seafood used: scallops, prawns and fish, but not too enamoured with use of yellow chives, nor the peppery, fermented soy bean-paste condiment used for the sauce - but then, it’s my personal biasness.
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Dessert - glutinous rice balls with black sesame paste filling. The little mochi balls were dusted with powdered peanuts, making the eating a bit messy.
I think what we appreciated most of all that evening was the quiet respite from the holiday shopping crowds thronging Orchard Road outside. Within the confines of the restaurant, it was all peace and quiet.
Address
Yan Ting
29 Tanglin Road, The St. Regis Singapore, Level 1U, Singapore 247912
Tel: +65 6506 6887
Operating hours: 12 noon - 2.30pm, 6-10.30pm Mon to Fri,
10.30am - 3pm, 6-10.30pm Sat & Sun.
