Ah Orh Seafood Restaurant

Ah Orh Seafood Restaurant – 115 Jalan Bukit Merah #01-1627

Teochew cuisine is as nude and stripped down as Chinese food goes. Only the freshest ingredients and perfected cooking techniques are tolerated in this unforgiving style as the largely subtle sauces do little to conceal mistakes made. At Ah Orh Seafood Restaurant, the market-fresh seafood is bought daily and displayed openly as proof. Regulars point at the 'exhibits' they want instead of consulting the menu, gladly paying around the $137 I did for uncompromising quality.

The lightly-dressed Sea Snails ($8) were chewy and meaty. Extracting the shellfish was almost as fun as eating it dipped in a garlicky chilli sauce containing a generous dose of vinegar.

The Mussels in Black Bean Sauce ($8) were soft and lightly creamy specimens. The sauce was as robust as they come in this style but was still quite subtle with relatively delicate accents of ginger and chilli.

Teochew Style Seabass ($35) would be the archetypal dish of this cuisine. The extremely fresh fish with delicate flakes of moist and delicate yet firm flesh was complemented simply in a light broth flavoured with salted vegetables, ginger and the odd tomato. For added oomph, one may opt to add a dash of a fiery sauce of salted soybeans and chilli padi.

The Stuffed Beancurd ($8) was so soft that it tested the limits of my chopstick skills to pick up a piece without it breaking. The thick, creamy disks had thoroughly absorbed the flavours of the minced pork topping it, any excessive porcine attributes balanced by spring onions.

Leather Jackets ($25) had firm, meaty flesh with an almost buttery richness similar to pomfret. The small fish were excellent in the same sauce as the mussels with the added tang of bitter gourd slices.

Chilli Slipper Lobsters ($30) are an ingenious alternative to crab that I vastly favour due to considerably less fuss and mess. This was the only strongly-flavoured dish with the sweet crustacean meat napped in a thick, viscous nectar of garlic, tomato paste, egg, chilli and sugar, thickened and rendered gorgeously glossy with potato starch.

Braised Duck ($10) is a signature item that few tables go without, and for good reason. The thick, meaty slices had virtually no visible fat but were rendered moist in a beautiful soy-based braising liquid. The tender meat is excellent with a piquant sauce of chillies and garlic.

As always, I ended on a sweet note with Yam Paste ($10). The thick, fudgy mush was smooth, rich and wonderfully sugary with delightful depth accorded by a very crucial and very sinful ingredient: lard.

Aoki

Aoki - 1 Scotts Road #02-17 Shaw Centre

When it comes to dining with refinement and grace, the Japanese certainly take the cake. From turning the simple act of drinking tea into a culture-embodying ceremony to rendering steaming rice an art form sushi chefs can spend years mastering; these people take their food seriously. I managed to score a private room at Aoki where they certainly pull out all the stops to ensure your meal is - in a word - elegant. Of course, all that classiness comes at a befitting price with a party of two forking out $162.40.

The ambience alone left me pretty dazed so I'll try to walk you through it. The Zen-minimalistic exterior is more than easy to miss, little more than a curtain-clad doorway opening into the street. Intriguingly, the entrance is flanked by two tiny mounds of what appeared to be salt.

The unusual service was a sort of apathetic pampering; kimono-clad waitresses meeting your every need with meticulous thoroughness and a distant demureness on the precipice being cold. This clinical, empirically flawless service made me feel like an exacting mob boss for some reason...

Keeping with this Yakuza theme was a hidden call button below the table in the closed room, I kid you not! I pressed it half-expecting a trapdoor to open but a waitress slid the ricepaper-panelled door open in a heartbeat instead. With a perfectly-schooled unreadable expression, she took my life... I mean order.

Our meal began with a mandatory Otoshi ($3) starter comprising a pair of salads. The potato salad was creamy and extremely smooth with a generous amount of crushed black peppercorns.

The garden salad was a little more unusual with a Western-style mélange of crisp lettuce and plump cherry tomatoes dressed with premium shoyu and fragrant sesame seeds.

We washed this down with a House Sake: Kiyoizumi - Ichigou ($22). The rice wine was aptly named 'strawberry' (if my Japanese serves me right) for its sweet-sour, fruity nature.

A fine example of their meticulous attention to detail was offering us an array of Sake bowls to choose from, no two being alike. This made enjoying the beverage far more interesting than if we drank from a characterless, standard set.

The Shiroebi Uni ($20) proved irresistible as both my dining partner and I are suckers for sea urchin and shrimp. The Toyama White Prawns exceeded my expectations with their amazing mouth feel of delicate crunch, yielding softness and slight gooeyness. Crowning it, the vividly saffron-hued sea urchins - or sea urchin gonads to be exact - were delightfully creamy and sweet; the musky undertones might have been my imagination though.

The Hotaru Ika Okizuke ($10) was similarly gorgeous. The baby squids were extremely fresh, their eyes still crystal clear, and thus had a perfect gelatinous soft chew. The soy marinade was not too salty and yuzu zest accorded it a burst of vibrancy.

My Nigiri Sushi Tokusen ($50) was a luxurious set of nine different kinds of meticulously-assembled sushi. The salmon roe beckoned to me - a temptress in a clinging dress of red and black - and my (chop) stick seemed to fly forward with a mind of its own. It was perfect in the nude (I mean the roe) and not dressed with the typical saline, each plump sphere bursting like a rich, creamy bubble filled with the salty flavour of the sea.

I went for the maguro next which turned out to be soft and yielding, a smear of sweet Nama wasabi opened the palate to render the tuna steak-like in meatiness. Encouraged, I went on to savour the two other varieties of tuna nigiri on my platter, prized fatty belly pieces of different grades. The light pink cut was firm and creamily smooth while the darker pink - appearing not unlike a well-marbled steak tartar - was softer and richer.

I found my knowledge of Japanese cuisine stretched by my dining partner as he painted a background for my Anago Nigiri served with a Shisho leaf. Appearing like the more common unagi sea eel, this river cousin is a summer fish with more delicate flakes. The astringent Shisho cut through the rich fish and smoky, sugary glaze beautifully.

I was treated to ebi once again along with firm and meaty amberjack, glossy and slightly sticky pike as well as neutral-tasting sea bream.

The pickles really hit the spot as palate cleansers between the vastly different flavours of each fish. The ginger was delightfully astringent and piquant while the radish pickles were sweet and crunchy, one with an accent of yuzu zest. The only blemish in the platter was a too-firm and compact tamago as I admittedly favour mine light, airy and fluffy.

The Chawan Mushi that my set came with was perfectly straddling solid and liquid; quivering with almost impossibly fragility on my spoon. Melting on the tongue, it was rich, smooth and delicate with a blending of flavours from embedded chicken chunks and firm shrimp.

My dining partner's Nigiri Sushi Jyo-Sen ($30) was a selection of 7 largely similar to mine though sans the pike, Anago, tuna belly and ebi. Instead, he had crunchy cucumber rolls and a massive grilled prawn. His tamago was also ingeniously bent over a ball of sushi rice, a shape fitting just perfectly into the mouth.

Custard Pudding with Peach Sauce, Mango Sorbet and Plum Wine Jelly all sounded absolutely amazing individually, let alone served together in a dessert 'bento'. The sorbet had a lovely strong mango flavour and was most refreshing while the jelly had commendable kick despite being rather sweet. The custard - while good - was not as amazing with a too-subtle peach sauce on a pleasantly eggy custard that was not quite smooth enough.

Wan Hao

Wan Hao – 320 Orchard Road, 3F The Marriott Hotel

After my trip to Crystal Jade, I developed a gradually intensifying craving for yum cha and Wan Hao's weekend dim sum a la carte lunch buffet provided the perfect means to sate it. I've always preferred a la carte buffets to regular buffets because you don't have to jostle with other hungry souls, call me a snob but it adds a touch of refinement. The Marriot's Chinese fine-dining restaurant offers excellent, intuitive service and a mind-bogglingly extensive menu at $55++ per pax.

The first 5 items are from a list of chef's specialties limited to one order per table; the following 3 are soups limited to one order per person.

The sweet and crunchy Drunken Prawns were thoroughly infused with the potent flavour of Chinese wine and bittersweet tang of ginseng. Peeling them was a messy affair though!

I could not get enough of the Scallops and Asparagus in Spicy XO Sauce for the tender young asparagus spears and super-soft scallops were utterly divine with the rich, smoky sauce of chillies and dried scallops.

The Beef Tenderloin with Black Peppercorns presented a conundrum of painful pleasure. The meltingly tender chunks of beef were napped in a gorgeous, glossy glaze that I spent futile minutes trying to deconstruct. Caramelly and fragrant with spices, I would be forever indebted to whoever gives me its formula.

The buttery, flaky Sea Perch Fillet with Garlic actually got an equal measure of flavour from an amazing gingery sauce in addition to the already potent topping of fried garlic.

I absolutely adored the US Kurobuta Pork for the muted flavours of the viscous sauce allowed the natural porcine flavours to be the sole focus of this course. A surprisingly lean cut was the perfect balance of bite and softness as well as deliciously juicy.

For my choice of soup, I could not help but be intrigued by the Shark's Fin Dumpling Soup. I was quite surprised to find it closer to a massive dumpling in gravy, rather than a soup per se. The silky sheath held within it a complex, explosively flavourful filling comprising shredded chicken, shitake mushrooms, shark's fin and dried scallops.

The Shark's Fin Soup with Crab Meat & Bamboo Pith was a more conventional option but still impressed with its excellent execution. A liberal amount of quality fin was the obvious highlight, the generous chunks had a lovely crunch.

For those seeking something even more luxurious, Wan Hao offers a mean Miniature Buddha Jumps Over the Wall; named as such because it supposedly put a monk in such ecstasy that he vaulted over a fence. The abalone and fish maw in superior stock are so good it almost makes that story believable.

The Chilli Prawns with Crispy Buns wowed with extremely fresh, sweet and crunchy prawns. The glossy, egg-thickened sauce was rich yet not too overpowering with generous garlic and healthy spice accorded an extra edge by bell pepper chunks.

An order of three kinds of roasted meat quietened my insatiable inner carnivore. The super crispy Roast Pork had neat layers of crisp crackling, a thin sliver of rich fat and tender meat; it was divine with a thick smear of sharp mustard. The Roast Duck had a lovely crisp skin, a generous layer of decadent fat and moist meat. The Honey Glazed Pork or Char Siew was lean yet tender but was a tad too sweet.

The Har Gau had a skin that held everything together without being too thick. As before, the prawns were amazingly crunchy.

The Siew Mai fared less well, coming across as dry and a little bland.

The Char Siew So had a rather thick pastry layer though it was so light and delicate that one almost doesn't notice it. As with the earlier char siew, the filling was quite sweet.

I much preferred the Char Siew Bao which had the same filling in a fluffy cloud of a steamed bun.

The Shrimp Wanton in a Spicy Broth squeezed 3 delicious prawns into EACH dumpling. The simple spy-chilli sauce served to accentuate the sweetness of the crustaceans.

The Prawn Dumplings with Mayonnaise were extremely crisp and not smothering them with sugar-sweetened anaemic-white mayonnaise would be blasphemy.

If a little musty, the Beancurd Skin with Shrimp and Oyster Sauce had lovely strong flavours.

While never my favourite dish, the Phoenix Claws in Spicy Sauce shed new light on the unglamorous chicken foot with its sweet, smoky glaze.

The Beef Tendon with White Radish illustrated how vegetables can take meaty flavours to a whole new level. The beefy notes rebounded off the equally strongly-flavoured root vegetable for an effect both robust and refined.

After all the single-serve portions, I was shocked when a massive plate of Yang Chao Fried Rice was placed in front of me. That said, it was one of the best I've had with the delicate individual grains full of flavour from being lightly charred, according it a lovely smoky-sweet fragrance too.

Chilled Soursop refreshed the palate with a natural tartness given a touch of flowery mystique by jasmine jelly.

8 Treasure Hashima always bowls me over with how snow frog egg sacs can be rendered such a delectable dessert with a little rock sugar.

A yum cha brunch would not be complete without a Mango Pudding and this one was studded with actual chunks of sweet mango!