License to create

Beijing

A new generation of Beijing chefs are remaking Chinese cuisine in innovate ways. Wish's Yu Meisheng is chief among them. Ye Jun digs in.

Ye Jun

The quest for novelty is as prevalent in the food industry as in the fashion industry. That pursuit for a new and refined version of Chinese cuisine is obvious at Wish, which calls its food style "creative Chinese cuisine". And it is easy to see the differences in the food.

Its preserved duck egg dish is surely the first time somebody has thought to mash the ingredient, mix it with diced chili and crisp peanuts, top it with crab roe, and serve it in two beautiful glass bowls. In traditional Chinese cuisine the delectable duck egg is usually cut into the shape of an orange segment, and served inconspicuously with ginger and vinegar. At Wish it gets the attention it deserves.

Another dish, original flavor pork, beef and chicken slices served on a chopping board, reflects chef Yu Meisheng's appreciation of the natural taste of meat. The three meats are plainly boiled, and served only with a simple soy sauce, or even simpler, dipped in salt.

The restaurant's crisp-roasted baby pigeon is prepared with vanilla and fine-mashed chili that you can taste, but not see, a surprising and pleasantly different take on the classic Cantonese specialty.

Another clever mixture is that of steamed codfish with Guizhou-style chili sauce. While adding a lot of flavor to the fish, the chili sauce gives the codfish a distinct Chinese flavor.

Yu also prepares ordinary dishes such as bean curd and pork liver with different sauces. He adapts dim sum into exquisite bite-sized morsels, served on a chic black plate. The chef experiments with unorthodox food combinations, such as codfish and pumpkin soup. The menu also has several dishes with cheese, highly uncommon in Chinese cuisine. To finish the dinner, there's walnut ice cream, an ice cream with cheese, and a green stuffed glutinous rice ball.

Yu says he draws inspiration from painting, ikebana, and sculpture. He has also paired good food with different containers: stone, porcelain, clay, wooden and bamboo plates.

For a long time, Beijing relied on the same old food styles. One can still see plenty of restaurants serving big bowls of meals, which offer good flavor, but are often oily and look messy.

Western cuisine was introduced to Beijing on a broad scale 30 years ago and Chinese chefs quickly adopted Western presentation methods. But they are only just starting to discover a style of their own.

One of the first to form his own style of cuisine was chef Dong Zhenxiang at Da Dong Peking roast duck. After the success of his healthy take on the traditionally oily duck, he started using the philosophy of freehand style Chinese miniature painting in the layout of his dishes. Freehand style emphasizes casual but concise strokes. It took Dong three years to make all his dishes look like Chinese paintings.

Other young Chinese chefs quickly picked up the creative spirit. Among them, chef Fu Yang at Le Quai Restaurant & Lounge, Hao Wenjie at Jasmine, and Chen Qing at Kong Yi Ji's Shang Yan (Noble Banquet). These chefs are all creating their own dishes with a core of tasty Chinese ingredients, presented in a clever and tempting manner.

Dong said his generation of Chinese chefs is responsible for a new era of Chinese food. Lovers of good food in the capital are lucky to taste the fruits of their labors.

Sweet Bites of summer

Hong Kong

Cupcake lovers find that happiness comes in small packages. Donna Mah explores shops with goodies that appeal to all ages.

Donna Mah

In the last few years, Hong Kong has seen many new cake shops opening up. Interestingly, many of these beautifully stylish shops carry what was considered a treat for children. Well, both little children and big children.

Often decorated in an assortment of colors and flavors, these little bundles of happiness are no longer just for kids. Though they are still popular for kid's birthday parties, more and more couples are also choosing tiers of cupcakes piled high for their weddings.

Sweet Secrets first opened its doors in 1999 and according to the owner, Sarah Lee, they provide the 4Cs - cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and catering. Their current cupcake menu consists of 12 main flavors that evolved after a year of taste-testing. Lee says she thinks cupcakes "make people happy."

The Chocolate Swirl cupcake at Sweet Secrets is a soft and moist chocolate cake, decorated with white and dark chocolate pastry cream frosting, which is a cross between a buttercream frosting and whipped cream. Some of the other cupcakes on offer are frosted using buttercream frosting - which, though yummy, is much richer and heavier than the pastry cream frosting. Lee tells me that their most popular cupcake is the Velvety WOW, which is a chocolate cupcake with cream-cheese frosting. So popular in fact that when I was in the shop, there were none to sample.

For kids' birthday parties, the favorite is a light vanilla sponge cake decorated with colored whipped cream, called the Twinkie. These look like they would be a hit at any birthday party.

At Sift there have 17 cupcake flavors on the menu. They aren't all available everyday, as with most shops that offer cupcakes, but there's always a good selection. The Red Velvet cupcake here is a light chocolate cupcake dyed red and topped with Madagascar Bourbon vanilla cream cheese frosting. These cupcakes are sinfully sweet and a truly decadent treat. I enjoyed mine with an excellent cappuccino. It was the perfect afternoon indulgence after a hard day of hitting the shops.

If you're a fan of Disney characters fan, then a visit to Confetti Celebration Cakes is a must. During the summer holidays, they have the Toy Story characters images on all of their cupcakes. They serve seven different cupcake flavors and they use buttercream frosting. The shop is mainly white with the cakes providing splashes of color. It's a very pretty shop, but unfortunately it's only takeaway here as there is no seating available.

For a cupcake fix in Kowloon, Coco in the Mira Hotel is where to go. The stylish caf-patisserie serves artisan chocolates, cakes, and of course, cupcakes with their cups of java. There isn't a lot of seating, but it is the destination of choice for many with a sweet tooth to satisfy.

Above ground wine cellar

Shanghai

A private club on the Bund opens its extensive collection to the public. Shi Yingying takes a peek.

Shi Yingying

Wine lovers will feel like mice in a cheese factory once they walk into the wine cellar located on the second floor of the private club House of Roosevelt. At 2,000 square meters, with 2,500 labels and 20,000 bottles, the wine cellar on the Bund is serious about matching great wine with exceptional food.

Unlike the many subterranean cellars with damp, musty air and plenty of mold, this one is chill and filled with nature light.

"We have a device to make sure room temperature stays constantly at 17 C, which is the right temperature for the reds," says Selim Chiali, wine cellar manager at House of Roosevelt.

"We're also equipped with special fridges to keep our whites at the right temperature - around 11 C to 12 C - and to keep champagne at 8 C," says Chiali.

With its stone floor, dark wood shelves and raw, unrestored concrete walls, the cellar looks like a European wine cave, except that sunlight streams in through massive arched windows that face the Bund.

"People tell me it's more like a wine museum than a cellar," says Chiali. "And I'm happy to hear so, as my dream is to collect every grape and each kind of wine."

Essentially a massive wine showroom, the cellar is where you can find wine from the Old World or New, extremely cheap (as little as 65 yuan, $9.60) or extraordinary expensive (as much as half a million yuan, $73,800).

"Unlike other floors of the 90-year-old building, the cellar is open to the public," says Chiali.

Chiali walks further into a secret cellar, just like something in a James Bond film, hidden behind a bookshelf and guarded by infrared lasers. Chiali uses the cellar to store rarest bottles.

Building up a cellar of reasonably priced wines has forced Chiali to become eclectic and there are few wine-producing regions in the world not represented in the cellar.

Tables are placed among the shelves of wine and the cellar has a tapas menu. Items on the menu are listed with matching wines.

If you feel like champagne to celebrate, for example, the House of Roosevelt suggests accompanying it with caviar and shrimps on endives along with pink grapefruit segments. Red wine goes well with duck rillette with groutons, while white is at its best when paired with prawns and tuna with avocados on focaccia bread.

The cellar is not the only place to enjoy wine in the House of Roosevelt - there's a bistro on the first floor, an upscale restaurant on the eighth floor and a rooftop terrace on the ninth floor.