A thank you to Yardley Kyling from Chefs Gallery and Thang Ngo from Noodlies for organising and inviting me to the launch of the Chefs Gallery new winter menu. I felt like I had collapsed and went to dumpling heaven and above me were several cute little angel piggies floating around awaiting to be eaten. Thou shall not squeal no more my oh so dear delicious piggies! buahahaha
Signature “Piggy Face” sesame bun and “Totoro" marsh-mallow arranged in an edible garden setting
beautifully presented and served with ice cream.
Trillium prawn dumplings
These are the most complex dumplings made at Chefs Gallery. The dumplings are first steamed for about 7 to 8 minutes, then folded leaving three holes at the top and then carefully stuffing the fish roe and caviar in. Sounds so exhausting but how pretty is it!!
Left: Steamed chicken and Shitake mushroom shiu mai topped with a seared scallop and garnished with red flying fish roe
Top right: Colourful mixed vegetable dumplings in a clear pastry
Bottom right: Shredded Peking duck with cucumber and hosin sauce rolled inside a Chinese roti
I am not a greedy a person but the shiu mai were awesome because they were so huge! There was a generous amount of chicken stuffed inside them and it made the ones you get at yum cha look so stingy!
Besides the trillium prawn dumplings, the peking duck wrapped inside a roti was my other favorite. I heart a lot of food dishes but one thing but one thing that will always be on my top 5 list is peking duck. So in a way yeah I am kind of biased but most things with peking duck taste so succulent and juicy so when you add the peking duck and hosin sauce and roti - how can you not! nom nom nom
New Macanese style mini burger filled with pork fillet, lettuce, pork floss and mayo.
So apparently Macau is the place to go for these mini 'burgers'? I missed out on trying one when I was there, guess I need to make up for that now. The mun tao (i.e. chinese white dough buns) was an interesting combination with the pork fillet because the buns were sweet but stubtle. The buns were extremely hot when I ate them (don't ask me why I didn't wait for it to cool down, kind of stupid when I think back at it) so it was kind of hard to enjoy as much as I could of.
Left: Regular handmade noodles wok fried with shredded pork, cabbages and black fungus
Top right: Steamed chicken thigh fillet with sticky rice, shitake mushrooms, red dates and
wrapped in a lotus leaf parcel.
Bottom right: Prawn and pork wontons in a Shanghainese spicy sauce
Steamed chicken thigh fillet with sticky rice
Besides its dumplings, Chefs Gallery is also quite well known for their hand made noodles as it is meant to be as good as the ones in Taiwan. I haven't been to Taiwan so I can't compare. To me, they were stringy and not too soft although I found it to be a bit too salty for my own liking.
The sticky rice with the steamed chicken was another winner of the day! It was simple as there were only a few ingredients but it tastes better than your typical sticky rice that get at most Chinese restaurants. The chicken was unbelievably tender and there wasn't too much soy sauce where it would have destroyed the whole dish. It comes with a shot of soy sauce, I didn't add it so that could probably be why lol.
Signature “Piggy Face” sesame bun - before and after being squished
When this dish came out I simply could not stop squealing. Look at it!! Look at the garden!! Look at the totoro!! Look at the piggies!! *squeals* Squish my little piggies, squish squish!
As you probably have figured by now I had problems eating this dish because it was too cute to destroy!! I couldn't destroy their home and I most definitely couldn't murder my piggies. boohooo but the dish was getting cold and it had to be eaten =P
Overall, I'd thought that Chefs Gallery had given quite some thought in developing their new menu. I mean even the piggies got a new home and it looks much better than their old boring steamed basket. Would definitely be returning for more pig squishing fun!
Chefs Gallery
Gotta go eat!!
