If you’re the sort of Cantonese cuisine fan who doesn’t handle change well, you have nothing to worry about at Shang Palace, the Shangri-La Hotel Bangkok’s 2nd incarnation restaurant of that ilk: it’s never going to stop perfecting its ha gao with whole shrimp, Peking duck or monk jumped over the wall soup. But fads and fashions come and go, and inevitably some dishes fare better than others over the long haul.
“There are always going to be some dishes that have had their day in the bun, so to speak, and that’s a good thing, because it creates space for something different,” is how the restaurant’s senior-most chef, Chinese-born Chef Chow Wai Man, puts it paraphrased. Fortunately, though, with his over 40 years of culinary experience in China and Hong Kong, Chef Chow is most famous for his bar-raising traditional Chinese cuisine.
And while his words might set off alarm bells in the heads of some Cantonese cuisine cognoscenti, “something different” in Chef Chow’s interpretation has various wholly positive meanings. It can catapult back through space time to revive a former star whose flame faded faced with the relentless onslaught of modernity but, with a little ingenuity, can be revitalized. Then there are those that juxtapose a contrasting Western or Japanese concept for contrast which you can call “fusion” if you must. And yet others that have simply evolved under the inspired attention of the Shang Palace chefs.
Of the restaurant’s sumptuous dim sum selections, the specialist Sous Chef Chaozhi Liang, a Guangdong native with 27 years’ experience, presents 10 newbies, bringing to 40 the total.
Among the new items introduced this month, savoury standouts include stir-fried turnip cake with XO sauce and beansprouts, so simple and yet so delicious. Steamed spinach siew mai is one of two new selections graced with an umami grating of cheddar cheese, another being pan-fried rice cake stuffed with barbecued pork, both addictive. Moreover, Chef Liang is not averse to converting his dim sums into cute forms and “deep-fried meat turnover in chick shape” is a cute killer. Smoked salmon folded into pastry cases topped with wasabi infused mayo hits the spot too.
Dessert dim sum-wise, Chef Liang is equally innovative with yellow duck (mango) pudding and Kitty (coconut) jelly looking ready for bath time but delivering firm, smooth texture and fruity flavour. Being Christmas, he’s also come up with sticky rice snowmen dumplings stuffed with red bean paste and capped with a red strawberry Santa hat. Three other new numbers — steamed piggy, panda and golf ball bun set; steamed chocolate walnut buns; and also simple but delicious, baked milk and egg white with crusty puff pastry, close out the new dessert selections with aplomb.
Meanwhile, the classic dim sum menu still features all-time favourites like: baked barbecued pork pastries; deep-fried crab claw rolls; deep-fried shrimp and sesame spring rolls; steamed rice rolls with honey glazed pork; steamed scallop siew mai; steamed fish stuffed with minced shrimp etc.
Dim Sum is served Monday to Friday from 11.30am to 2.30pm. Prices range 100++-180++ each.
As for the a la carte, new signature items include a vast bamboo basket packed with steamy sticky rice and prime crab meat (Baht 2,000). Not to mention steamed giant river prawn seasoned with garlic, pepper and tobiko and sauced with the head that gives it all a deep and distinctive flavour. Not to mention the perennially popular traditional Peking style oven glazed goose in two courses (Baht 1,988).
However, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. The lavishly illustrated menu is pages long, with each picture posing an irresistible temptation. The 13 sections, comprising: Chef Chow’s recommendations; signature dishes; appetisers; barbecue comer; soups; abalone, sea cucumber, bird’s nest; live seafood and live fish; seafood; poultry; beef, lamb, pork, vegetable; rice & noodles; and dessert, make choosing only slightly easier.
Highlights of Shang Palace’s main course dishes range: stewed pork belly with quail eggs in casserole; deep-fried half chicken; scrambled eggs with scallops; stir-fried assorted mushrooms with crispy pork; pan-fried shrimp balls with capsicums & eggplant; steamed crab with egg white and shaoxing wine; and steamed tofu and crab meat with broccoli.
Beyond Cantonese cuisine there are also dishes from Sichuan, Huiyang, Shanghai and other regions.
First opened in 1986, three-four years ago, Shang Palace completed a US$4 million re-design that announces itself in a traditionally large, conspicuously chinois welcome area with a large gilded Buddha and a Chinese calligraphy that HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn graciously penned which translates as “living in the lost horizon” — a nod to James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon, which introduced “shangri la” to the English lexicon.
The opulence is subtle, modem in its application, and predominantly gold and saffron. Embellished with celestial carpets and punched with Tang red chairs drawn up to round tables, one dines under startling chandeliers like outsize haut joaillerie that at night create a canopy of crystal stars. A hand painted silk mural of exotic birds and flowers offers another stunning focal point.
The private dining rooms are fittingly named after gemstones, each boasting unique art and lattice works. Kaleidoscopic fabric-glass panels ornament the doors suffusing the rooms with translucent light. All with individual music controls, self-contained lighting, air conditioning and high-speed Internet access.
Tea drinking is an integral element in enjoying Chinese cuisine and Shang Palace presents a vast variety of rare tea leaves from China that go far beyond the popular oolong and green tea to pale, sweet osmanthus, smoky, coal-black lapsang souchong, and everything in between. Also featured on the beverage menu are Chinese white wine, fine cognacs and bourbons.
But it’s the cuisine, cast in stone and newly innovated but always created with great skill from top quality ingredients often imported from the specific region or province the recipe originates from, that folks really come for from far and wide for. And that much will suree never change.
SHANG PALACE, Shangri-La Hotel Bangkok. 89 Soi Wat Suan Plu. Tel. 02 236 9952 and 02 236 7777. Email: restaurants.slbk@shangri-la.com.
