Getting creative with Cantonese
With a wide range of dim sum delights and main dishes to get the taste buds swooning, Hong Kong Fisherman is a great place to dine
HONG KONG Fisherman, the Chinese restaurant that packs in the crowds at Impact Muang Thong Thani, has brought its popular dishes to downtown Bangkok, opening a second outlet on Sukhumvit Soi 26.
Designed to resemble a traditional Beijing teahouse though with contemporary twists, it offers local diners authentic Cantonese dishes created by Peter Lai, a former champion of the TV cooking show “Iron Chef Thailand”.
The restaurant, which is on the second floor of K Village community mall, boasts a large dining room along with two private rooms and can comfortably seat 70 diners.
The kitchen is in the hands of Lai, a Hong Kong native, who turned professional chef when he was just 17 and went on to work at one of Hong Kong’s top restaurants. In Thailand for more than two decades, he joined Bangkok’s Grand Hyatt Central Plaza in 1985 and travelled to other Hyatt properties in Seoul and Australia before moving back to the City of Angels to work with the Chao Phraya Park Hotel.
Today, when he isn’t busy with the restaurant, he sits on Impact Exhibition Management’s board and advises on its Chinese kitchens.
For Hong Kong Fisherman, he sticks to traditional recipes and cooking techniques and, of course, uses the very best ingredients like imported soy sauce, tapioca flour and Chinese wine as well as Polish caviar and Hokkaido scallops.
“We guarantee food of the highest standard,” Lai tells the Sunday Nation. “Cantonese cuisine is different from other Chinese styles of cooking and we adapt the ingredients to create better flavours and colours.
For those who love their dumplings, there are 50 kinds of dim sum on offer every day from 11am to 6pm, among them Steamed Prawn with Spicy Lime Sauce and crispy Deep-Fried Shrimp Wonton wrapped in dough sheets imported from Hong Kong and served with sweet plum sauce. Both dishes are priced at Bt90.
Caviar Scallop (Bt195), offers fresh shrimp har gao topped with gold and shrimp sui mai comes with a generous serving of Polish caviar and a scallop dumpling. Other must-tries include Chaozhou-style Sticky Rice Bun (Bt90) and Roasted Duck in Rice Flour Roll (Bt110).
One of the most popular main dishes – and one that despite its relatively small size is made for sharing – is the Special Barbecued Combination Platter (Bt390), which features deliciously moist roast duck, barbecued pork and crispy pork and with an aromatic barbecue sauce made from Chinese spices and Hong Kong soy sauce.
“We marinate the roasted pork with Chinese rose wine to create a soft texture and our crispy pork is less oily than you’ll find elsewhere,” Lai explains.
Also popular are the Barbecued Peking style Duck (Bt980) served with fresh dough sheet, vegetables and a special sauce made from Chinese spices and tamarind and the Double Boiled Mini Monk Jump Out of the Wall (Bt700), a clear soup made from legs of Yunan ham, chicken, shark’s fin, Chinese herbs and spices.
For the seafood fan there’s Sauteed Hokkaido Scallop with XO sauce (Bt1,100) that’s fried with broccoli from the Royal Project and Crispy Fried Prawn Salad with Fruits Mayonnaise (Bt450), a refreshing dish spiced up with dragon fruit, cantaloupe and rose apple and served with a creamy homemade dressing.
“My father created the recipe for Hong Kong XO sauce in 1984. Made from dried scallop, dried shrimp, Yunan ham and chilli, it’s perfect for preparing any kind of Chinese food like egg noodle and seafood. Today though, most chefs adapt some of the ingredients to keep the prices down,” Lai says.
Among the choices for dessert, the Chilled Mango Pudding (Bt80), featuring yellow jelly made from nam dok mai mango and served in milk is a customer favourite with the Red Bean Coconut Cake and Deep-Fried Chinese Date Pancake coming in close seconds.
BEST IN CLASS
Hong Kong Fisherman is on the second floor of K Village. It’s open daily from 11am to 10pm.
Call (02) 661 5908 or visit www.HKFisherman.com.
