Modern, Creative, Fancy Chinese (Cantonese) Cuisine at Kai Garden, Marina Sqaure.

Chinese restaurants can be a bit indistinguishable, sometimes, with different restaurants across different chains and cuisine types sharing many similar menu items. So it was quite refreshing to hear that Chef Fung Chi Keung, formerly from Mandarin Orchard and the Paradise Group, has struck out on his own and established Kai Garden restaurant in an attempt to put a few modern, creative twists on traditional Cantonese Cuisine. Suitably armed with an excuse to spend (i.e., a special occasion), we paid the restaurant a visit last weekend to sample Chef's cuisine.


The creativity starts off with one of Chef Fung's signature appetizers - Chilled Cherry Foie Gras ($24): Chilled balls of foie gras pâté shaped to resemble cherries. It's a very amusing and playful start to the dinner, but your enjoyment would really depend a lot on whether you like pâté in the first place. The darling and I are huge fans of pan-seared foie, but not the minced variety, so this was taste-wise a bit "meh" for us.


We move on, then to the Crispy Whole Peking Duck ($88). The duck itself is superb, with crispy, fragrant skin clinging on to just the right amount of fat underneath. What's unique about the rendition here at Kai Garden are multi-coloured pancakes (the different colours coming naturally from adding charcoal, beetroot, lettuce and pumpkin respectively), and a variety of different dipping/spreading sauces.

If you're a traditionalist you'd probably stick to flavouring your pancakes with the regular sweet & tangy peking duck sauce, but if you're up for some experimenting, there are mixed, black pepper, sesame and seafood (with crab meat) sauces as well.



Did I mention that the skin of the duck is oh-so-crispy? Definitely one of the better peking ducks in town.


Next up - the Live Garoupa in Lobster Soup. This is by far the most well presented (Chinese cuisine) fish dish I've ever been served. The fish is brought to the table with its fillets pre-sliced and still raw, poached in the umami lobster broth, and immediately served in individual portions.


The lobster broth is a just-right, perfect accompaniment to the delicate, perfectly-cooked fish slices. It's just the right consistency (it's a soup/broth and not a bisque), and is just flavourful enough to accompany, and not overpower, the fish. The dish tastes just as amazing as it looks.


The rest of the fish - bones, head, etc - is then taken away and cooked with salt & pepper so as not to go to waste. This sort of excellence doesn't come cheap, though - the fish is "seasonal price" on the menu; during our visit it was a staggering $20/100gm (this 1kg fish alone cost more than all the other dishes combined).


Another of chef's creative takes on traditional Chinese/Cantonese dishes: the Sweet and Sour Pork on The Rocks ($22). Yes ... this is essentially fancy gu lou yuk (咕噜肉). Nevertheless the meatball is delicious, with an interesting core of fresh milk and coconut milk, surrounded by minced pork with a crispy honey shell. I don't really understand what the ice is for, though.


Just to check off the food pyramid checklist - the Wok Fried Hong Kong Kai Lan ($20), which had quite a bit of oomph on the flavour department thanks to the umami from the anchovies.


A final tummy filler: the meat from the peking duck, stir-fried with mee sua ($18). Competent and well-executed, if a little bland / normal compared to the rest of the menu.


Additional costs to the bill: Chinese Tea & tid-bits ($17.40 for 6 pax), service charge and GST, which pushed us up to $450 for 6 people. Other than the Garoupa, I would say that Kai Garden's menu items are good value for money, considering the taste, quality, and effort involved to prepare and present.

The Garoupa, on the other hand ... it was a very accomplished dish, and one of the better fish renditions I've had in a long while, but it is pricey as hell.

In any case, overall my family and I were thoroughly impressed with the effort Chef Fung is taking to try and revitalize / modernize Cantonese dishes, without departing too far from how they are expected to taste, and would not hesitate to recommend the restaurant.

Kai Garden is on the third floor of the Marina Square mall (same wing as the food court). Open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. Non-halal.

Mandarin Oriental's Ocean Grand Room: A Singapore Luxury Hotel review!

If you haven't heard of the staycation concept, here's a quick primer: Rather than spending hundreds of dollars travelling hours somewhere, just skip the flight and take the vacation in your home city! It makes a lot of sense for short weekend breaks, and is particularly popular in Singapore, where presumably the dozens of luxury hotels around the city provide a perfect backdrop for rest, relaxation, and a little family time.

Having stayed in exactly none of these aforementioned hotels, we aren't in any position to say which are better than others. Instead, in today's post we'll take a first baby step by reviewing the Ocean Grand Room at the Mandarin Oriental Singapore - and maybe in a year (or ten) we'll publish a "top 10" list!


Built in 1987 and renovated in 2004, the Mandarin Oriental is a triangular building with rooms overlooking either the Marina Bay, City (North towards Suntec) and 'Ocean' (South towards Gardens by the Bay). As you can see in the layout above, the Ocean Grand Room's 570sqft is larger than many studio condominiums, and has a living room sort of partitioned off by a desk. It's a handsome desk, with a very comfortable chair. The location of the television is sort of a let down, though: thanks to its compromised location it isn't in an ideal viewing angle from either the sofa or the bed.


The sofas are comfortable and great for relaxing on. On the small coffee table you should be able to make out the fruit 'basket' - bananas, oranges, apples, and pears.


Taking a closer look at the bed - As expected of a hotel of this calibre it's a huge, king-sized behemoth and feels insanely comfortable. The bed itself is medium-firmness, with plush, softer padding on top. Naturally, a choice of a half dozen pillows are available from housekeeping if the 'standard' ones are too soft for your liking.


Sorry, Disney Bears not included!
On each bedside is a modern-looking switch panel with which to control the room's lights, a telephone, fancy looking clock, and a complimentary bottle of water which is also replenished during the evening turn down service. One notable omission: A USB port or power socket with which to charge phones or tablets.


The balcony, frankly, is a huge disappointment and I can't imagine anyone spending much time there. For starters there are no chairs, and because the wall juts out at the corner you actually get a worse view than from inside the room.


Speaking of the view: it's spectacular. We don't have a good daytime photo, so you'll have to just use your imagination (oops!). If you're a visitor to Singapore you might perhaps prefer a room overlooking the Marina Bay, but the darling and I both prefer this wing of the hotel; we think having the Singapore eye, Marina Barrage, Gardens by the Bay and Marina Bay Sands makes it more interesting.

The room has huge, eight-foot-high floor to ceiling windows so you get this view from anywhere other than the bathroom.


Speaking of the bathroom; it's a bright, nice, twin sink design, although rather strangely there's a full length mirror directly opposite the toilet bowl. I guess the designers thought looking at yourself while you're sitting on the loo is a common behavioral trait of the luxury traveler?


There's also a bathtub that's big enough for one, and amenities by Aromatherapy Associates (a UK-based company), and a small shower room tucked away in the corner (also just big enough for one).


Let's also look at some other features of the Ocean Grand Room! Mandarin Oriental provides HDMI and Audio cables for you to connect your laptop/phone/mp3 player to the room's multimedia panel and speaker system. The speakers are a pleasant surprise, although they aren't particularly high fidelity or particularly strong.



Some basic stationery is provided: Pen, pencil, paper, postcards and stapler. Which we didn't use.


A kettle is filled up with fresh water daily, which you use to prepare your Segafredo instant coffee and TWG tea. It's a step up from nescafe and lipton for sure, but at this price point would a Nespresso machine be too much to ask for?


The minibar is generously stocked, but with everything at 'hotel' prices we didn't dare partake. Besides, we had access to the The Oriental Club, with almost all-day free-flow tid bits, soft drinks and other hot beverages (we'll cover the review of the Club in a separate post).


In the evening we headed down to the 5th floor to check out the Mandarin Oriental's Swimming Pool. It's definitely a 'have fun, relax, and splash water' pool, so if you're looking to do some serious swimming you might be a bit disappointed. For just chilling out it's great, though: The pool staff serve you free flow iced water to keep hydrated while you laze your afternoon away. Of course drinks and food's available if you want it.


Since it's Christmas Eve, we're pretty stoked to find a Christmas stocking hanging on our door handle at midnight! Goodies inside were quite nice as well - oranges, santa and christmas tree gummies, candy canes and cookies. Now we just need to come back next year to get a second stocking ...


If your room comes with access to The Oriental Club, we highly highly recommend having your breakfast there. If it doesn't, then you'll be with the rest of the hotel at Melt - The World Cafe.



There are quite a number of ala-minute stations strategically located around the restaurant - like this eggs station:


The breakfast spread is very extensive - there's all sorts of juices, fruits, cold cuts, western, asian and indian hot breakfasts, noodles, pastries, bread, cereals, yoghurt, waffles, etc; anything you'd expect in a hotel breakfast is probably here in some form or other.








Food overall was ... just decent. After all, the Mandarin Oriental is a big hotel - over 500 rooms - which means on high occupancy days this single restaurant has to fill over a thousand hungry bellies. Melt does admirably on the quantity and variety measures, but quality definitely suffers.



In addition to the food being rather mediocre, it doesn't seem like the restaurant can actually handle the crowd that well - particularly after 9.30am or so. It ends up being a little chaotic, really, with dozens of people thronging the buffet lines and egg stations, and dozens more standing in line waiting for us to finish our food and clear out. Definitely not the most relaxing of breakfast experiences.


In concluding, we'd like to borrow some terminology usually used to describe trips on airplanes. As a luxury hotel, Mandarin Oriental has an amazing hard product. the furnishings are luxurious and modern and the floor-to-ceiling windows are a perfect complement to the gorgeous view.

The soft product, however, didn't really feel very luxurious at all. Outside of The Oriental Club, staff were generally polite but disinterested, well-mannered but aloof. And the Mandarin Oriental lacks a little in other minor aspects as well - for example, private in-room check-in, or being addressed automatically by name at restaurants. You can't help but feel like just another anonymous face in the sea of guests - inevitable, perhaps, given the hotel's sheer size.

Don't get us wrong, though. Despite the hotel's shortcomings, the darling and I still thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and are desperately hoping to strike the next toto or 4D so we can pay a visit again soon.

Emporium Shokuhin's GYUU+ Yakiniku (焼肉) in Marina Square!

Unless you've been living under a rock, you'll undoubtedly have heard about Emporium Shokuhin. It's a huge, 34-thousand-square-feet-of-mall-space area housing a Japanese grocer with all manner of Japanese goodies, a seafood market both frozen and fresh (lots of premium choices like Japanese Hairy Crab and King Crab), a dry-aged meat butcher, and eight different dining concepts.

Of the eight different restaurants, GYUU+ is the Yakiniku (焼肉) eatery, serving up grilled seafood and various meats (some more premium than others). It's a tad bit disappointing that GYUU+ opted to go with gas-powered flame grills instead of Japanese binchotan charcoals; nevertheless we take our seats and start with some orders of salted pork belly ($15), scallops ($16 for a pair) and salmon fillet ($12).


When the Japanese eat Yakiniku, they typically "eat their way across a cow," trying different cuts of meat from different parts - including more exotic bits like the tongue and tripe (stomach). GYUU+, probably recognizing that Singaporeans aren't quite as adventurous, stick firmly to safer waters; for example these cubes of Miyazaki Wagyu ($23/100gm). The menu doesn't list where these cubes are cut from (or what the quality/marble score is), so one can only assume that they're from a less desirable part of the cow.


We also had an order of US Prime Striploin ($26/100gm) which, impressively enough, seems to hold its own against the Japanese beef in the marbling department.


Let's eat! We mentioned earlier that we would have preferred charcoal: It burns hotter (flame is technically hotter, but it doesn't transfer radiant heat to food well), thus you can get a nicer sear on your meat. Plus, as the fat drips off it hits the coals and vaporizes into flames which impart an aroma that you simply don't get over flame.


Flame, however, is still plenty good enough. We were quite impressed with the hot plates / grill that GYUU+ employs: It's non-stick and the gaps are small enough so we're never worried about losing a piece of meat.


Strangely, we ended up liking the USDA Prime more than the Miyazaki Wagyu. We thoroughly enjoyed the beefy flavours in the Sirloin more than the additional fattiness of the Wagyu. Don't get us wrong, though, both cuts of beef were delicious. The rest of the items (pork and seafood) were perhaps a tad bit pedestrian in comparison.


After adding in rice ($3/bowl), napkins, water and other taxes and fees, we ended up paying $61 per person - which we think is quite acceptable considering the ingredients used.

GYUU+ is located within the Emporium Shokuhin area in Marina Square, and is open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner. Reservations +65 6224 3433 (probably not really required). Non-halal.