Michael Yip | 叶志坚

Poon Choi @ The Emperor Restaurant, Sheraton Subang

Filed Under Food

Poon Choi, a traditional dish by the Hakka people, came about commemorate everything from childbirth to weddings. In these days and times, not many families practices that anymore but for the month of May, The Emperor @ Sheraton Subang is offering that dish.

I had the privilege to review this dish recently thanks to Sheraton Hotel Subang, truthfully, I don’t know what to expect as the last time I had Poon Choi was prepared by my Godmother many years back and I barely remembered how it tasted.

When Chef Michael dropped in to chat with us, I found out one thing about this one big claypot bowl that sits in front of me, within this one simple bowl consist of 4 layers with a total of 27 different ingredients cooked in 4 different styles easily able to fit 6 to 8 people depending on whether they are big eaters or not. With the Chef, Bel and another guest, we could barely finish the one single dish.

Just to give you an idea of what we had from the bowl: the bottom layer consist of scallops, black fungus, cabbage, abalone and lotus roots among others all prepared with preserved yam. The 2nd layer consist of items such as bean-curd skin, yam, black mushroom and a few other items cooked with Oyster Sauce and the 3rd layer cooked with double boiled soup contains ingredients such as fish maw, asparagus and chicken. The top most layer contain items such as fresh scallops, broccoli, Fatt Choi, Black Moss, goose feet, Tiger Prawns and Abalone. Now I might have listed less than 27 different ingredients here but believe me, there are 27 different ingredients in there. I’ve ‘secretly’ counted the ingredients as I scope them into my bowl.

According to the chef, this promotion is only for the month of May and if a customer would like to change an item in the menu of the Poon Choi, they can actually do so but there will be some additional cost to it, which to me is fair. You can’t expect to change the black moss with say Roast pork without expecting any increase in price right? Another tip in case you go there all hungry is to give them a call to book for the dish before heading to the venue as I was told that it takes about 45minute to an hour to prepare the dish as there’s a lot of ingredients involved with 4 different cooking style.

Authentic Hakka Pen Chai
Lunch & dinner (Only for the month of May)
RM90++ per person (Minimum 6 Diners)

For Reservations, Call The Emperor @ 03-5031-6060 ext 1954

Ratings:
Food : 4/5
Service : 5/5
Cleaniness/Ambience : 5/5
Value for Money : 4/5

Rate this:

2.9

Comments (3)

Food @ Asia Cafe

Filed Under Food

Tuesday, I had a nice guest that came all the way from Penang to meet up with me and so the question that popped up was, where can we go for dinner?

The usual back and forth of suggesting a place to go went on for a good 5min before we decide to go somewhere near where there’s alot of choices. So… off I drove us to the nearest place to the hotel. Asia Cafe in SS15 Subang.

What I ordered for us was the following…

Ikan Pari Pari bakar – I told the cook to cut down on the sauce as it’ll kill the overall taste, can say that I made the right decision. The fish was cooked just the way I like it.

This was followed by Fried Mushroom, I’m not sure what type of mushrooms these are called but it was nice to chew on.

The last thing that came was the Sotong Ball. I think its called Taco balls. I don’t usually like the sotong ones as the sotongs are quite .. rubbery to me. But here is a mixture as there’s also the prawn and crab meat ones.

All in all, Asia Cafe is a nice place to go to hang out, there’s less and less choice of food to choose from though as my favorite Lobak stall is no longer there along with a few other stalls’ standards dropping. I guess this is due to the fact that the locals are not preparing the food anymore and tasks had been handed down to the foreign helpers. When was the last time you went?

Rate this:

2.9

Comments (1)