Lei Garden: Blooming With Creativity

There's only so much you can do with dried oysters, scallops and black mushrooms, you would think. But Lei Garden, one of the premier Cantonese restaurants in Singapore, simply amazes when it comes to being creative with traditional cuisine. We landed up with high expectations as we had heard about Lei Garden's innovative, elaborate and extensive menu with over 120 dishes ranging from dim sum, nutritious tonic soups, shark's fin, abalone and birds' nest delicacies to excellent seafood, meat and vegetarian favourites, full of wholesome gourmet flavour.

The lively restaurant with a two-tier aquarium spanning from the floor to the ceiling has 11 private dining rooms with a seating capacity of 150 guests. It is crowded, noisy and you have to book in advance, but it rustles up excellent Peking duck. Bird-lovers brace yourselves: the live duck is presented for your approval before it is cooked. It is then served up in two stages: first the skin, sliced into crisp and delicate portions; then the meat, served with crisply fried dough sticks, spring onions and the chef's signature sauce. Ordering the duck when you book a table will speed things up a little.

In recent years, Lei Garden (owned by Lei Garden Restaurant Group) has been infusing gourmet dishes from all over China and the world into their traditional Cantonese menu and has become one of the pioneers in fusion dishes. One of the most innovative dishes is the Braised Stuffed Crispy Sea Cucumber with diced abalone and shrimp paste and special sauce ($22.80 per piece/person). The sea cucumber is stuffed with homemade paste and deep fried dipped in a dense, crispy batter, which is also light and elastic enough to have distended air bubbles around it. Despite its alien-like appearance, its various textures of crispy batter, tender paste and springy sea cucumber work well together, plus the mildness is perked up with the sweetish-sour sauce that comes drizzled over it.

Another unusual dish is the chilled whole fresh abalone with barbecued sauce ($45 per piece) which allows you to enjoy the firm texture of the abalone, sans the usual oyster sauce base. Lei Garden uses a lighter, Japanese soya-like sauce. For the sharks fin dish ($52 per person), the kitchen serves up a tasty stir-fried version with fresh crabmeat and bean sprouts. On the side, the superior stock soup is there to round up the flavour. The chilled Hawaii papaya served with lemon mousse and fresh mango juice is a pretty dessert of red and gold colours, light and refreshing to the palate.

To meet changing time and expectations of customers, the chefs and managers of Lei Garden Group have made it a rule to have a food tasting session every afternoon. The purpose is to maintain standards and make improvements on the existing menu based on customer feed back and more importantly to motivate each chef to create new dishes. The group is venturing into yet another new attempt. A food factory is being planned to not only supply semi-processed or processed food to its branches so as to ensure standardised quality but also produce food items that would be suitable for retail sales. Over the last thirty years, more than a thousand new dishes have been perfected that way and the ever-so-famous XO sauce in the market was created by Lei Garden way back in 1981. That is a revelation!