Yan Ting at St Regis Singapore is a very comfortable restaurant that can impress both visitors (like myself) and locals. The latter crowd are definitely affluent or some who want to celebrate an occasion. The dim sum menu is traditional and it is covers a lot of categories.
I’ve eaten with a few friends that afternoon and how the dim sum brunch works is that we each have our own pot of soup double-boiled fish maw soup with black garlic (原盅黑蒜炖花胶) and wok-baked Boston lobster with XO sauce (XO酱焗波士顿龙虾). We get to choose as many dishes as we want. The dishes are cooked to order so it’s served the freshest possible.
If I have to sum up my delicious, upscale dim sum brunch, it would be the photo on the header of this post. This double-boiled fish maw soup with black garlic (原盅黑蒜炖花胶) is everything I’d ever want in a bowl of magnificent seafood-based soup – intense flavors (there’s chunks of abalone in it too) that sing on your palate, it’s medium-bodied and it isn’t too salty. I just wish I had a quart of this and I could end this lunch even though this started the meal.
We ate a lot of dishes so I am highlighting the really memorable ones. The squid ink ha gaw with Chinese olive that had a slightly deeper flavored ha gaw than I typically would have with the unique pitch black dumpling wrapper that was texturally perfect as well.
Usually black truffle shu mai tends to be the dish that I would not care since it tends not to do anything except the fact it is a luxury. However, at Yan Ting does make the flavors of the pork filling a bit more complex and interestingly sweeter besides the earthy flavors this fungus does provide.
The crispy suckling pork belly was perfectly crisp and quite lean, in a very good way, compared to most crispy pork bellies I’ve had. The pungently spicy Chinese mustard did cut through the fattiness of the pork.
The Hanzhou-style braised pork belly was easily a comforting type of food from the rich, supple chunk of braised pork belly (that is fatty compared to the crisp version) and it had a good depth of savory-sweetness that is the hallmark of this dish. The adorable miniature mantous were a nice touch.
The bowl of spinach, century egg, salted egg whites with garlic in a broth was very tasty even though it does not look pretty (or ugly delicious). This homey looking dish was both simple and soulful. The spinach was cooked well and the broth had great flavor without being too salty.
The final savory dish of this meal was the wok-baked Bostom lobster with XO sauce and it’s very delicious. It’s about a pound lobster that was cooked well and the sauce was subtly spicy, sweet and savory.
As for desserts, the chilled mango sago cream was incredibly good. Silky textured without being too thick and not too sweet.
The steamed salted yolk custard buns 黃金流沙包 were not on the menu but when we asked our head waitress, she said the kitchen would be happy to steam a batch for us. When we had our hands on the bun, it was piping hot and the desired molten center was excellent – not thick and the salted egg yolk flavor was there. Ironically, this particular dessert bun was started and popularized in Hong Kong and I ate a few fancy and even Michelin-starred restaurants’ dim sum in the search for it a couple of years ago and was disappointed. I ended up finding the best one (so far) in Singapore. Go figure.
Overall, the dim sum experience was very solid. There are lots of good dishes but the ones I have mentioned earlier were memorable to me. The service here was attentive, professional and friendly. The staff here speaks English very well; some staff do speak Cantonese and/or Mandarin too.
For more photos of this visit, please CLICK HERE or view the photos below:
[alpine-phototile-for-flickr src=”set” uid=”26389565@N00″ sid=”72157706553356701″ imgl=”flickr” shuffle=”1″ style=”gallery” row=”4″ grwidth=”1200″ grheight=”800″ size=”640″ num=”30″ shadow=”1″ border=”1″ align=”center” max=”100″]Information:
Yan Ting at St Regis Singapore
29 Tanglin Rd
Singapore 247911
Phone: +65 6506 6888
