Chao Shan Cuisine
Teochew or Chaoshan cuisine is characterized by fresh seafood and ingredients, usually seasoned lightly to bring out the natural flavours. But on top of these lightly-seasoned dishes, we always love coming back to Chao Shao Cuisine for their perfectly roasted suckling pig and the use of much glorious pork lard in their stir-fry dishes.
I consider Chao Shan Cuisine’s roast suckling pig one of the best out there and have written about it on many occasions. The skin is perfectly roasted until super crispy yet it remains so smooth and shiny. This is gold standard by which all roast suckling pigs should be measured!
Their combination cold-dish is another of my must-order dish here. Authentic and delicious pork trotter jelly (aspic), prawn balls, liver rolls and cold jellyfish salad served together as a platter, they just pair so well with cold sparkling champagne to kick off a good dinner.
Garlicky yellow chives go well with seafood. Here the vegetable is stir-fried with fresh prawns and lard. A simple classic Teochew dish that everyone likes.
The Teochews love shark fish and usually make them into cold aspic dish. They also love to stir fry shark fish filet with salted vegetable, black bean and chili which is an off-menu item here, subject to availability.
Other than cold crabs, another seafood that Teochews like is crayfish. The classic way to cook the crustacean is to remove the crayfish meat from the shell and stir fry with lots of egg, chye por (preserved radish) and onion slices. Of course here at Chaoshan, they do it with lots of lard too! Imagine having a super wok-hei fried-carrot-cake-look-alike dish but with succulent crayfish meat.
There are many variations of oyster omelette, even within the Teochew community. I love the version at the now-defunct Swa Garden which had a higher egg-to-flour ratio and the oysters were moist and fat. The version here at Chao Shan Cuisine is different - the oysters, eggs and flour mixture are pan fried until crispy like a flat pancake.
Not sure if the restaurant still beat the beef balls using metal rods like how they were traditionally made in Chaoshan area, but these handmade balls are bouncy and delicious. Everyone gets one ball each, served in a light clear soup to enjoy the natural beef flavour.
Still hungry and need a carb dish to fill you up? Instead of the usual chye pro kway teow, you might want to try their Hokkien Mee for a change. Yellow noodle is fried with seafood, pork belly and liver, again with lots of lard.
For sweet ending, you can never go wrong with their traditional fried water chestnut pancake. Crispy pancake topped with lots of crushed peanuts and water chestnut bits.
Burp!
Chao Shan Cuisine
17 Phillip Street #01-01/02
Grand Building
Singapore 048695
Lunch
11:30am - 2:30pm
Dinner
5:30pm - 10:00pm
