Reunion dinners are happy occasions when the whole family come together and share the last dinner of the Lunar year. Usually, it was a steamboat. This year, we wanted to try something different.

Princess was really excited about dinner as she would be in charged of preparing and plating everything for the family. There were two sets ordered for five persons.

Zhu Jun Lunar New Year Menu

Michelin-starred chef Zhu Jun is well known for his innovative approach to the creation and development of new dishes. Drawing on his western culinary experience, he deftly combines select Western traditions with the art of Chinese cuisine.

The sumptuous menu features both Singapore Airlines’ signature dishes as well as festive classics. The meal starts with the Singapore Airlines’ signature satay, followed by the Lunar New Year favorite Fa Cai Yu Sheng that comes with Oscietra caviar for that special luxurious touch. Thereafter, dinner proper was a 9-course meal comprising of abalone and prawn appetisers, double boiled chicken soup with sea cucumber, main courses such as braised duck with fa choy and fried sea bass with orange lime sauce and seasonal dessert in celebration of Lunar New Year. And there’s a sweet ending of the meal with an assortment of festive cookies. 

SIA Signature Satay 

Chicken Satay, Onion, cucumber and satay sauce

Unlike on board SQ, you get only chicken satays.

Appetiser

Fa Cai Yu Sheng

Chinese New Year salad of sliced lightly smoked salmon, shredded & pickled vegetables, cracker, peanut, sesame seeds, sweet and sour plum sauce topped with Oscietra caviar

The sweet and sour plum sauce was really well made, very much better than those in restaurants. The smoke salmon tasted almost like the raw thing, very slightly salted. The caviar was wasted in the lohei, totally drowned in the plum sauce.

South African Baby Abalone with Szechuan Pepper, Prawns Pickled in Wine Lees, Sea Kelp Roll

Princess placed two portions of the three appetisers into one plate, making it looked like a lot. The kelp was a bit sweet and tasted like the ones you get in night markets of Taiwan. The prawns would need more wine lees. But it was the Sichuan pepper abalones that were outstanding. The numbing peppercorn gave the abalone the much needed heat.

Soup

Double-boiled Chicken Soup, with sea cucumber and king oyster mushroom

Soup, nothing to shout about this one.

Main Course

Braised Duck with Black Moss, stuffed with glutinous rice, prawn and Yunnan ham, Braised Potato with Boletus Mushroom

This is one was a combination of two main courses. Duck meat was used to wrap glutinous rice with prawn and ham and the duck roll was braised ala Teochew-style. Then it was topped with a savoury sauce made with black moss. And Princess added the potato and boletus mushrooms with this dish, and the two actually worked well together.

Fried Sea Bass in Orange Lime Sauce
Stir Fried Celtuce Vegetable Served with Egg Fried Rice

Fried pieces of sea bass was simmered in a tangy citrus sauce, and Princess added the stir fried celtuce from the Business Class set. Again these worked very well together. The fish was too big a piece, it would be perfect if they were nuggets instead of a whole portion.

Scallion Mixed Nuts Pastry

Scallion Mixed Nuts Pastry 五仁蔥香酥餅 is a classic Shanghai pastry. The flaky pastry was savoury but with a sweet filling, again typical Shanghainese style of serving a sweet pastry during the course of dinner.

Dessert

Eight treasures Purple Rice Porridge, with lotus seeds, red dates, peanuts, kidney beans and dried longan

Eight treasures Purple Rice Porridge 八寶紫米粥 is a common dessert eaten on the eighth day of the 12th month of the lunar calendar. Called Laba 臘八, one would cook a porridge made with eight type of grains to commemorate the harvest during Qin dynasty. Tasted like black glutinous rice and the only missing ingredient was coconut milk.

Assorted Festive Cookies

And for the petit fours – or threes – there’s my favourite pineapple tarts 鳳梨撻, and peanut cookie 花生酥 and sacima (caramelised puffed rice) 沙其馬. The pineapple tarts were beautiful and buttery with real bites of pineapple that were not too sweet.

Overall, we enjoyed the dinner and there’s more than enough food for 5-6 persons even though the servings were for four. The egg fried rice that came with the meal was really good, but we forgot to take photos. Anyway, it was different we did not need to go out and squeeze with others in this special time.

Date prepared : Feb 2021