Shangri-la hotels have a tendency to lean towards Huaiyang and Cantonese cuisine for its Chinese restaurants around the world, and all of them are of very high standard. And Futian Shangri-la has a very good Huaiyang restaurant.

After a movie date night we were looking for something to eat. Unfortunately a lot of restaurants were closed due to the pandemic, and the new ones were quite rubbish. So we decided to go back to something familiar. With a classic dining environment, a selection of authentic and innovative Huaiyang delicacies, Shang Garden is our go-to place when nothing else comes to mind.

Huaiyang 淮揚菜, also known as Jiangsu cuisine is one of the Four Great Traditions in the Chinese culinary scene — comprised of Lu, Huaiyang, Yue and Chuan, they represent the cuisines of North, East, South and West China respectively. Derived from the cooking styles of the regions surrounding the lower ends of rivers Huai and Yangtze, the cuisine is considered among the most popular and prestigious in China, and revolves around a deep understanding of freshness, original flavours, and the temperance of food.

Executive Chef Anthony Dong Yuzhen 董玉振 hailed from Yangzhou, ground zero for Huaiyang cuisine. With the concept of “intention and careful cooking”, Chef Dong pays attention to the inheritance of the taste and cooking skills, and also focusses on the integration of unique and innovative elements into cooking. After more than 20 years of studying Huaiyang cuisine, he has developed modern creative dishes and yet kept the authentic and classic Huaiyang cuisine to diners.

淮揚菜 Huaiyang Cuisine

While so many culinary techniques focus on seasoning or complex blends of flavours, in Huaiyang cuisine, each dish is based on its main ingredient. The freshness of this ingredient and, more importantly, how it is cut is vital to the final outcome. Flavours in Huaiyang cuisine are lighter, lean closer towards sweet than spicy, and are often highlighted by pork and poultry, freshwater produce. 

清炖蟹粉狮子头 Double-boiled Meat Balls Soup with Crab Roe

Double-boiled “lion’s head” meatball with with crab roe is a classic Huaiyang dish. “Lion’s head” consists of knife-cut meat that’s 50: 50 mix of lean and fat meat, combined with Chinese mitten crab meat and crab roe. The pork was fresh and tender, and the crab mix was fresh and fragrant thanked to deep freeze technology. It has plenty of umami, juicy and tender, and the melt-in-mouth texture was fantastic despite being double-boiled.

原创上汤参茸炖绣球 Double-boiled Bean Curd with Matsutake and Sea Cucumber in Superior Broth

有味使之出，无味使之入。

清代美食家 袁枚 《随园食单》作家

文思豆腐 Wensi tofu is a classic Huaiyang dish that originated from Yangzhou. It was named after a reverent monk named Wensi during the Qing dynasty and the original had enoki, black fungus and other mushrooms to replace the meat taste. The piece de resistance is the piece of tofu that was cut criss-crossed 80 times to produce 6,400 hair like strands.

Tofu is a tasteless ingredient, and needed an external flavour. So Chef Dong used a Cantonese style stock that was made from dried matsutake mushroom and chicken. Sea cucumber was added to the finished dish for a different texture. I was surprised that the tofu was removed of the “soy bean” taste and the stock was light enough not to overwhelm the overall balance, yet flavourful to give the tofu some taste.

淮扬翡翠香酥鸭 Deep-fried Crispy Duck in “‘Huaiyang” Style

Chinese cuisine is not just about Peking duck (which some historian put it as originated from Jiangsu when the Ming emperor Zhu Di moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing). Huaiyang cuisine has three classic duck dishes – 八宝葫芦鸭 Eight Treasure duck, 盐水鸭 brined duck and 香酥鸭 crispy duck.

And here they have upgraded the crispy duck with a less-oil version. The duck is first steamed and then deep fried. The duck meat was tender and juicy, and the deep fried duck skin was better than KFC.

扬州锦绣煮干丝 Shredded Bean Curd Simmered with Jinhua Ham Chicken and Shrimp in Chicken Broth

This famous Yangzhou dish was born in the allusions of “Qianlong Visit to the south of the Yangtze River” 乾隆下江南. After finely julienned and cooked with refined chicken stock, the dried tofu absorbs the essence of Jinhua ham, shredded chicken, dried scallops and other ingredients. It is easy to get this dish wrong because of all the rich ingredients in the stock, but with all the experience Chef Dong, they nailed it perfectly here.

家传笋干菜鲍鱼红烧肉配青稞饭 Braised Pork Belly. Abalone and Dried Bamboo Shoots served with Steamed Barley Rice

This is one of the signature creative dish from Chef Dong. The first look reminded me Taiwanese braised pork rice 卤肉饭. And then it looked like Hakka preserved mustard green and pork 梅菜扣肉. But it was a combination of dried bamboo shoots, pork belly and made luxe with a piece of abalone.

It was kind of weird to eat barley instead of rice with braised pork belly. The abalone borrowed all the flavours with the braise of the host. Thankfully, the abalone was still tender despite the braising. Where has all those fats gone? This is the fattiest dish of the evening.

阿叔葱油拌面 Noodles Mixed with Scallions, Oil and Soy Sauce

待我西湖借君去，一杯湯餅潑油蔥。

北宋詩人蘇軾 aka 大吃貨 蘇東坡 《和参寥见寄》

A well-known noodle dish from Jiangsu region, the noodles with scallions infused oil and special soy sauce was eaten for centuries that it was immortalised in a Song dynasty poem. The homemade spinach noodles were chewy and smooth, the taste was salty, sweet and satisfying, and the scallion oil was fragrant and mouth-watering.

Afterthoughts

Coming back to Shenzhen after three years of the pandemic was something refreshing – the city has bounced back stronger and more open than before, the culinary scene however took a step back with on the two extremes left. You either get expensive and not always good restaurants or cheap and almost always not good delivery and eateries. The middle section is unfortunately void. Luckily Shang Garden is good but expensive, but in the good old days, it would be just a restaurant in the middle. Now you get that standard but pay for fine dining price.

Shang Garden Chinese Restaurant 香樂園
Level 2, 4088 Yi Tian Road, Futian District, Shenzhen
Tel : +86 (755) 2151 3838

Visited Aug 2023

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