XIN CUISINE CHINESE RESTAURANT,
Concorde Hotel Kuala Lumpur,
2 Jalan Sultan Ismail, Kuala Lumpur.
Tel: 03-2144 8750 / 03-2144 2200 ext 2338
Business hours: 11.30am-2.30pm/6.30pm-11pm (Mon-Fri);
11am-2.30pm/6.30pm-11pm (Sat);
9am-2.30pm/6.30pm-11pm (Sun & public holidays).
Non-Halal.
DINERS who love their pork, take note that the Concorde Hotel Kuala Lumpur’s Xin Cuisine restaurant has been rolling out a series of pork-themed dishes since April and many of the items will be added to the restaurant’s repertoire, permanently.
Given the meat’s versatility, it can be eaten freshly cooked or preserved (either cured or smoked) and prepared in dishes ranging from soups to the typical barbecue or slow-braised.
Starting off with soup, there is the Double-boiled Pork Ribs with Cordyceps Fungi.
Besides pork dishes, diners can try vegetables with crab meat and salted egg sauce.
Boiled in claypot over charcoal-fuelled fire for about three hours before serving, the soup was quite fragrant, with dried scallop for additional umami flavour.
The meat was extremely tender to the point of falling off the bone, while the cordyceps added a subtle herbal taste to the soup.
Diners who enjoy pork knuckle will like the Braised Beancurd Sticks (foo chok) with Pork Knuckle, where both meat and beancurd sticks have been soaking in black sauce, thus absorbing the flavours. And, the dish goes quite well with rice.
The Braised Pork Belly with Preserved Vegetables is for the adventurous.
Stewed pork belly in red sauce.
It is similar to the Hakka Mei Chai Kou Rou dish but for the meat’s cooking style, the preserved vegetables’ slightly sour taste counterbalances the rich taste of the pork’s belly fat.
The meat itself is cooked until tender and is easy to eat.
In the midst of all this meatiness, you also have some dishes such as the Hokkien noodles which, in keeping with the theme, has a lot of deep-fried lard for added crunch.
The thick noodles are still springy and chewy, the lard pieces adding flavour to the prawns and fishcake pieces, and the experience is close to eating authentic street food.
Another dish sampled was the Fried Vegetables in Crabmeat and Salted Egg. In this writer’s case, the vegetable was spinach, with the salted egg and crabmeat mix providing a gentle savoury taste to the understated dish.
Deep-fried beancurd, mixed with an assortment of sliced vegetables and mushrooms, also provides a nice counterpoint to the large amount of pork one is bound to consume at Xin Cuisine.
For dessert, the kitchen offers Chilled Aloe Vera, a concoction of aloe vera jelly cubes floating in syrup together with longan, orange pieces and strawberry.
This made for a refreshing finish following the heavy dinner.
Wong said he aimed to replicate that of a home-cooked meal.
“Hence the use of traditional cooking style with the charcoal fire and claypots, but at the same time, we also want to put in some modern influences such as the red wine for the pork belly,” said Wong.
There are other dishes which were not sampled, such as BBQ Crispy Suckling Pig, done Hong Kong style.
“We make our own char siew and roast pork here,” said Wong.
Most of the dishes start from RM35++, but the Crispy BBQ Suckling Pig is priced at RM160++ (whole portion) and RM80++ (half portion).
These dishes are available for both lunch and dinner.
This is the writer’s personal observation and not an endorsement by StarMetro.
