Yi by Jereme Leung, Raffles Singapore

• yì by Jereme Leung is a Chinese restaurant at the Raffles Singapore. The cuisine here is all about modern interpretations of Chinese cuisine with a focus on regional Chinese specialties and reclaiming lost dishes. Come along and see what is a must order here including a divine char siu platter, Jianghan beef, a gold dusted roasted duck and beetroot fried rice.*

It's our first night in Singapore in almost 10 years and I'm excited to be eating out. Yi is located in the Raffles Singapore in the Raffles Arcade, best accessed by at the North Bridge Road entrance. The floral entrance of 藝 Yì by Jereme Leung is striking and adorned with 1,000 paper flowers. It was inspired by Pangu, thought to be the first ancestral being and the creator or the universe and the one that separated heaven and earth.

Jereme Leung is a Hong Kong Singaporean chef who started working in the kitchens of Hong Kong restaurants from the age of 13. In the 1990's he embarked on a pilgrimage across China to explore regional cuisine in each area. In 2002 he moved to Shanghai and oversees 9 restaurants. Yì is his first Singaporean restaurant and means"Art" in Chinese.

The restaurant is spacious at 594 m2 or 6393 square feet and the crowd here tonight is quite mixed with groups of young women, couples and young families some on their computer, phones and iPads. Service is lovely and deferential and the restaurant has a busy hum to it. We can hear birthdays and celebrations this Friday evening. There is a choice of set menus for $138SG or $168SG per person or you can order a la carte. The pacing is excellent - the food comes out in a timely manner so that you don’t have to wait long between course but it also doesn’t feel rushed.

There are two enormous glass jars that they wheel around on a marble trolley and these are the amuse bouches. One jar is filled with pickled cherry tomatoes and the other guava cubes. Both are pickled in a mixture of pineapple juice, vinegar and sugar and they are both delicious and perfect for whetting the appetite (not that I ever need any help with that!).

We decide to go with the a la carte menu as there are some dishes that didn’t appear on the set menu that we wanted to try. The first is a cold appetiser of rolls of cordyceps mushrooms and spinach on a bed a sesame gochujang sauce with petite raw scallops and salmon roe on top. These are a tasty and light way to start the meal.

The one thing that I really wanted to try was the barbecue combination platter because I adore char siu. There are two types on the plate: the first is a barbecue black pork done Hong Kong style and the second is an Iberian pork chop with pickled benton ginger on top done Malaysian style. Hong Kong style char siu is usually lighter in colour and is usually red while Malaysian char siu makes use of dark soy sauce that contributes to its darker colour. Both are delicious and quite different from each other but I love the lusciousness of the Malaysian version. Even Mr NQN who doesn’t really love pork as much as I do, wolfs this down with gusto.

The roasted duck is carved on a trolley at the table before being spritzed with gold dust and is served with batons of cucumber shreds of spring onion, and rockmelon. The duck has a luscious crispness to the skin, like glass. There are two sauces that comes with one it. One is their signature rose sauce as well as one with a punch of star anise. While the rock melon is interesting I like it with the classic cucumber and spring onion and that delectable rose sauce that has the distinct scent of rose.

Double boiled soups are an art in Chinese cuisine and not easy to come by. Double boiled soups are where one vessel containing the ingredients is submerged into another to gently heat the contents with indirect heat to obtain the maximum flavour and nutrition. Here there are a large range of double boiled soups including this one which is a double boiled chicken soup with fish maw, bamboo fungus and matsutake mushroom served in a coconut. It has a slight sweetness on the coconut water and is so beautifully delicate. We both enjoy the subtle deliciousness of this soup.

The Jianghan beef is a stunning dish. The beef is cut into triangular pieces and stewed with a sweet soy sauce and poached Penang nutmeg. The beef is succulent and has a short rib texture although they tell us that it is shank, but the revelation is the Penang nutmeg. This is sweet and heavily scented and you eat the whole nutmeg flesh and all provides a counterpoint to the rich beef and matcha crisp on top.

We have the beef with the beetroot fried rice with crab meat, conpoy (dried scallops), asparagus and egg white. While this is a fish forward dish it complements the rich beef well.

The restaurant's signature desert is their housemade shaoxing wine ice cream that comes out in a cloud of dry ice with balls of rockmelon, wild honey, tangerine peel and chopped walnuts. It’s such a clever take on the wine and is also light and refreshing enough to end a rich meal.

So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever had Chinese cuisine like this? And do you ever need an amuse bouche to whet your appetite?

NQN and Mr NQN were guests of Yi by Jereme Leung but all opinions remain her own.

Yì By Jereme Leung

Raffles Singapore

328 N Bridge Rd, #03-02 Raffles Arcade, Singapore 188719

Phone: +65 6337 1886

https://www.yi-restaurant.com.sg/