CHASING FOOD DREAMS: Mid-Autumn Bliss Menu @ Elegant Inn Hong Kong Cuisine

Celebrate Mid-Autumn Festive with Poon Choy & Mooncakes

As we gear up for the coming Mid-Autumn festive month, it is the perfect time to usher in the festive mood with what Malaysians do best… gather to enjoy great food and good company with family, friends and business colleagues.

Elegant Inn Hong Kong Cuisine, anointed as One of Asia’s Finest Restaurant by Miele Guide, has been serving over a decade of fine Cantonese cuisine as well as Hong Kong-inspired dishes to gourmands. It’s solid reputation for serving the finest cuisine with quality ingredients has garnered a loyal foodie cult of the elite in the city.

Although its my first time stepping into Elegant Inn, I have long heard of its acclaimed reputation through the industry’s grapevine. What started as a 6-table restaurant in Taman Connaught, Cheras before moving to Menara Hap Seng 11 years ago has truly paid off as gourmands can now enjoy the restaurant’s signature dishes in the bustling city of Kuala Lumpur.

Elegant Inn boasts of the city’s glitzy view of skyscrapers of our nation’s prides with Twin Tower and KL Tower at sight. The restaurant is housed on level 2 and often gets missed by many city dwellers. However, true blue epicurean knows to hunt down the restaurant for a taste of its fine cuisine.

The restaurant seats up to 13 large tables when required or diners can also opt for their 6 private dining rooms for private events. The interior offers traditional Oriental theme meets modern grandeur. While many opts for their elegant and fine indoor dining area, Elegant Inn also has an al fresco area for dining or private parties.

Using neutral colours that is easy on the eye, diners can expect hues of browns, beige and dark wood glitz up with splashes of coppery gold from its attractive ceiling centerpieces of lighting. The clever addition of Chinese antique wall pieces added much Chinese character to the whole ambiance.

The restaurant even has its own little edible garden to be used in the dishes.

When a restaurant has been in business for over a decade, it simply denotes that food and service is excellent. For a fine dining eatery, Elegant Inn strives on going that extra mile to serve the freshest and best quality menu to their diners.

The owner, Jeanette Han, is utterly passionate about Elegant Inn and runs the restaurant with stringent focus on the quality of the ingredients. She believes in using the best produce and let the produce be the highlight of the dish with minimal seasoning. We talked to her and was impressed on her stories of her early years where she would personally source for the ingredients from Hong Kong, carting tons and kilos of ingredients through the streets of the city to carry them back home for the restaurant. She shares stories of how the team continues to try and taste the various quality of the ingredients to find the best for Elegant Inn.

This Mid-Autumn festival, Elegant Inn is featuring a special Mid-Autumn Bliss set menu that includes a luxurious South African Abalone Treasure Bowl Feast. The set caters to party of 4 pax, 6 pax or 10 pax for a 5-course menu filled with premium goodies for an unforgettable Chinese feast.

A Happy Start, we tucked into an unusual pairing of Silky Egg White with Bird’s Nest and Pan Seared Pork Tongue. Literally a yin and yang, one is highly prized while the other is often placed at the other end of the spectrum. Fluffy and lightly creamy, the scrambled egg white provided a delicious platform for the premium bird’s nest along with crispy strands of rice noodle. The clever interplay of texture and delicate flavour of the starter is a brilliant way to pave the journey for more delicious dishes to come.

The pork tongue, transformed into moreish batons of tasty meaty bites, were so yummy that one might even assumed that its pork meat. The side pairing for the pork tongue was a fresh and tangy pickled salad of white fungus, baby black wood ear and cucumber. The pickled salad helped to refresh the palate from the offal.

There have been articles citing that the Cantonese people have a soup recipe for every occasion as well as for every ailment. It is one of the most important dishes at the table as soup will nourish and strengthen the body to prevent sickness. At Elegant Inn, Jeanette stressed that they take their soups as serious as it gets. One must simply make sure to use quality and enough ingredients along with hours of double-boiling method to achieve a nutritious and tasty soup.

The set menu offers Double Boiled Soup with Deer Tendon, Dried Conch, Black Chicken & Murrill Mushroom with options for diners to lux up versions with additional top up pricing. One can select the Double Boiled Soup with Superior Shark’s Fin, Dried Conch, Black Chicken & Murrill Mushroom or the Double Boiled Soup with Fish Maw, Dried Conch, Black Chicken & Murrill Mushroom.

The broth has that glorious rich deep flavours from the long hours of boiling to extract the goodness of pork bones, black chicken, dried seafood and murrill mushrooms. Each spoonful of the soup is deliciously satisfying and tummy warming while the earthy aroma sent my senses to a delicious frenzy. Diners can also enjoy the premium ingredients of the soup heartily.

The highlight of the evening was the South African Abalone Treasure Bowl. Poon choy is a lavish Cantonese dish that was said to originate from China but made famous through walled villages in Hong Kong. A large pot is layered with scrumptious meat, seafood and vegetables. Depending on the recipe, there are luxurious versions as well as classic versions.

Elegant Inn’s Treasure Bowl is a sight to behold. The portion for each claypot feeds 6 pax heartily. The crowning glory was the 9-head South African abalones, followed by roast duck, large prawns, mushrooms and broccoli. The abalones are braised perfectly, tender and toothsome to bite with a flavoursome abalone sauce. The roast duck and prawns were also cooked well and had all the goodness of their natural flavours and juices.

The bottom layer is swine haven. Big bone and pork meat slow braised for hours, simmered till the meat and cartilage is tender and gelatinous. Oozing with moreish notes, the braising sauce is sublime from the additions of radish and Chinese cabbage. Deliciously comforting, its easy to keep going back for more of that pork and its marrow as well as the soft sweet vegetables. There’s plenty to feed the ten of us with two huge portions of the treasure bowl.

Never judge a book by its cover. In this case, the Claypot Rice with Garoupa Fillet, HK Dried Prawn & Tung Choy might look rather plain at sight but once the rice is fluffed up and mixed with the fried garoupa fillet, the dish has such gorgeous flavours. Once can taste the aroma of the rice mingling with the subtle sweetness of the fish along with dried prawn and tung choy. It’s delicate and yet tasty, a dish that epitomizes Cantonese cuisine’s classic flavours to perfection.

Dinner ended with a Teochew Style ‘Tau Suan’ with Crunchy Sea Cucumber and Black Gold Custard Bun. The pairing of classic and modern dessert was a brilliant way to end the evening after an extravaganza meal of treasure bowl. Tau Suan, a sweet mung bean dessert broth, is usually paired with fried dough fritters but the folks at Elegant Inn takes this one step further and paired it with crispy fried sea cucumber.

Such lavish updates on that dessert, it worked well as we enjoyed the contrasting texture of the creamy beans with the crunchy and lightly chewy sea cucumber. The Black Gold Custard Bun was sufficiently tasty with its signature molten custard center wrapped in fluffy bun.

Dinner was unforgettable. Elegant Inn takes Chinese cuisine to a whole new height, showcasing how refine the cuisine can be with sublime flavours, beautiful textures and glorious presentation. Truly a dining of the senses, diners can expect nothing but the best from Elegant Inn Hong Kong Cuisine!

Elegant Inn Mid-Autumn Bliss South African Abalone Treasure Bowl Feast

Available from 28 August to 30 September 2019

RM888 for 4 pax

RM1288 for 6 pax

RM2138 for 10 pax

As Mid-Autumn festive is around the corner, diners can also savor Elegant Inn’s housemade mooncakes along with Hong Kong’s Maxim mooncakes. Elegant Inn’s mooncakes are freshly prepared and is available in four flavours from Snow Skin Durian Musang King Mini Mooncake, Baked Purple Sweet Potato Mini Mooncake, Snow Skin Pandan, Matcha & Organic Sunflower Seed Mini Mooncake and Snow Skin Red Bean, Black Sesame & Organic Chia Seed Mini Mooncake. Dine-in or take away, these pretty petit mooncakes will certainly add much festive flavours to the season.