Chef
Desmond Chia needs no introduction. He was one of two sons of the founder of
Sik Wai Sin, one of the most reputable zi char restaurants in Singapore, famous
for its limited but well-executed Cantonese menu. Diners were known to brave
the heat at the non-air-conditioned Sik Wai Sin, waiting hours for a superb “home-cooked”
meal. And while his brother presided over the steamed dishes at the restaurant,
Desmond was the “man behind the fiery wok”, honing his skills with fried dishes
for 13 years.
So when
Chef Desmond decided to open his own restaurant, Desmond’s Creation, I had high
expectations of it. I arrived at 11.45 am sharp – the opening time shown on
their official operating hours; the shutter was down, finally opening at 11.55
am.
It soon
became obvious that Desmond ran a tight three-person operation -- two men including himself in the
kitchen and a woman manning the dining room. To their credit, and my amazement,
things proceeded smoothly throughout the busy lunch hour and food was served
without hiccups.
It was
also instantly obvious that Desmond was not a risk-taking chef. The menu
remained small and 99% of the dishes were “imported” from Sik Wai Sin. My hopes
rose even higher upon seeing this, as I reckoned that nothing could possibly go
wrong with such a small number of dishes – dishes that the chef had cooked for
umpteen years.
The
first dish to arrive was Braised Black Bean Pork Rib with Bitter Gourd.
Usually, the black bean paste would be well sauted with the meat, and then with
the vegetable. Here, I tasted nothing of the “fragrance” of a well-fried dish;
it felt like the whole dish had been braised without undergoing fire.
Fried
Beef Kailan, which came next, was decent. The vegetable was well fried and
perfumed with “wok hei”. The downside was that some beef was cut not across the
grain, leaving it a little on the tough side. Also, it would have been perfect
had the chef sprinkled on a dash of Chinese wine before serving.
When we
were ordering and had asked for tofu, the woman told us bluntly that this dish
would come with “big” prawns. I suppose that was how restaurants maneuvered to
increase revenue; I also got the impression that those who ate at Desmond’s
Creation didn’t mind paying for slightly more “premium” food. Either way, the
prawns proved over-cooked and hard. To make the matters worse the tofu was
over-fried too. What we ended up with was a plate of hard prawns, dry tofu and
diluted gravy.
Steamed
Minced Pork with Salted Fish was a personal favourite of mine since I was a kid.
In Chef Desmond’s version, he hand-chopped the pork, and this alone earned him
loads of brownie points in my book. The glitch in the dish, however, was that
he over-mixed the meat, causing the protein to over-bind and making the meat
hard rather than crunchy.
But my
biggest problem with this dish was the salted fish used. As noted earlier, since
the customers were prepared to pay slighter more for their food, Chef Desmond
should have opted for better-quality salted fish. The best salted fish (梅香马鲛鱼) for
this dish would have been Spanish mackerel aged between 10 months and 3 years.
The fish would be prepared by salting and sun-drying it for another 2 years
minimum, which would leave the flesh slightly pink near the bones and with a
pungent and ‘fleshy’ scent.
Even
the portion of the salted fish that Chef Desmond used was too small for the
amount of pork in the dish. The salted fish should have been of an amount
sufficient to pervade thoroughly the meat and gravy during steaming. In the end,
I could only detect a whiff of fish when the plate first landed on the table, and
when I actually ate the salted fish itself.
Another
downer was the Sweet & Sour Pork. The meat morsels were too small, slightly
burnt, and too thickly coated with batter.
The sensation was of eating sweet & sour pork -- in its vegetarian
version.
Steamed
Fresh Carp with Bean Paste was the best dish of the meal. It was brilliantly executed
-- Chef Desmond timed to perfection the cooking of the fish, and the bean paste
was well balanced with a cocktail of sourness, sweetness, and savouriness.
These
were dishes I had grown up eating from zi char stalls all across Singapore; so,
like I said, I had high expectations. Perhaps too high. Perhaps by going it
alone when he did, the chef bit off more than he could chew; perhaps his skills
and experience fell a little short of his dreams. Perhaps.
Desmond’s
Creation or Sik Bao Sin
592
Geylang Road
Singapore
Telephone:
6744 3757
