It's our last meal on our Michelin tour, and thankfully it is also the most casual... as we were down to only three mouths. I had never heard of
Feng Wei Ju (風味居) at the StarWorld Hotel before, and apparently it only opened at the end of 2014. It is therefore quite an achievement for this restaurant serving Sichuan and Hunan cuisine to nab themselves a Michelin star within a year of its opening.
As I'm not very fond of spicy food, I had very low expectations coming into this dinner. I was also grateful to the Great One for accommodating my weak palate, as she definitely tried to steer clear of dishes which were bound to deliver intense heat.
We weren't expecting to get an
amuse bouche at a place like this, but the spiced duck tongue was nice. I didn't touch the pickled Chinese onion (蕎頭).
Marinated mung bean noodles and vegetables with spicy sesame dressing (東北大拉皮) - I should have taken a picture of the picture on the menu. It looked so beautiful... with all the different vegetables arranged in a radial pattern around the outer edge of the round plate. Then this arrived on the table...
But it still tasted pretty good, although I was surprised at how long these noodles were. Just enough chili in the sesame sauce to get me going.
Pork neck meat with hot garlic sauce (蒜泥白肉) - I had to order this, knowing it is one of Hello Kitty's favorites. And it so happens that I love it, too. This was wrapped with thin slices of cucumber inside and served with two different dipping garlic sauces, and surprisingly the reddish sauce didn't taste of chili.
“Sichuan” stewed pork hoof (壹品天下壇子肉) - we chose this out of three different fatty pork dishes, but even this didn't taste any more "Sichuan" or more spicy than the other two... In terms of flavor, it was kinda interesting that they served it with dried oysters and hair moss (髮菜)... and also had quail eggs and chestnuts in the bowl. But the lean meat was overcooked and a little tough... Pretty disappointing.
Pan-fried bun with lamb meat (孜然羊肉夾饃) - the clear winner tonight. You just can't go wrong with lamb and cumin, and in this case they threw red and green bell peppers as well as onions into the mix, which led Hello Kitty to pronounce that this tasted like
fajitas. And guess what? She's absolutely right. This was reasonably spicy, but sooo delicious!
"Old Beijing" pan-fried pork dumplings (老北京鮮肉鍋貼) - we had heard that the restaurant hired a Beijing
dama (大媽)/auntie to make the dumplings for them, so we decided to check this out. Well... maybe this IS the traditional style for dumplings in Beijing in days of yore, but it didn't pass muster with us. I can deal with the wrapper being thick, but the all-pork filling was just a hard lump. To add insult to injury, it was also bland. I think I'll take "modern" dumplings any day...
One strip noodles with beef bone soup and braised beef "Shanxi" style (山西紅燒牛肉一根麵) - the restaurant is also known for their noodles so we definitely wanted some. I'd never had the chance to have the "one strip noodle" - where the double is stretched into one long and continuous strand of noodle. So we ordered up a bowl... and of course the Great One ended up choosing something that was not spicy at all.
After we checked out to see that it was indeed one single strand of noodle in the bowl (but of course...), the staff took the bowl away, cut up the noodles, and split it into three smaller bowls for us. The braised beef was OK, and the soup tasted a little of five spice and had a slight kick from chili.
Well... the food was decent, but hardly star-worthy in my opinion. Maybe if we had more mouths to feed tonight, we could have ordered a few of the larger dishes instead of the noodles and dumplings. As it turns out most of our dishes weren't fiery, so perhaps we didn't get the full experience?
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