Yans Dining Shanghainese Cuisine

Yan’s Dining is a fine addition indeed to the swanky Mandarin Gallery scene in Orchard. One of the best Shanghainese offerings in the Lion City so far. They are certainly authentic - just from their selection of baijiu and KweiZhou Moutai. Also, everyone is China Chinese - every table with a full bottle of whisky or two. Yes, Yan’s Dining is a respite for local China Chinese in Singapore.

The soup (special, off menu) was superb. It had claypot , double boiled pork (trotters and fatty bits, belly), chicken and bamboo shoots. The secret ingredient for me was the Cantonese, the vegetable 'wo shun' (莴笋) is called 'Wo Shun' (莴笋) or more commonly, 'Wo Choy' (莴苣). It refers to celtuce, a variety of lettuce known for its edible stem.

Together, the concocted broth was milky, savoury and full umami and freshness at the same time. The first few sips, it’s milky and silky, reminiscent of collagen broths in other hotpot restaurants. Take another sip- and you get the claypot earthen-ness, the depth of texture in Cantonese double boils. This soup was 7.5/10 for me.

Then the lazhi zhi or chilli pepper chicken were accustomed to in szechuan cuisine - this was also executed perfectly - coming in at 7.5/10

The vegetable dish was the most unique/outstanding for me - typical Shanghainese. It was bean curd strips, with bok choy and mushrooms. They used salted meats (foh tui in Cantonese) to give the sauce, broth-like depth. Amazing. This was also 7.5/10 for me.

Their famous smoky fish was smoky indeed. Like how you’d smoke a duck with apple chips. The scent is amazingly fragrant. Just a tad sweet for me. This comes in at 7.25/10

The scallion fried noodles was also good. We had nothing sub 7 on the table tonight. So the scallion noodle (being the last dish), had to make up the rear. This was still a 7/10 dish - offering smokiness and crispiness of the evenly fried scallion and garlic bits. The noodles were springy wanton mee bathed in scallion oil.

Mandarin Gallery offers the best of Korean, Japanese and now Chinese cuisine in one building. Just a sign of the times really.