Thursday, June 17, 2010

Canton-i: a gem or not?

with Alan T and friends

I have blogged about the Catonese inspired, Malaysian owned Canton-I restaurant at Ion when it first opened. See this entry for my first views. I have been revisiting the restaurant as a de-facto place to eat with my friend Alan T...who runs two shops in Ion and seldom have time to travel further for lunch...and Canton-I is like his private dining room.



While I found the restaurant to be ok, but not spectacular the last time round, this time, I found it to be quite good.

Especially good was the roast duck and the char siew.



I did find the duck to be rather good the first time round...and in every subsequent visit including this one, Canton-i showed me that they were indeed masters in roasting duck. The skin was glistening, crispy...hiding the smallest sliver of fat to provide the umami punch, and the meat was beautiful...slightly powdery like it should be, and very tender...tasty and flavourful.

I did not find the char siew up to the highest standards the first visit, but this time, they redeemed themselves. The char siew was superb:



Requisite in high fat content, the meat was marinated well...and fully infused with lovely flavours. The roasting was done just right...tender, juicy inside, almost charred though not quite on the outside. The marinate was more Hong Kong style...meaning the taste was led by saltiness rather than the sweet, sticky ones from KL. But nonetheless excellent.

The roast pork was rather good too...though slightly behind the shadow of the other roasts:



The skin was thin, crispy, the fat hiding below the skin was just a sliver...and the meat was wonderful in aroma and done just right, so it is still juicy though had a slight bite.

We tried the Teochew tofu...as we had two Teochew Ahiah in the group:



And it turned out to be a winner. The tofu was very tender, soft...breaking at the slightest prodding with a pair of chopsticks, and had to be scooped up with a spoon. This was a good thing...in the mouth, it was silky smooth, and very nice. Even our famous Dr. Mycroft who doesn't eat vegetables and tofu, gobbled down his share...he still doesn't eat vegetables, but he gave half a thumbs up for the tofu...which is saying a lot! BTW, yes, he is a real medical doctor...

And the finale was wonderful



Fried rice, served in a stone bowl. I suspect the rice was flash fried in a super hot wok...and scooped into this stone bowl for additional smoking and cooking and crusting. The aroma of the wok hei was superb. The rice nicely done. Embellished with bahu, and chicken, it was a great dish. Excellent. Shiok!


Canton-i Restaurant
2 Orchard Turn
#03-14 ION Orchard
Tel: +65 6509 8368
http://www.canton-i.com.my/
Daily: 11am - 10pm

2 comments:

Jeremy P. said...

Hi Peter,

Great pictures of the food.

As a side query, I was hoping to find out some information from you regarding bespoke tailors (since your other blog has not been updated recently), and was wondering whether we could discuss this via email?

It would be helpful if you could let me know how best I could contact you? I'm a London-based Singaporean who's moving back to Singapore shortly.

Best wishes,
Jeremy

Aston C. said...

interesting ... a doctor who doesn't eat vege. Not exactly a healthy eatng habit, hehe

Anyway, I been to canton-I and I felt that the roast meats r pretty good, as was their wanton mee. Mee was pretty tasty n al-dente.

I think I will try their hot pot fried rice then. Thanks for ur food reviews !