Toh Yuen Chinese Restaurant Dining Experience @ Hilton PJ

July 3, 2009

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Two weeks ago, Hilton Petaling Jaya and theQGuides.com organized a dinner at the various restaurants within the hotel for food bloggers. I was lucky enough to be one of the invited bloggers to attend such an event.
Besides being treated to good food, the bloggers were also introduced to ZestPJ, the blog for Hilton PJ’s restaurants as well as utilizing theQGuides.com as the platform to make table reservations online. It’s great to know that Hilton PJ has come to realize the power of blogging and made the initiative to reach out to food bloggers.

We were not prearranged to dine at any particular restaurant, so a lucky draw was done to determine which restaurant we got to go. Among the restaurants of Paya Serai (cafe, Malaysian cuisine, hawker delights and buffet), Toh Yuen (Chinese restaurant) and Genji (Japanese restaurant with a countryside ambience) I was hoping for Toh Yuen, and I got what I wished for.

Toh Yuen is a beautiful Chinese restaurant with a brilliant interior that exuded class and elegance. It has a seating capacity of 110 including 8 seats at its Dim Sum bar and 4 private rooms – Jade, Silk, Great Wall 1 and 2 – that accommodates up to 10 people each.

Moon gates like this are one of the special features in Toh Yuen, aimed to create the feeling of dining in a traditional Chinese courtyard. A giant marine aquarium is located to the back of the kitchen too, with live fishes swimming around adding life to the already warm and homely ambiance. I am pretty sure it was there to improve the feng shui of the restaurant too.

Glasses of premium handcraft Blooming Tea accompanied our meal – Hai Shang Hua (scented, unfermented Green Tea, Jasmine Flower and Lily Flower) and Yi Xian Tian.
According to the menu, Yi Xian Tian is a good tea drinkable at any time of the day that functions well to clean out toxins while offering a great taste. We have to agree on the great taste as we found ourselves drinking it non-stop lol. RM10 per glass.

For appetizer, we chose the highly recommended Mango Dragon @ RM17. It was a dish that consisted only two pieces of prawns, fried with a coating of flour and fresh mango flesh. Being somewhat unimpressive looking, it was surprisingly delicious thanks to the very crispy outer layer with a refreshing mango taste.

There were plenty of choices for soup, and being a scallop lover I chose Fresh Scallops and Lily Bulbs in Clear Broth @ RM17.

Wonderfully flavorful even for a clear broth and easily the tastiest soup we had that night. I found that the taste even surpassed the shark’s fin soup we were going to have after that. Look at the size of the scallops!

From the Shark’s Fin and Bird Nest department, we had Toh Yuen’s signature Shark’s Fin Soup with Crab Meat and Crab Roe @ RM50. A picture speaks a thousand words, need I elaborate more? That’s some crazy amount of Shark’s Fin lol.

The satisfaction of getting to finish the whole bowl of shark’s fin soup all by yourself.. it’s so great it’s indescribable.

Next up was another signature dish of Toh Yuen, their Traditional Barbecued Peking Duck @ RM108 per bird. It came highly recommended by HIlton PJ and Frederic Kho, Toh Yuen’s Executive Sous Chef himself.
Since we definitely won’t be able to finish the whole bird by ourselves, we shared it with ThamJiak, the other blogger who dined at Toh Yuen too. Luckily they were there as well or we would have to give this dish a miss.

The Peking Duck was skinned off its crispy skin tableside, then wrapped in a pancake along with cucumber, spring onion and hoisin sauce.

The crispy skin of a Peking Duck is actually more desirable than the meat so it is usually served first. By the way, are you wondering what happened to the Peking Duck’s remaining meat? Because I did.
After asking the chef, it was revealed that the meat can be used to prepare other dishes like tossing it with noodles, stir frying it with black pepper sauce or spring onion and ginger.

Quite a lot of Peking Duck skin was left because each wrapped pancake had a slice of the skin only. To be honest I still prefer to eat the Peking Duck’s crispy skin on its own, rather than in a pancake. I felt the pancake used was too floury tasting and the spring onion’s strong taste overpowered everything else.

From the meat section, Pan Fried Lamb Chop in “Mongolian Style” @ RM19 was recommended. Only a whiff of the signature lamb smell was detected, might be because the smell was buried under the strong Mongolian sauce.
If you never tried Mongolian sauce before, it’s actually sweet and spicy due to the black pepper used. I liked this dish but be please warned that the unique blend of taste (sweet and black pepper sauce) could be an acquired thing for those who are unfamiliar.

For seafood we had the Canadian Black Cod Fillet steamed in light soya sauce @ RM32 per 100gm. Each fillet shown above weighs approximately 100gm.
The cod fish was undeniably fresh but we should have tried the other styles like Baked with Honey Sauce (at least for one of the fillets), because it hit me that we had always ordered cod steamed. Time for us to try alternative styles if the possibility arises.

Our Peking Duck’s meat was used to fry a plate of noodles, which I felt was nothing special. The skin was still the best part.

“Pi Pah” Style Braised Bean Curd with Vegetables @ RM32 for the smallest portion.

One final dish we ordered was another soup (again), Shark’s Fin Dumpling in Superior Soup @ RM23 – a huge dumpling containing nothing but shreds of shark’s fin cooked in a light broth. Taste wise it was OK but wasn’t as good as the other soups we had earlier.

I ended the meal with a glass of cocktail – Long Island Ice Tea @ RM32. It made me feel tipsy alright.

Cappuccino, ordered from Paya Serai. Luckily I had a few sips of this as well to help me stay awake during the drive home. Overall, we were happy with the food at Toh Yuen. But there’s always room for improvement, and I strongly hope that they will improve on the dishes’ presentation.
For your information, Toh Yuen or Peach Garden restaurant does not serve ala carte Chinese dishes only. They have Dim Sum Brunch too, which is served on Sundays from 11am until 3pm, priced at RM58++ for adult and RM29++ for child below 12 years. For normal meals, it operates for lunch from noon to 2.30pm and for dinner daily from 7pm to 10.30pm.
If you are interested to dine in any of the restaurants in Hilton PJ, you can make reservations at ZestPJ.com or theQGuides. Personally I would recommend you to use theQGuides because members will earn points redeemable for exclusive promotions and discounts for every reservation made online.