Yuk Sou Hin CNY Set Menu @ WEIL Hotel, Ipoh

With the opening of Yuk Sou Hin (玉寿轩) at WEIL Hotel, Ipohians now have the chance to savour authentic, contemporary Cantonese cuisine prepared by Chinese Master Chef Chung Ho Shi. Hong Kong born Chef Chung has an impressive professional background, having worked in various international hotels before helming Yuk Sou Hin. If you’ve been searching high and low for high standard Hong Kong style dim sum at affordable prices in Ipoh, you will not go wrong here.

In welcoming the Chinese New Year, Yuk Sou Hin is offering a wide variety of set menu for a prosperous dinner perfect for treating your fellow staff or family. The Chinese New Year set menus are available in 5 different sets for table of 10 persons, while there’s only one for a table of 4 @ RM588++. The sets for 10 persons are carefully designed to meet different budget requirements with prices ranging from RM1188++ to RM2888++.
As you may already known, the more expensive sets would feature more luxurious dishes. But it is also note worthy that each set has its own version of Yu Sheng too. Some have fresh fruits, live prawn and even abalone as the garnishing.
We sampled the set A @ RM1188++ where the dishes’ serving size was reduced to 6 persons’ portion because there were only a handful of us. One thing I felt Yuk Sou Hin definitely did right was to serve thick salmon slices for that extra bite. The other ingredients were as fresh and natural as possible without resorting to use artificial colored ‘fake vegetables’.

I studied through all the CNY set menus and was glad to find that no shark’s fin was found in any of the soup or dishes. Personally, that’s a plus for me. The Double Boiled Chicken Soup with Ginseng and Abalone was light and soothing with a faint whiff of Chinese herbs. You could actually taste that minimal seasoning was used and most of the flavours came from the chicken itself.

In Cantonese, the word ‘prawn’ sounds like ‘ha’ which means laughter and happiness so it is usually included in most of the CNY menus. Chef Chung’s Wok Fried Prawn with Celery was one of my top picks from the menu simply because the prawns were masterfully cooked to a perfection: bouncy with a bite. The freshness of the big, succulent prawns really came through while everything else was equally great as well.

And what’s a CNY dinner without fish? The Steamed Garoupa Fish with Superior Soy Sauce was fresh, meaty and luscious with the light and pleasantly sweet sauce. It was just stellar.

Next up, Chef Chung’s signature Smoked Duck with Lychee Wood and Tea Leaves. One bite was all it takes to understand why this is his signature dish and completely justified all the hype it received. This is hands down, one of the best duck I’ve had so far. The crispy duck skin was paper thin and there was none to little fat left after the smoking process. The plum sauce was amazing too and accentuated the flavour of the duck nicely.

I thought the Braised Sea Cucumber with Flower Mushroom and Seasonal Vegetables was faultless, as the sea cucumber was soft yet supple – just at the exact texture it should have been. But whether you like it or not is another story, since I know quite a number of people who don’t touch sea cucumber.

You should be feeling pretty full by now but if case you’re not, the Fried Glutinous Rice with Preserved Meat in Lotus Leaf should do the trick. The fried rice was loaded with plenty of diced ‘lap cheong’ and dried shrimps. Overall I felt this was okay, I think it could certainly use more flavour.

Lastly, for desserts we enjoyed a sweet and crunchy Pan Fried Nian Gao which was done traditionally with a local flair by sandwiching the sticky rice cakes between slices of sweet potatoes and taro. Simple yet delightful and marked a wonderful end to a truly satisfying meal. To get the latest and ongoing offers at Yuk Sou Hin, check out WEIL Hotel’s Facebook page.

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