All hail - The Chairman

Chairman, a new-ish Cantonese restaurant in Kau U Fong (in "NoHo", where you'll also find this), dishes out old-school, high-end food with a modern day 'Chinese gourmet' twist. It's quickly become the Chinese hotspot of late, and hence extremely hard to book - try calling 2-3 weeks ahead - but it's worth it. I'd go back just for the shao xing crab in an instant.

pan-fried minced pork and salted fish cakes to start

Chairman's chicken - basically soy sauce chicken, but with a distinct Chinese herb flavour - makes me think of 當歸 (a type of dried fungus) but somehow I don't think it is... still trying to figure it out

preserved plum ribs - one of their signatures. a little teeny weeny bit too sweet for me, but still very nice

morels, mushrooms and tofu

close up of morels, mushrooms and tofu sheets - well, just the tofu - so you can see inside... they're tofu sheets stacked together rather than a block of silky tofu - the layers give it resistance against the teeth and an interesting meaty texture. they get these tofu sheets from a really famous place in Sham Shui Po called Kung Wo 樹記.

veg: pumpkin sprouts with fried garlic

plain congee - deceivingly simple, deliciously 'ricey' (in Canto we call it "有飯味" - has the fragrance of rice). a bit thicker than usual congee (e.g. Law Fu Kee's) but I love the slightly 'sticky' consistency

crab steamed in Shao Xing wine with chicken oil. a MUST

the way the rice noodles soak up the Shao Xing + crab + chicken sauce is SO, SO, SO GOOD!!! the rice noodles were amazing too - smooth but not too soft, with a bit of bite and that delicate 'rice' flavour again... i know it's only feb, but i think it could possibly rank as one of my top dishes of 2010...

dessert 1: almond 'tea'/milk (sweet soup). not too sweet, with a rich, but not overbearing scent of freshly ground almonds

dessert 2: goji berry + ginger ice creams. if i'm not mistaken it's made in house with hokkaido milk

A note about their winelist - it's is a little pricey and the selections at the $300-400 range aren't many (or particularly impressive)... next time I'd BYO for $150 corkage (they can also do a 'buy one of their wines + waive corkage' deal - not official, but we wrangled it out of them... so worth asking).

Chairman
18 Kau U Fong
NoHo (between Central and Sheung Wan)
Hong Kong
+852 2555 2202


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