IT’S all about superior ingredients at Elegant Inn HK Cuisine in Kuala Lumpur. That is quite apparent, whether it is a double-boiled soup with that had taken six hours to slow cook, the house-made Chinese sausages, or the fine dimsum.

The restaurant recently won a place among Tatler’s Top 20 Restaurants and to celebrate, it put together a six-course menu that reflected the meticulous efforts of the Elegant Inn.

Live Australian lobster and golden bird’s nest are the luxury ingredients in this well-thought-out menu available until April 17. 

It begins with a platter of three starters featuring steamed silky egg custard with French goose liver, aromatic HK prawn paste pork belly, and chilled Australian lobster with fresh lemon parsley sauce.

It’s a smooth custard with porcini jus and chopped porcini, topped with goose liver. It’s a custard you can’t get enough of: blending with the deep porcini sauce with a rich burst of goose liver.

Pork belly marinated with the best shrimp paste from Hong Kong gains a delicious aroma when fried. The slices of pork belly are crispy and moist with that saltish, inimitable flavour of shrimp paste.

It’s lobster next – on a spoon with salmon with a sprinkling of tobiko. A zesty, citrusy lemon parsley dressing brings it all together.  

Double-boiled soups are always something to look forward to here. The double-boiled premium wild porcini, white jade fungus, dried conch and free range chicken is our second course.

There’s no salt in this soup which lets us savour the natural sweetness of porcini with its lovely aroma, with contributing flavours from dried conch, ham and chicken. There was a delicate crunch from the white jade fungus as a bonus.

The main event of the dinner is, of course, the live Australian lobster in the signature salted egg yolk style, or wok-fried with sakura ebi and chives. A live lobster is, of course, heaps better in flavour and texture than frozen ones served at other restaurants.

The yolk of the house-made salted egg is melted with ginger and lobster juice for a sublime, creamy sauce to complement the springy, sweet meat of the lobster.

There’s chopped celery in the sauce to counter the guilt of having lobster, I was told. I enjoyed the lobster guiltlessly.

It was hard to choose between the two cooking styles for the lobster. The wok-fried lobster with sakura ebi and chives won. I revelled in the delicious sakura ebi (tiny flavourful Japanese shrimps) embracing the super fresh, succulent lobster.

There was some chopped crunchy turnip cooked with the ebi which soaked up its flavour. I wiped the lobster shell clean of the ebi it had been fried with .

Chinese cabbage simmered with Japanese dried scallop and Chinese ham is a vegetable dish that looks simple to make but hard to get right. The cabbage was soft and juicy, bathed in a sauce that had absorbed the sweet essence of the dried scallop, with an aromatic lift from ham.

If you missed Elegant Inn’s Chinese New Year  “lap mei fan” for Chinese New Year, this special claypot rice with Chef Yong’s goose liver sausage, waxed olive pork sausage and free-range chicken makes up for it.

The yummy juices of the flavourful sausages, and chicken drizzle down the rice, hugging each grain of it. Best of all was the crispy crust of the yummy rice.

Golden bird’s nest champagne toast and golden custard cake was an aptly sweet ending to this celebratory menu. It was a divine bird’s nest drink paired with the softest, eggy pan-fried custard cake.

The Celebration set menu for two, four or six is priced at RM288++ per person. Call 03-2070 9399 or 012-722 3518,for reservations. Elegant Inn HK Cuisine is on the second floor of Menara Hap Seng, Jalan P. Ramlee, Kuala Lumpur. – March 26, 2022.

* Eu Hooi-Khaw has been writing about food for the longest time, covering all aspects, from restaurant reviews to cooking and recipes, as well as the healthy side of it. She has written for major newspapers and magazines, published the cookbook Fresh Ingredients, and also writes for her website hooikhawandsu.com.