Japanese Sea Cucumber Soup with Himematsutake Mushroom and Sea Whelk.
At Yun House, you can’t help but be taken up by its lovely luxe interior. In Cantonese, yun is translated as “park”, aptly named as the restaurant overlooks the KLCC Park.
The black-and-gold entrance leads to an elegant dining room with private spaces, featuring classic yet contemporary furnishings.
The main wall feature of 22,000 ceramic pieces by a Thai artist depicting plants swaying in the wind, with a dragon and phoenix hidden in the clouds, stops you in your tracks.
Another significant feature is a wall of pretty flowers, a signature of the restaurant.
Chef Jimmy Wong cooked up a few choice dishes for our lunch review and the Crystal Dumpling with Morel Mushroom and Black Truffle caught my eye first in the Four Seasons Combination Platter.
It had the finest transparent skin which burst at a bite, revealing the morel mushroom and chopped water chestnut inside, giving away a whiff of truffle oil.
The Beancurd Skin Roll with Shrimp and Mustard was no less impressive with chunky sweet and bouncy shrimps encased in the crispy skin.
Then there was the Wok-Fried Carrot Cake with dried shrimps, dried scallop, egg and choy poh (diced pickled radish). Lightly deep-fried with a thin crispy skin, the carrot cake was topped with shrimps, shredded scallop and choy poh, offering a symphony of flavours and delightful textures.
Lemongrass Jelly with Bird’s Nest and Steamed Rice Cake.
Soups are a must for a Cantonese lunch. The Japanese Sea Cucumber Soup with Himematsutake Mushroom and Sea Whelk was to be savoured slowly to appreciate the different layers of flavour in it.
Imagine soup with chicken, chicken feet, sea whelk, dried scallops, dried octopus, carrot, onion and celery simmered for 12 hours – such lovely decadence. It left a welcome gumminess on my lips.
The milky soup was served with premium black spiky Japanese sea cucumber in it.
I loved the springy texture of the sea cucumber and would have been contented with just this broth alone, which was also graced with sweetish wolfberries and fish maw.
Wong explained how it was possible for 40kg of ingredients to produce just 4kg of soup, and we were in awe. All the essence of these would have distilled into the soup.
Superior ingredients are not spared in the Yun House dishes. This included the Steamed Sustainable Grouper Fillet with Chinese Hua Diao wine, caviar and ramen.
The perfectly steamed fish sat on a thin layer of steamed egg, topped with caviar and by its side, a roll of ramen to soak up the sauce from the steaming.
Lemongrass Jelly with Bird’s Nest was a refreshing sweet ending. The Steamed Rice Cake with Shredded Coconut, Black Sugar and Macadamia Nut was a nod to the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration.
Steamed Sustainable Grouper Fillet.
We were told that the chef’s signature Deep-fried Eggplant with Cereal is such a hit with diners that they often come to the restaurant just to pack some home. A crispy covering of fine oats gives way to a creamy soft centre of eggplant, and the skill is in the frying, with nary an oily print on the plate. Having had a taste of it at a previous lunch, I can attest to how delicious it was, with fried curry leaves and chillies adding spice and aroma.
Another memorable dish was the Braised Rice Vermicelli, which came with crabmeat and caviar. The noodles were drenched in a fish-bone stock, with knobs of fresh crabmeat, dried scallop threads and shimeji mushrooms lending more sweetness.
Certainly, it gives reason to return to the Yun House for more of such deliciousness.
