Zhe Jiang Heen    浙江軒  

I wonder what the difference is between Zhe Jiang cuisine and Shanghai cuisine? I still don't know after this Zhe Jiang meal.

I had heard a lot about this new restaurant and we finally found a night where all 9 of us were free to give it a try. We were really hungry and decided to order everything we could think of, self 放題.

We started with cold starters of smoked eggs, chicken with rice noodles and ma lan tau, chopped vegetables with bean curd saladThen we had 2 prawn dishes. The river prawns had a firm texture and were sweet and fresh, I am not normally keen on this dish but found this one worth a try. The prawns in salted egg yolk were nice and hot but I think Ning Po Association does this dish bestThe next is my all time favourite dish, fresh sweet peas fried with Chinese ham. This dish is so hard to come by, it is seasonal and not all Shanghai type restaurants serve it. The peas are freshly picked from their pods and so sweet. Minced meat in 鍋巴 cones is a dish I have not tried before. It looks fun and attractive and tasted delicious. A bit like minced pigeon but the cone and its texture went very well with the mince and the cone didn't disintegrate with bitesI didn't try this fish dish as I can't get excited over little fried fishes. I know Shanghainese love the dish but it doesn't excite me. I preserved the calories for other dishesFried long beans is a favourite vegetable dish for non vegetable lovers. Since there were quite a few men present, we couldn't go wrong with this dishThe tea smoked duck was a masterpiece. One of the best of its kind. The meat was succulent, soft and the smoky flavour so delicious, the steamed butterfly buns that came with the dish were well made tooI saved space for this noodle dish which is served in most Shanghainese restaurants. This one was excellent. Not too oily and the noodles not too soft. The deep fried spring onions burnt enough to give out a strong fragranceSiu Long Bao had a thin wrapping and lots of soup inside. Well done !As I could only upload 12 photos, I did not take pictures of the Dung Bo meat. I heard it wasn't very nice as it was made with lean belly pork. The dish needs pork layered in fat and for the fat to be braised for so long that it turns translucent. I didn't have any.

Dessert was this glutinous pudding slice made with date and red bean. I don't normally like date in Chinese dessert but they may have added some coconut milk which neutralised the date taste and the chewy texture was very rewarding. Egg white puffs with red bean were ordered too but I didn't have any, way too full by this stage.The restaurant was very competent and turned out mostly excellent dishes. I understand there is a membership system and one of my friends was a member. I don't know if non members can go, I believe so with members getting a 10% off.

I would definitely rank this restaurant on a par with Chekiang Association and Ning Po Association. Although I can't separate Zhe Jiang food from Shanghai food, would still love to come back