Contemporary Cantonese

With 38 years' experience as a Cantonese cuisine chef, Goh joined Tian Tai Xuan, a contemporary Cantonese restaurant in Tianjin in March, bringing with him his signature dishes and continuing creativity toward Cantonese cuisine.

Buddha jumps over the wall is a classic soup dish which is made by boiling a dozen fine ingredients together such as abalone, sea cucumber, dried scallop and pork tendon.

Goh has updated the dish by adding more steps to the cooking process. The ingredients such as ham and chicken are boiled for hours first before the fish paste, abalone and sea cucumber are added to the pot. Goh then filters the soup after the first step to pick out the ingredients.

"The soup is a classic dish. But in old times all the ingredients were rare while now, there is no need for diners to eat the ham or chicken which have already infused their flavors into the soup base and are no longer especially tasty to eat," Goh explains.

Another signature dish of his, special fried chicken, is a creation based on Goh's decades of experience observing diners across Asia. "I always wanted to create a dish that both children and elderly people-and people from and outside China-enjoy eating. And this is it," he says.

The chicken is marinated in miso sauce before being deep fried with garlic, and Goh adds a special kind of sugar and some Japanese shichimi powder to add extra layers of flavor.

"There's a bit of sweetness that emerges from the salty flavors of the chicken, and inside the sweetness, you can taste a bit spiciness," Goh says. "The secret sugar is actually the type used to coat roast pork to suck in a bit flavor from the meat."

Chef's private is a dish inspired by Goh's childhood memories of Malaysia. The dish is a stew made with roast pork, cabbage, tofu, tomato and taro.