Nuage sister restaurant celebrates Shandong cuisine

Big, rhombus-shaped slices of white perch were submerged in a luscious light-brown sauce, radiating a pleasantly sweet fragrance of rice wine. The fish slices were slippery and soft, silky in texture and quite easy to break into smaller pieces with chopsticks. As the sweetness lingered in my mouth, I couldn't stop reaching for more, especially because the fish had been deboned as much as possible.

The restaurant follows an ancient recipe to bring out the best of the dish, chef Yu says. The rice wine used must be more than 20 years old, to easily cover any fishy smell. He mixes the wine with osmanthus, date paste, dried apricots, salt, and fresh distiller's grains, and then slightly heats the mixture to fuse the aromas and flavors.

He then wraps the mixture in a cloth bag, and hangs the bag to a roof beam, to filter and collect the puree - which is then used to fry the deboned fish slices pre-soaked in egg white to tenderize them and make them glaze, Yu adds.

I also liked the deep-fried meatballs, which exemplify how Shandong culinary art goes into every detail. Each golden meatball was a little bigger than a cherry, and the flavor had got into every bite of the crisp coating and tender meat. Even when the meatballs became cold, the outer texture remained crispy and the flavor fresh and not musky.

Yu says the meat seasoned with various traditional Chinese flavorings, including ginger juice and miso, must have appropriate portion of fat and lean meat, so that the meatballs won't become too soft or hard, and will shape well.

The hot oil needs to be of steady temperature to deep fry the meatballs, because otherwise, the texture of the delicacy will not be attractively brittle and firm, or consistent, Yu says.

"It is not easy to cling to old meticulous ways, while others are hurry to make quick money," Yu says.

Perhaps as a reward for such patience, next month the restaurant will officially announce its authentication as a time-honored Beijing brand by the Beijing Traditional Brands Association. The brand list also includes Quanjude, the respected old-Beijing brand famous for Peking roast duck.