Fusion delivers best of both hemispheres

What is going to happen when traditional Western ingredients are cooked in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant? They will be as delicious as those prepared in the Western ways at Dragon Phoenix.

In April, the Chinese restaurant in Fairmont Peace Hotel, which features quintessential Shanghainese and Cantonese cuisines, has presented 10 creative courses by using top quality Western ingredients such as Australian beef and lamb, French oysters, sea bass and foie gras.

Those ingredients are cooked with Chinese style sauce or seasoning including cumin spices, salt and pepper spices and Chinese Fen wine.

Our first dish was Australian beef tenderloin with matsutake mushroom.

The beef was cooked in abalone sauce, rather than black pepper or red wine sauce. It was cooked to medium rare perfection while drenched in the dense and luscious sauce. The new combination kept the aroma of the beef and added the strong and long-lasting flavor of the abalone sauce.

The Australian lamb chop was pan-fried with cumin spices, a common seasoning in the Northeastern cuisine of China. The fragrance of the cumin was smelt as soon as the dish was served, but it didn't overpower the lamb. The lamb was fried crispy outside, which perfectly matched cumin spices.

The meal was finished with a dish of foie gras fried rice. Although there were only small foie gras cubes in it, the foie gras' flavor was strong enough to make the rice delicious.

Other recommended dishes on the "East meets West" special menu includes poached turbot fish in rich broth, wok-fried sea bass fillet with salt and pepper spices, and French Belon oyster cooked with Chinese rice wine.

To enhance the culinary experience, the restaurant has selected the famed Chateau Bouchard Pere et Fils wine from Burgundy France to be paired with those dishes.

The dishes on the "East meets West" menu is priced from 98 to 358 yuan ($15-55).

yangyijun@chinadaily.com.cn