- This is our stuffed crab claw
with garlic butter and roasted vermicelli.
And we have the garlic butter that's been made up,
and then we have a prawn paste here.
We're going to wrap the prawn paste around the garlic butter
and form it into a round shape.
We're just going to put this roasted vermicelli into it.
We probably make about 30 of these a day.
Two minutes for one, that's 60 minutes.
Again, this is just one of those things
where you want to add texture to something,
you want to add a extra flavor.
We've been in a very privileged position
to have, you know, won a few awards already.
My relationship with winning awards nowadays,
is the pressure of letting my community down.
That's where I'm at as a headspace and as a chef.
(upbeat music)
So there's a daily routine always, always, always
starts with making these har gows.
Sadeq makes the dough,
and then I will usually wrap.
- So this is our early morning job, to do har gow together.
(tribal music)
- This is Sadeq our head chef
and he's been with us for 11 years now.
- This not 11 years, it's almost 12 years, chef.
- Yeah, we don't count that.
(laughs)
Har gow is a steamed prawn dumpling,
where the skin is made from a variety of starches.
And then the filling is made from
a beaten down filling of prawn with seasonings and fat.
I think, you know, the setup of any Chinese restaurant,
you know, is that actually culturally speaking,
we have a lot larger menu
than any kind of European cuisine.
It means that we have a lot more
to prep in the same amount of time.
From the minute we come in,
we have probably 30 or so items that need to be prepped.
It's a massive undertaking
of a whole brigade of chefs,
working very quickly to get the product made.
So Sadeq has made a dough out,
so that dough is potato starch,
wheat starch and tapioca starch.
And basically in order to get it to the right thickness,
you have to use a knife to smear it open.
Beause if you tried to use a rolling pin,
it won't get thin enough
and it will take too long.
You know, a perfect dumpling
really for this particular one.
I was always taught that you should
try to have 13 pleats in it.
You know, this is the 10th year
of doing it in this restaurant day in, day out.
And even to this day,
I can never really sit back at the end of it
and go, "You know what?
All a hundred of them were
exactly how I wanted them to be."
They're never going to be perfect,
and I think that's what you really aspire to do.
And you can tell anyway,
every, every day we make this dough.
He will know whether or not it's a little bit drier,
or it's a little bit wetter,
or it's a little bit less elastic or more elastic.
And why wrap it?
I don't even have to tell him, he already knows.
You know, occasionally you'll get one or two
that will crack and he'll say,
he'll know straightaway that it's time to redo the dough.
'Cause if I have to do it,
if I have to get to the 30th dumpling
with a crack forming in it,
he knows that there's going to be trouble.
In order to get to the point
where we can do this in 40 minutes,
it's taken, you know, 20 years of practice.
(upbeat music)
We always play this game.
Right, can you spot the ones that Sadeq wrapped?
Because his ones are normally just slightly bigger,
and the pleats aren't as nice as mine.
Oh they're good today.
I actually can't spot them.
(upbeat music)
So we're going to go downstairs now,
to see what are the other
hundreds of jobs going on downstairs.
This is again, something that we never
anticipated we'd have to do.
Number one, we ran out of space.
Number two, actually a lot of dim sum
requires a very cool kitchen.
We needed to have an area
where we could have air con basically.
Dim sum is the Cantonese pastime,
traditionally eaten anytime
from about 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
But it's very much about small mouthfuls.
They don't always have to be dumplings.
It's about meeting up around the table,
having lots and lots of small dishes,
usually hot, some cold,
and using the time not only to enjoy the food
but enjoy each other's company.
The auntie, she's making a quail egg dumpling.
The real beauty in any cooking in my opinion,
you know, is lots of little things done well.
This egg has been cooked for 90 seconds.
This dough here, it's a dough made out of
wheat starch, baking powder, cooked eggs,
which is very unique to Chinese dim sum.
And then you chill it down,
and then the next day you can use it,
you have to remold it.
And afterwards you get your egg
which inside is soft-boiled.
And then you need to wrap it,
and seal it without breaking it.
Yeah, you kind of look at it and go, "Oh, well that's easy."
But actually if I was to break down
the amount of heartache and the amount of times
I've thrown like tons and tons of dough
that I've made up into the dustbin,
or I've looked at this and like, you know,
60% of the eggs have popped.
You know, I've given the job to someone
and they've wrapped these up and they've got yolk
dripping out of them before we even cook them.
It's just one of those things.
It's just deceivingly simple.
This item is even more technical.
So this item started about four days ago.
So again, we got to a stage here
where we've got these pieces of pork.
So this is basically the pork skin
from traditional Cantonese siu yuk,
which is barbecued roast pork belly,
you know you see it in Chinatowns all over the world.
Delicious, one of the best things you'll ever eat.
And then we blast it into the oven 'til it's black
and we scrape that off until you get this,
you're left with the crumble texture underneath.
And then after we chill it, we make up a prawn mix,
which is similar like the one
that we used for the prawn dumpling.
And then we basically put it on top like toast.
So it's like a halfway house between
like a dumpling and like sesame prawn toast.
But instead of using bread,
we're using something that took three days to make.
Afterwards we're going to insert truffle, Peruvian marigold,
and like three different dressings,
so that when you bite it,
you're going to get a real mix of different flavors.
(uplifting music)
So this is the dough.
This is just flour and water, that's all it is.
But the important process is in the laminating.
So this is the dough for our Shanghai dumpling.
So we're going to run it through the machine,
again make it thinner.
This is one of the first processes of the day,
because it's one of these doughs
that after we've made it, we have to rest it.
You can't use this dough straight after.
So again, you have to run it
through the different settings of the machine.
To get it thinner and thinner, you have to do it 50 times.
If you don't do this properly,
you're going to end up screwing up
the dumplings for the whole day.
This is a process that would've taken
hours and hours and hours before,
and the resting, mixing, folding.
And once you've done it wrong, you've done it wrong.
(intense music)
It's almost 12, we're just setting up.
We're doing just under 50 guests.
If every guest orders 10 items, that's 500 plates.
It is a push.
Today we're running a little bit behind, but that's okay.
So you've got several things on the go at the moment.
We've got the cheung fun, so you just portion that half.
So here we have the steamer section.
This is a most traditional piece
of Chinese cooking equipment.
It's basically a big cauldron of water,
which gets a turbo jet boiling the water really vigorously.
And what it does,
it gets this constant injection of hot steam.
And it's very different to like, a Rational steamer,
because a Rational steamer doesn't have
this force and velocity of steam going up it.
We have Jamshed here, with preparing the cheung fun.
His job is to get all the items put onto the steamer,
get all the timers going for four minutes.
That might sound easy,
but when you've got seven or eight checks going,
each with nine or 10 different items,
each with different cooking times,
it's really important that you keep track of the count.
This is a very, kind of, unorthodox kitchen
when it comes to dim sum.
And normally you would have people making
on a table and a steamer being behind them.
But we prep all our dim sum downstairs,
bring it up for service all ready
and then we use it during service time.
So the thing about Shanghai dumplings
is actually, the closer you do it to service, the better.
Good, doors are open and guests coming in.
The team are making Shanghai dumplings,
as the first dumplings will go out,
will be just as the first tickets
come in for the Shanghai dumpling.
You have one person rolling, one person wrapping.
And the inside this mixture, it's a jelly,
mixed with fresh pork with some seasoning, some sesame oil.
(laughs)
Once in a while you get a good one that you're happy with.
So the Shanghai dumpling is probably
the only dish on the menu that has
stayed the same since day one.
I like it to be really soupy,
you know, traditionally it normally has
like a little meatball inside.
But I actually don't like the meatball inside.
And then the final thing was actually, normally you dip.
I didn't like that either.
So what we ended up doing
is that just nowadays we just inject
the vinegar into the dumpling after we cook it,
so that we control every aspect.
Everything's been done for them.
So it becomes what for me, what's important about dim sum,
which is a single mouthful of magic.
(upbeat music)
Now we're getting ready for service now,
so it's going to get very, very tight in here.
Right, can we turn a pass on please?
We got Monica who does the frying.
So there are obviously several items
that require frying again.
And then what is more unique than anything
for a dim sum kitchen,
is that we have three people plating
because actually our dim sum in general
is quite heavy on garnishes and last-minute plating.
First course tasting table one please.
Har gow, siu mai go to 33.
33 go.
Alright, corn roll go please.
Table six.
If there's a choice between taking
a little bit longer and doing things properly
or just getting a high volume out, our stance is very clear.
You know, each little laminated dough is important
that you see every line going through.
Everything is the correct weight,
has the correct amount of filling.
I always maintained that we were going to
open this restaurant purely to explore
what I wanted to explore about Chinese food,
and I was never going to let
volume get in the way of that.
(upbeat music)
Okay, seven rabbit, go please.
With a wonton, please.
93, finished.
Dim sum madness is over.
It's pretty much over for the day.
Now we're just going to get ready now preparing
for the dinner service.
Apart from three items of dim sum,
pretty much the entire menu
is completely different from the morning menus.
So everyone else is just slowly
just getting rearranged in the kitchen
for a completely different format of service.
So this is one of the dishes for dinner,
basically, soy-braised chicken.
Right, I'm just going to put it in
and all I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off the fire
and I'm going to not touch it for 45 minutes.
Over the 45 minute cooking process,
you get that real incredible texture from the chicken
that you get from cooking at a lower temperature.
So getting up to dinner service now,
and we're just going to prepare
this soy chicken that we prepared earlier.
We'll just prepare it for a soy chicken wrap.
Well, it goes on the tasting menu in the evening.
So we're going to put that
and we're going to put them into a wrap.
We're going to get a leaf, we're going to put chicken on,
we're going to put the relish on,
we're going to put some caviar and some cracker on
and a little bit of chicken skin.
(orchestral music)
Thank you.
We're about to start,
beginning to start some of the tasting menus
and some of the banquet menus.
Running through some snacks and canapes,
and then the menu begins.
All right, let's go please.
Can I have the first course?
Alright, where's the king prawn at?
Dim sum please, 23.
Can I have dim sum on three?
All right, let's move please.
Okay, Shanghai, table two.
So we've got the beef here,
it's been chilled down so we can cut it neatly into batons.
We've made up a batter.
Hopefully our fork is going to keep it straight,
and afterwards our team is going to
roll it through some star anise-infused caramel.
If I didn't want to do it this way,
I wouldn't have done it at all.
I used to hate sweet and sour chicken.
I used to dread it, 'cause I used to associate it
with being kind of like quite cheap and it was
never really what I thought Chinese food was about.
I really started to respect it for what
it's done for myself as a chef
and what it's done for us as a Chinese community.
There's something very quite intriguing about it.
As a single mouthful,
I feel like it says what I want it to say as a dish.
(orchestral music)
But if I ever got to the stage where I thought
that we weren't improving or we weren't evolving,
I'd probably just lock the door and just like not open.
I'd just call everyone up and go,
"Sorry guys, enough is enough."
It's very much in my nature
to want to push to find the next challenge.
And that's all it's been,
the last 11 years have just been about
a day in, day out, of finding ways to improve every day.
(dramatic music)
All I do hope is that, you know,
my kids will grow up and they'll look at me
and, "You know what? my dad was all right.
He represented our culture and left something
for the generations of the future,"
To go, "You know what? That was because of what we did."
Go 23, side chicken, second course.
I need platter two, two please.
You know, one day when, you know, this
restaurant is probably no longer here anymore,
you know, people will say "A. Wong did do certain things
which changed the playing field
for all other Chinese restaurants."