Under the undefined part of our club rules, the paymaster for the week has to confirm his respective lunch date with the club via email at least 3 full days in advance and the actual venue at least on the morning of the lunch date itself.
So, we were pleasantly surprised at this week’s lunch venue, and were also given a tantalizer that some fantastic crabs have been pre-booked in advance for this engagement. Part of this choice of place and food we suspect, may have been due in no small part to the good’ol “peer pressure” or if the more American amongst you prefer “positive encouragement” resulting from “feedback” on the biopolis misadventures by Jason Lau, aka businessman / BMW640 / club driver number 3.
On the date itself, our hopes were lifted still further by Maigai’s failure to properly diarize his engagements resulting in his inability to be at 2 places at the same time! And although deep in our hearts we longed for his presence, our mouths and stomachs were more than delighted at his absence! Less mouths at the table means more food to go around! Thanks maigai! Hope you keep up your disappearing act next week too!
Jon, aka Juice / Merc E350 / club driver number 1, (although he now demands that he be referred to as President-elect), Collin and I arrived at the venue early and were under heavy duress to order tea by the waitress. I proceeded to select the usual Xiang Pian (reasonably priced and good), but Mr President-elect would have none of it and took the waitress’s recommendation of their superior Pu-er (superior = more ex in my view). We then proceeded to have a look thru the standard menu and special menu/crab menu (pls see pics attached).
And wala! It dawned on me that we could (at least within the businessmanclub) figure out one age-old philosophical question that has blighted mankind… Are the wealthy predisposed towards generosity, or put in another way, is wealth and generosity correlated?!? Should he who has a lot naturally want to bestow some of his good fortune on the less fortunate?!?
Now for those of you familiar with members of the club, it is an indisputable fact that the member who tops the wealth ranking is businessman himself. For those unacquainted, simply inferring from the regular mode of transport of each member of the club… BMW 640, Merc E350, Merc E250, Toyota Mark-X, SMRT (sian…), SBS (lagi sian….) will be more than sufficient to put paid to anyone’s doubts on who’s got more mojo on the asset side of the ledger.
So back to the main story… we knew that crabs were going to be served this lunch, but we did not know which type. Was it gonna be the chilled air-flown flowery crab (strongly recommended by the waitress), Alaskan king crab, hairy crab, Aussie snow crab, etc etc. In any case Jason turned up just in the nick of time together with Dann to make the order.
For starters, we ordered 2 plates of the usual roast pork. No complaints here as with all the other imperial treasure branches. The skin was crispy but not burnt, and the meat was succulent. None of the porky smell/flavour that seems to sometimes bedevil western variants of roasted pork with crackling. This dish was all but cleaned out in less than 60 seconds. Actually I think we ordered 2 plates because we forgot to take a photo of the first plate before eating.
Our next dish was the soup of the day. (There were some minor requests for
Buddha jumps over the wall, sharksfin soup, etc etc, but all requests were flatly denied.) Unfortunately, we missed out on the name of this soup, but suffice to say it had the usual ingredients of pork ribs and black beans, which somewhat thickens the soup and gives it a cloudy nature.
There were also what I think were 2 varieties of kelp, a darker brown variety with smaller leaves and the more commonly seen greenish version which you often get in Japanese soups. The soup on the whole was fairly tasty and somewhat hearty despite its rather unattractive lower Ganges river sort of colour. There was also a noticeable absence of any sort of dried seafood (i.e. scallops, oysters, clams etc), which probably explains the competitive pricing of this dish. On the whole it was a decent soup especially given the limited number of ingredients the chef worked with in its creation.
Our 3
rd dish was the cold crab. When it came, we were all a little underwhelmed mainly due to its size. The main shell was smaller than the size of a gentleman’s palm. Taste wise it was fresh, with firm flesh, although the flavor was a tad bland. The soft creamy yellow roe was quite pleasant, although not as richly flavoured as the roe of hairy crab. For the eagle eyed amongst you, you will notice the absence of some of the crab’s legs in the photo. (Don’t worry, Imperial Treasure MBS does not import its crabs from the Tohoku region in Japan which was recently made famous by a little accident in a town called Fukushima.) As usual in our rush to tuck in we forgot to take the pic, and so we had to reassemble/reconstitute whatever parts we had to make the picture.
The 4
th dish was the roast chicken. This is arguably one of the best dishes of the day. The meat was tender, succulent and juicy even at the breast area. The skin was crispy and the chicken was flavourful throughout. It can sometimes be difficult to find really good roast chicken. Mostly when the skin is crisp, the meat can be dry in some parts, or the meat is bland. This chicken could possibly have been free range, although at S$19 for half a chick, no one would say it was a steal.
The 5
th dish was the beef cubes. The seasoning was good and was not too salty, and the fried garlic slices accompanying the meat was decent. It was not over-fried which if you do encounter would result in a rather bitter aftertaste. The cubes were medium done and were tender. Thankfully for this dish we were 2 men down as MG was out and Dann is a Buddhist. (How I wish everyone was Buddhist)
The 6th dish was the hot steamed crab. Taste wise broadly similar to the cold crabs, but on balance we decided that this crab is probably better eaten cold.
The 7th dish was the salt and pepper pork ribs. The meat was somewhat chewy owing to its chunky cut. Taste and flavour was good, and despite the seasoning style, it was neither too salty nor peppery, and yet the seasoning did permeate through the meat.
The 8
th dish was the steamed spinach with 3 eggs (salted, century and standard). This dish is common throughout many Chinese restaurant establishments these days, and I suspect this order was more of an attempt to maintain a balanced diet for club members. Standard fare overall here.
The 9th dish was I think the gong bao xia (prawns done kung pao style, which is with dried chilies, cashews and onions). The prawns were fairly large and they were fresh and crunchy. Unfortunately taste wise they were quite bland, which seems to be the case for most farmed prawns these days. Fresh but bland. The kung pao seasoning was well done. Not too spicy or oily (ahem… unlike at silk road).
Our final dish before desert was the crab meat fried rice. The rice was fragrant, grainy and tasty. It was not too oily, although it did seem to lack a little bit of salt. This feeling could have been partly due to the earlier dishes, which might have numbed our taste buds somewhat. On the whole this was a good dish.
There were 3 desert dishes selected. Almond cream, Or-nee (mashed up yam/taro with gingko nuts) and double boiled hasma with lotus seed. Unfortunately again, we forgot to take a pic of the almond cream before finishing. But it looks a lot like a bowl of diluted off-white paint, so you can imagine.
The almond cream served at Imperial Treasure in my view is one of the better ones you can find in Singapore. It does not have the starchy flavour that you find quite often in other places that serve almond cream. As for the Or-nee and Hasma, I cannot comment as I was not offered even to have a spoonful, so I suspect it must have been way better than average.
So rounding back to our little experiment mentioned earlier, the answer to our question can be found by figuring out the details in the pics…. And if you can’t, let’s just say Ebenezer’s still stuck in Christmas past!
By: Club scribe aka Veg or Guru
