BEFORE we start, I need to tell you something, a dark secret that may go down badly with some of you: I'm really not a big fan of Cantonese or Chaozhou cooking. Give me Sichuan or northern styles anytime.
To me, Chinese cooking doesn't get more bland than Cantonese, yet just about anyone in China, north or south, will tell you the finest cuisine comes from Guangdong.
If you want to test the theory, Fook Yuen is one of the territory's typical xindai yuecai or 'new generation Cantonese' restaurants. It specialises in fresh seafood, abalone, shark's fins, bird's nests and other more expensive specialities which help pay for the classier surroundings and service. It's also a place I've dined in a few times with local people and they assure me it is reliable.
I decided to make this evening better than the usual I might enjoy (or endure) in a Cantonese restaurant by getting my friend and mentor David - Hong Kong born and bred - to do the ordering for myself and our other guests. I held final veto just in case he suggested sea cucumbers, but we had a great dinner.
Fook Yuen has an English-Chinese-Japanese menu, but it gives only about 60 per cent of what is on offer. It lists all manner of the more expensive dishes plus poultry, meat and barbecued dishes (including Peking duck for $240). But the best stuff is only in the Chinese menu. We studied it long and hard.
The first dish was a lovely Norwegian-salmon sashimi ($68 for six nice-sized pieces), which was as good and fresh as anything I've had at any Japanese restaurant.
