Mei Jiang
This year The Peninsula Bangkok is celebrating its 10th Anniversary opening on 19th November 1998. With it came Mei Jiang, one of the first Chinese restaurants in Bangkok to elevate Cantonese cuisine to a refined dining experience; a pioneer in contemporary Chinese.
The restaurant has a very elegant colonial British residential style, typically Hong Kong, symmetrically balanced with clean architectural lines that have been decorated in soft teak tones.
Hong Kong born Chinese Executive Chef Jackie Ho has been at Mei Jiang for just one year. He began to learn his craft when he was just thirteen years old in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. Now he is the master in his kitchen having acquired his creative culinary skills in Asian destinations known for their delicacies, from Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenyang to Surabaya, Indonesia and now here in Bangkok.
As a creative traditionalist, Chef Ho creates menus of authentic dishes that are always innovative and bursting with natural flavour, using a combination of unique cooking techniques. Innovation is an essential element without compromising authenticity, using of natural ingredients with respect for traditional Chinese preparation methods.
According to Chef Ho, "The essence of creating perfect flavours for each dish is to be able to match the right cooking techniques with the right ingredients".
Having a vast collection of recipes he rotates his menu every six months while retaining those must have signature items including former Chef Tam's gold medal winning Lobster coconut roll. He has painstakingly trained his kitchen team to cook as he does to ensure consistency on those days that he is not in the kitchen.
Mei Jiang is now thinking healthier Chinese cuisine and several of its signature recipes are in the groups 'Naturally Peninsula' cookbooks. To get there, recipes were sent to the Corporate Nutritionist in Hong Kong for health content audit. She would fine tune the recipe to fit within the preset healthy parameters and return it to the chef to add to his menu. They can clearly be identified with the NP logo and have been cooked with Italian olive oil plus low sodium salt for seasoning. He uses soya bean oil that is not reused for other regular dishes.
Restaurant Manager, Tanthong Kerdkorkiattikul has an in-depth knowledge of fine Chinese teas and is always available to assist guests in making their selection. Tea with a meal is as important to the Chinese as is wine to the French. His recommended tea pairings with key dishes are; 'Pan-fried Australian beef tenderloin in red wine sauce' pairs with Nanyan Supreme Ti Guan Yin as the tea is slightly bitter strong that helps to cleanse the palate. 'Stir-fried lobster' with Hang Zhou First-Run Long Jin as the tea has a smooth and light bitter taste with a subtle sweet element that allows the guest to enjoy the freshness and sweet taste of this dish. 'Crispy fried chicken' has been in extremely hot oil and the skin absorbs more oil as well as water than other poultry, therefore Yunnan Age Unknown Puer is recommended as it cleanses the fat in the mouth similar to a detox.
Mei Jiang is the home of healthy Chinese cuisine in Bangkok.
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