Awesome mapo tofu and redefined Sichuan cooking at new Chinese restaurant Kun

NEW RESTAURANT

Kun 74 Amoy Street Singapore 069893 Tel: 6969 4256 Open for dinner only Tues to Sun: 6pm to 11pm.

IN THE realm of Chinese cuisine, it’s understandable why Cantonese cooking has a stronger restaurant presence than, say, Sichuan. Because not everybody’s intestines have a death wish.

After all, who goes out to eat food they’re afraid of? Invite someone to a Cantonese restaurant and you know what you’re getting: a civilised meal of skillful steaming, braising, roasting and the like. But if someone asks you out for mala hotpot? Immediately you see the wicked sneer, the goading “do you have the guts” challenge in their eyes. They don’t want to feed you, they want to hurt you.

But not at Kun. This new restaurant in Amoy Street, which incidentally takes over from Chengdu restaurant – it moved its vats of dried chilli-spiked oil a few more doors down – may well show you that you’ve been eating Sichuan food wrong all this time.

Far from being invented as an instrument of torture, Sichuan food of old had layers of flavours more nuanced than the familiar one-two punch of dried chillis and peppercorns. It has its own unique seasoning blends they call yu xiang – which has everything except the “fish fragrance” it translates into – and guai wei or “strange taste” which is anything but, yet balances the heat of mala with its mix of sesame oil, vinegar and other aromatics.

Kun makes full use of this wide spectrum of tastes and makes old Sichuan recipes taste new. Especially in its upscale, Japanese kappo-like surroundings that make you think you stepped into a sushi bar by mistake, if not for the big fat bamboo steamer simmering on the stove behind the chef.

The chef himself doesn’t speak a word of English, which is reassuring in the authenticity department. The restaurant’s owners are low-profile but from China, and new to the food and beverage scene. Considering how you can throw a stone and hit a new Japanese restaurant, Kun is a welcome change of pace.

At S$268 for a dinner-only tasting menu, it’s taking a gamble by Chinese restaurant standards. But if you’re already paying that for high-end modern Korean, Malay and mod-Asian cooking, Kun doesn’t veer far off the mark. There are strong cooking skills at work here, and while the use of caviar and salmon roe is superfluous, the chef has a keen sense of tempo as he calibrates the levels of heat, acidity, salt and sweet so that you never get bored.

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He has us at “housemade pickles” – a trio of sweet marinated cherry tomatoes, pickled celtuce and daikon that starts sour, rewards you with sweet and then hits you with a spicy kick before you know it.

But it’s the next dish – a deceptively simple “tofu pudding” in chicken consomme that wins our respect. Not to mention showing how particularly petty ancient Chinese nobles or royal chefs could be. Someone must have ordered, “Make me a dish that tastes like chicken but doesn’t look like chicken”, and enjoyed seeing chefs sweat over how to pull it off. They pulverised chicken breasts into an unrecognisable paste, worked in egg white and kept pounding and smoothening until the mixture formed wispy clouds floating in clear chicken consomme. We’re sorry that the process is so mind-bendingly tedious, but the result is worth shouting about. There’s no tofu in this pudding, just chicken-flavoured, non-chicken-looking bliss.

There are 12 courses before dessert and each one pulls your taste buds in different directions. Smoky, strong slivers of beef jerky that you chew on with a slice of raw garlic. Scallops blasted with a torch in front of you and plated in a sweet-sour chilli and onion sauce. The sauce is more impressive than the actual scallops and the ikura garnish does nothing.

Duroc pork belly is braised till caramelly sweet with tangerine peel for depth. The sauce is fruity, not too sweet and paired with dabs of apple puree that would seem too Westernised if it didn’t match so well. 

You’re then pulled back into traditional territory with freshly made strips of jellied noodles tossed in a garlicky chilli vinaigrette. But the chef veers slightly West again with very fresh steamed Boston lobster plated in a thickened soy-based sauce infused with three kinds of Sichuan peppercorns that cancel out each other’s tingling and leaves you with just a mellow tickle on the tongue.

While there’s plenty to like about an almost dessert-like papaya and hashima sweet soup; minced meat-stuffed glutinous rice dumpling on an addictive green onion sauce (with unnecessary caviar); and even spicy steamed Aussie wagyu rolled in rice flour, save room for Kun’s mapo tofu.

This is the main star of the evening and a must-have even if you’re already weighed down by everything before that. This is classic goodness with an ingenious twist – minced Angus beef short rib is cooked in the familiar spicy bean paste gravy but enriched with a generous shower of grated parmesan cheese. You taste the richness without any cheese flavour and it takes the edge off the chilli heat. Add rice and you need nothing else. Except maybe a wonderfully cooling clear jelly drizzled with brown sugar syrup. Mixed with chewy raisins, chopped fruit and topped with crunchy peanuts, it gives you lots of chewing joy.

Kun could push the boundary a little more, and not self-censor itself in the fear that locals won’t get what they’re doing. They’re on the right track, especially with sommelier Jimmy and server Prisca filling in the gaps when you don’t understand the chef. When you’ve got a strong narrative like Kun does, you want more of it, not less.

Rating: 7