Tien Court

Geoffrey Eu | The Business Times | Mon Jun 18 2007

When masterchef Ho Tien Tsai first arrived in Singapore from Taipei 17 years ago to cook at Tien Court in what was then the King's Hotel, he was still short on experience and somewhat lacking in culinary refinement. He confesses with a laugh that the first dish he produced for the restaurant 'Szechuan-style sliced streaky pork' was sent back to the kitchen for being way too salty.

Since that ignominious beginning, Chef Ho has carved out a distinguished career at Tien Court, spending all his time here apart from an 18-month stint in Shanghai. These days, he wields a much surer hand in the seasoning department and is equally adept at producing a wide repertoire of dishes.

Thanks in part to his role in developing an extensive range of menu offerings, the cuisine at Tien Court runs the gamut from Beijing Duck and double-boiled shark's fin to traditional dim sum, a full vegetarian menu and specialty steamboat, all catering to a loyal following of regulars.

While many of the dishes on the menu might be considered conventional, the chef is not averse to a little experimentation, mixing and matching ingredients and tweaking the presentation to come up with mildly adventurous concoctions of his own.

At a recent lunch tasting, Chef Ho took a slightly more imaginative approach to what could have been an all-too-familiar and traditional Chinese banquet theme. Many of the usual suspects were there - shark's fin, braised abalone, sauteed scallops - but there was also a sense of discovery to one or two dishes.

The opening gambit of sauteed scallop with deep-fried Shimeiji mushrooms ($12) was a successful one, with the succulence of the scallop, lightly seared with a smidgen of butter, nicely countered by the crispy texture and chilli-powdered spiciness of the mushrooms.

This was fully complemented by the next item, double-boiled superior shark's fin and kampong chicken soup ($58), served in a pretty clay pot. Chef Ho has learned to let the ingredients do the talking, and the natural flavours in this popular dish were certainly plentiful here.

Then there was another specialty dish, braised whole abalone and fish maw with superior oyster sauce ($61). Again, the taste and tenderness could not be faulted. The combination of rich soup in the previous dish and heavy sauce here meant that the meal could have ended here quite nicely. Instead, it went on for two more dishes, with somewhat less success.

The deep-fried prawn pancake ($9) was letdown by the tangerine sauce that accompanied it because it was both too sweet and too heavy on the cornstarch. Meanwhile, the braised luffa with dried scallop ($7) would have made a pleasant change from the standard Chinese braised vegetables dish - except that the luffa itself wasn't that appealing in either taste or texture.

The lobby level local food buffet at the Copthorne King's Hotel is justifiably famous but there is also plenty to admire upstairs at Tien Court, especially if you like your Chinese food to be representative of the culinary spectrum. Choose wisely, and you will be well-rewarded.

Tien Court
Copthorne King's Hotel
403 Havelock Road
Tel: 6733-0011
Reservation Hotline: 6318-3198 
Rating: 7/10

This article was first published in The Business Times on June 18, 2007.