Li Dan

IN sharp contrast to noisy Hong Kong-style fast food chains that offer stir-fried dishes and pork chop soups, Yuhedao Restaurant appears more like a neat Western restaurant.

Occupying 300 square meters on the first floor of Central Tower near Coco Park, the restaurant has red leather train-seat-style chairs and wooden tables. There are also two small rooms for parties of six to 12 people.

Xie Jialing, the owner of the restaurant, began to get interested in cooking during her four-year stay in Japan. She later worked as a manager with Chitaka, a famous restaurant chain in Taipei, for five years before opening her own restaurant there.

Xie opened Yuhedao in early 2006 in Shenzhen, to offer “decent meals for white collars too busy to cook themselves.” The dishes are more than decent, in fact, as they have attracted the attention of Hong Kong celebrity gourmet Chua Lam, who will work with the restaurant to open a new outlet in the CITIC City Plaza in May.

Lunch sets costing around 30 yuan (US$3.75) comprise pork steak, vegetables, rice and a bowl of soup. There are also drinks, desserts, Japanese-style udon, Korean noodles, pasta and spaghetti.

The restaurant specialty is pork steak with different fillings, which is juicier than common steaks and more pleasing to the eye. Diners can choose from an array of fillings like kimchi and ham, black pepper and stewed pork, or green onion and ground meat. The filling is wrapped in the pork steak like a sandwich before being dipped in batter made of eggs and crumbs. The steak is then sauteed for about 10 minutes before being served with cabbage salad.

Another must-have dish at the restaurant is the Taiwan-style stewed pork pot. The pork is first fried for a while, then stir-fried and stewed with soy sauce and other secret ingredients. The pork is then cooked with fried tofu, green vegetables and eggs stewed in soy sauce.

Chefs at the restaurant prepare their own kimchi for dishes like the kimchi noodles. They first preserve fresh vegetables in salt for a day, then clean them in water, and again preserve them with chili sauce and chili powder imported from South Korea for another three days.

The cheese hamburger steak is something people rarely find in other restaurants. Ground meat is mixed with onion and black pepper powder before being sauted on an iron plate, covered with a piece of choice cheese. The dish is served with fried onions, carrots and cauliflower.

Several new dishes will be available at the new outlet in the basement of the CITIC City Plaza, including a dish recommended by Chua. The dish comprises steamed meatballs wrapped in a thin layer of glutinous rice paste and served with a sweet spicy sauce.