- This is our stuffed crab claw with garlic butter and roasted vermicelli. And we have the garlic
butter that's been made up, and then we have a prawn paste here. We're going to wrap the prawn
paste around the garlic butter and form it into a round shape. We're just going to put this
roasted vermicelli into it. We probably make about 30 of these a day. Two minutes for one, that's 60 minutes. Again, this is just one of those things where you want to add
texture to something, you want to add a extra flavor. We've been in a very privileged position to have, you know, won
a few awards already. My relationship with
winning awards nowadays, is the pressure of
letting my community down. That's where I'm at as a
headspace and as a chef. (upbeat music) So there's a daily routine
always, always, always starts with making these har gows. Sadeq makes the dough, and then I will usually wrap. - So this is our early morning
job, to do har gow together. (tribal music) - This is Sadeq our head chef and he's been with us for 11 years now. - This not 11 years, it's
almost 12 years, chef. - Yeah, we don't count that. (laughs) Har gow is a steamed prawn dumpling, where the skin is made
from a variety of starches. And then the filling is made from a beaten down filling of
prawn with seasonings and fat. I think, you know, the setup
of any Chinese restaurant, you know, is that actually
culturally speaking, we have a lot larger menu than any kind of European cuisine. It means that we have a lot more to prep in the same amount of time. From the minute we come in, we have probably 30 or so
items that need to be prepped. It's a massive undertaking of a whole brigade of chefs, working very quickly to
get the product made. So Sadeq has made a dough out, so that dough is potato starch, wheat starch and tapioca starch. And basically in order to get
it to the right thickness, you have to use a knife to smear it open. Beause if you tried to use a rolling pin, it won't get thin enough and it will take too long. You know, a perfect dumpling really for this particular one. I was always taught that you should try to have 13 pleats in it. You know, this is the 10th year of doing it in this
restaurant day in, day out. And even to this day, I can never really sit
back at the end of it and go, "You know what? All a hundred of them were exactly how I wanted them to be." They're never going to be perfect, and I think that's what
you really aspire to do. And you can tell anyway, every, every day we make this dough. He will know whether or not
it's a little bit drier, or it's a little bit wetter, or it's a little bit less
elastic or more elastic. And why wrap it? I don't even have to tell
him, he already knows. You know, occasionally
you'll get one or two that will crack and he'll say, he'll know straightaway that
it's time to redo the dough. 'Cause if I have to do it, if I have to get to the 30th dumpling with a crack forming in it, he knows that there's going to be trouble. In order to get to the point where we can do this in 40 minutes, it's taken, you know,
20 years of practice. (upbeat music) We always play this game. Right, can you spot the
ones that Sadeq wrapped? Because his ones are normally
just slightly bigger, and the pleats aren't as nice as mine. Oh they're good today. I actually can't spot them. (upbeat music) So we're going to go downstairs now, to see what are the other hundreds of jobs going on downstairs. This is again, something that we never anticipated we'd have to do. Number one, we ran out of space. Number two, actually a lot of dim sum requires a very cool kitchen. We needed to have an area where we could have air con basically. Dim sum is the Cantonese pastime, traditionally eaten anytime from about 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. But it's very much about small mouthfuls. They don't always have to be dumplings. It's about meeting up around the table, having lots and lots of small dishes, usually hot, some cold, and using the time not
only to enjoy the food but enjoy each other's company. The auntie, she's making
a quail egg dumpling. The real beauty in any
cooking in my opinion, you know, is lots of
little things done well. This egg has been cooked for 90 seconds. This dough here, it's a dough made out of wheat starch, baking powder, cooked eggs, which is very unique to Chinese dim sum. And then you chill it down, and then the next day you can use it, you have to remold it. And afterwards you get your egg which inside is soft-boiled. And then you need to wrap it, and seal it without breaking it. Yeah, you kind of look at it
and go, "Oh, well that's easy." But actually if I was to break down the amount of heartache
and the amount of times I've thrown like tons and tons of dough that I've made up into the dustbin, or I've looked at this and like, you know, 60% of the eggs have popped. You know, I've given the job to someone and they've wrapped these
up and they've got yolk dripping out of them
before we even cook them. It's just one of those things. It's just deceivingly simple. This item is even more technical. So this item started about four days ago. So again, we got to a stage here where we've got these pieces of pork. So this is basically the pork skin from traditional Cantonese siu yuk, which is barbecued roast pork belly, you know you see it in
Chinatowns all over the world. Delicious, one of the best
things you'll ever eat. And then we blast it into
the oven 'til it's black and we scrape that off until you get this, you're left with the
crumble texture underneath. And then after we chill
it, we make up a prawn mix, which is similar like the one that we used for the prawn dumpling. And then we basically
put it on top like toast. So it's like a halfway house between like a dumpling and
like sesame prawn toast. But instead of using bread, we're using something that
took three days to make. Afterwards we're going to insert
truffle, Peruvian marigold, and like three different dressings, so that when you bite it, you're going to get a real
mix of different flavors. (uplifting music) So this is the dough. This is just flour and
water, that's all it is. But the important process
is in the laminating. So this is the dough for
our Shanghai dumpling. So we're going to run
it through the machine, again make it thinner. This is one of the first
processes of the day, because it's one of these doughs that after we've made
it, we have to rest it. You can't use this dough straight after. So again, you have to run it through the different
settings of the machine. To get it thinner and thinner,
you have to do it 50 times. If you don't do this properly, you're going to end up screwing up the dumplings for the whole day. This is a process that would've taken hours and hours and hours before, and the resting, mixing, folding. And once you've done it
wrong, you've done it wrong. (intense music) It's almost 12, we're just setting up. We're doing just under 50 guests. If every guest orders 10
items, that's 500 plates. It is a push. Today we're running a little
bit behind, but that's okay. So you've got several things
on the go at the moment. We've got the cheung fun, so
you just portion that half. So here we have the steamer section. This is a most traditional piece of Chinese cooking equipment. It's basically a big cauldron of water, which gets a turbo jet boiling
the water really vigorously. And what it does, it gets this constant
injection of hot steam. And it's very different to
like, a Rational steamer, because a Rational steamer doesn't have this force and velocity
of steam going up it. We have Jamshed here, with
preparing the cheung fun. His job is to get all the
items put onto the steamer, get all the timers going for four minutes. That might sound easy, but when you've got seven
or eight checks going, each with nine or 10 different items, each with different cooking times, it's really important that
you keep track of the count. This is a very, kind
of, unorthodox kitchen when it comes to dim sum. And normally you would have people making on a table and a steamer
being behind them. But we prep all our dim sum downstairs, bring it up for service all ready and then we use it during service time. So the thing about Shanghai dumplings is actually, the closer you
do it to service, the better. Good, doors are open and guests coming in. The team are making Shanghai dumplings, as the first dumplings will go out, will be just as the first tickets come in for the Shanghai dumpling. You have one person rolling,
one person wrapping. And the inside this mixture, it's a jelly, mixed with fresh pork with some
seasoning, some sesame oil. (laughs) Once in a while you get a good
one that you're happy with. So the Shanghai dumpling is probably the only dish on the menu that has stayed the same since day one. I like it to be really soupy, you know, traditionally it normally has like a little meatball inside. But I actually don't
like the meatball inside. And then the final thing was
actually, normally you dip. I didn't like that either. So what we ended up doing is that just nowadays we just inject the vinegar into the
dumpling after we cook it, so that we control every aspect. Everything's been done for them. So it becomes what for me,
what's important about dim sum, which is a single mouthful of magic. (upbeat music) Now we're getting ready for service now, so it's going to get
very, very tight in here. Right, can we turn a pass on please? We got Monica who does the frying. So there are obviously several items that require frying again. And then what is more unique than anything for a dim sum kitchen, is that we have three people plating because actually our dim sum in general is quite heavy on garnishes
and last-minute plating. First course tasting table one please. Har gow, siu mai go to 33. 33 go. Alright, corn roll go please. Table six. If there's a choice between taking a little bit longer and
doing things properly or just getting a high volume
out, our stance is very clear. You know, each little
laminated dough is important that you see every line going through. Everything is the correct weight, has the correct amount of filling. I always maintained that we were going to open this restaurant purely to explore what I wanted to explore
about Chinese food, and I was never going to let volume get in the way of that. (upbeat music) Okay, seven rabbit, go please. With a wonton, please. 93, finished. Dim sum madness is over. It's pretty much over for the day. Now we're just going to
get ready now preparing for the dinner service. Apart from three items of dim sum, pretty much the entire menu is completely different
from the morning menus. So everyone else is just slowly just getting rearranged in the kitchen for a completely different
format of service. So this is one of the dishes for dinner, basically, soy-braised chicken. Right, I'm just going to put it in and all I'm going to do is
I'm going to turn off the fire and I'm going to not
touch it for 45 minutes. Over the 45 minute cooking process, you get that real incredible
texture from the chicken that you get from cooking
at a lower temperature. So getting up to dinner service now, and we're just going to prepare this soy chicken that we prepared earlier. We'll just prepare it
for a soy chicken wrap. Well, it goes on the
tasting menu in the evening. So we're going to put that and we're going to put them into a wrap. We're going to get a leaf,
we're going to put chicken on, we're going to put the relish on, we're going to put some
caviar and some cracker on and a little bit of chicken skin. (orchestral music) Thank you. We're about to start, beginning to start some
of the tasting menus and some of the banquet menus. Running through some snacks and canapes, and then the menu begins. All right, let's go please. Can I have the first course? Alright, where's the king prawn at? Dim sum please, 23. Can I have dim sum on three? All right, let's move please. Okay, Shanghai, table two. So we've got the beef here, it's been chilled down so we
can cut it neatly into batons. We've made up a batter. Hopefully our fork is
going to keep it straight, and afterwards our team is going to roll it through some star
anise-infused caramel. If I didn't want to do it this way, I wouldn't have done it at all. I used to hate sweet and sour chicken. I used to dread it, 'cause
I used to associate it with being kind of like
quite cheap and it was never really what I thought
Chinese food was about. I really started to respect it for what it's done for myself as a chef and what it's done for us
as a Chinese community. There's something very
quite intriguing about it. As a single mouthful, I feel like it says what I
want it to say as a dish. (orchestral music) But if I ever got to the
stage where I thought that we weren't improving
or we weren't evolving, I'd probably just lock the
door and just like not open. I'd just call everyone up and go, "Sorry guys, enough is enough." It's very much in my nature to want to push to find
the next challenge. And that's all it's been, the last 11 years have just been about a day in, day out, of finding
ways to improve every day. (dramatic music) All I do hope is that, you know, my kids will grow up
and they'll look at me and, "You know what? my dad was all right. He represented our
culture and left something for the generations of the future," To go, "You know what? That
was because of what we did." Go 23, side chicken, second course. I need platter two, two please. You know, one day when, you know, this restaurant is probably
no longer here anymore, you know, people will say "A.
Wong did do certain things which changed the playing field for all other Chinese restaurants."
