Category:Chinese Restaurants 
From Singapore Hotels & Singapore Lifestyle
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Chinese Restaurants - the Chinese have a way with food. Whether it's fresh fish and pork, produce like mushrooms and vegetables, or exotic abalone or bird's nest, Chinese cooks will whip up the tastiest of dishes in a flash. In recent years, Chinese Cuisine has also taken a turn for the healthy; increasingly, cooks make do without lard and fatty cuts of meat, preferring instead silvers of lean meat or fresh seafood, accompanied by a range of fresh vegetables quickly stir-fried Cantonese-style to preserve their flavours.
Chinese Cuisine is also incredibly inventive: while there are Singapore-inspired Chinese dishes like Chilli Crabs or Pepper Crabs and Fish Head Curry, the large Chinese population here generally ensures the authencity of the cuisine, with the meal eaten in traditional style, ie. helping oneself with chopsticks (or more likely these days, spoon and fork) from a selection of dishes shared by all the diners.
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China's Regional Cuisine
The adaptation to regional and climatic demands, as well as the absorption of foreign influence, has led to a fascinating variety of tastes from all over China. In Singapore, you don't just say you'll eat Chinese Cuisine, you'll eat Sichuan (Szechuan), Cantonese, Teochew or any of a dozen distinct types of food from China's various regions.
Beijing Cuisine
Beijing Cuisine hails from the rough-and-ready cooking methods of the Mongols and the Manchus, which were absorbed and refined by the Han Chinese. Barbecue techniques, and the use of wheat flour to make bread were also introduced. Peking Duck is among the most delicious dishes in the world: the first course is crisp duck's skin, rolled in a wheat pancake with sweet soya bean paste and spring onions; the meat follows next, usually stir-fried with bean sprouts.
Sichuan Cuisine
Spicy and hot Sichuan Cuisine also has a delicious duck dish: duck smoked over tea leaves and camphor. Make sure you try the hot-and-sour soup, which is mind-blowing, and delicious with Sichuan fried bread.
Northern China Cuisines
Also from northern China comes Steamboat, the Asian fondue which makes for a sociable meal as you cook fresh, raw ingredients at the table in a well-flavoured stock. A more recent arrival in Singapore is Mongolian barbecue, which is an adaptation of age-old techniques, employed by nomadic horsemen who used to cook their dinner upon metal shields balanced over an open flame. Today, the shield is a metal hotplate and the nomad a trained chef, but the drama as your dinner is swept from the hotplate into your bowl is the same.
Cantonese Cuisine
Cantonese Cuisine is probably the most famous of all Chinese Cuisine, and justifiably so. An ancient Chinese proverb advises to live in Suzhou (a city noted for its refined manners and beautiful women), die in Liuzhou (where teakwood coffins are made), but eat in Guangzhou (Canton). As more Cantonese than any other Chinese from other regions settled in the West, their cuisine is perhaps the best known of all, with its stir-fried fresh ingredients and light sauces. Although the Cantonese form only a fraction of the Chinese population in Singapore, they are still the most prolific Restaurants here.
Cantonese dishes are simply flavoured, and employ a variety of cooking methods: steaming, frying in a wok, roasting, poaching and deep frying. A perennial Cantonese favourite is Dim Sum (little heart), countless small steamed or fried buns, pastries and dumplings served in bamboo containers. These little delicacies are usually stuffed with a variety of meat, prawns, minced vegetables and herbs, and are available at most Restaurants during lunchtime.
Hakka Cuisine
Hakka Cuisine is straightforward and simple, often using beancurd instead of meat as the main ingredient. The guest people, as the Hakkas were known when they came from the Western border of Guangdong, use their ingenuity to make the most of every scrap of food. Homemade wine is used to make heady soups such as beefball soup, while Yong Tau Foo, beancurd stuffed with minced fish and vegetables and served with a dark sweet sauce, is another speciality.
Hokkien Cuisine
Seafood with thick, well-flavoured sauces are typical of Hokkien Cuisine. But perhaps most popular of all is Fried Hokkien Mee, thick egg noodles sauteed with pork, squid, prawns and vegetables in a rich sauce, usually served with a fresh lime and a dollop of chilli paste. Also well worth trying are Popiah or fried Spring Rolls, thin crepes filled with shredded turnip, prawns, sausage and eggs seasoned with garlic, chilli paste and sweet bean sauce.
Teochew Cuisine
Mild food gently roasted, or steamed in light broths is the hallmark of Teochew Cuisine; one of its most wholesome recipes is fresh steamed seafood or fish. A delicate touch is evident in most dishes without any overpowering influence of unctuous sauces or sharp spices.
Hainanese Cuisine
There is also Hainanese Cuisine, the most famous dish of all is Hainanese Chicken Rice, a combination of boiled or roasted chicken, splashed with a touch of sesame oil and soy sauce, and served with rice cooked in chicken stock and a side dish of spicy chilli-garlic sauce. The Hainanese - recognised by the colonial British in Singapore for their skills as cooks - also cooked other dishes learnt from foreigners, such as breaded pork or beef cutlets.
Vegetarians need not despair: Tofu (soya bean curd), widely used in Chinese Cuisine, makes a protein-packed meal for non-meat eaters, and there are endless ways of preparing and flavouring it. Generally, Chinese vegetarian restaurants also use gluten to create dishes that resemble meat and poultry.
