Re-visiting 藝 yì by Jereme Leung

We came back to 藝 yì for some of the food we liked from the previous visit and to try some of the hairy crab dishes that they're doing for the season. Also, this was a lunch to commemorate.

Some fried dumpling they gave on the house. I actually couldn't tell what it was inside but it didn't taste bad. The skin was softer than it looked and the sharpness of those onions cut through as a complement.

$18 purple sugarcane juice. Expensive but nice.

What we liked from the last time included this luffa and pig's stomach soup with peppercorns. Creamy smooth peppery broth swimming with "juicy" strips of luffa and pig's stomach. A pot was good for four small bowls. So delicious.

There's Parmesan cheese custard buns with crab meat and roe.

The flavour from the roe reminded me of 流沙包, which this was a crab rendition of if you thought about it. Rich and creamy salty sweetness with bits of crab meat. I thought it might have been more impressive there were more crab meat for the texture.

Menu described this as Hangzhou styled hairy crab meat and roe stuffed in baked orange. Nice. Imagine hot orange puree with minced hairy crab meat and roe in them. Wished this was bigger.

Another dish we liked from the last round was their steamed chicken claws (凤爪) in a sweet fermented bean sauce. Like I mentioned previously, these were slurp off the bone tender.

Claypot kailan with prawn paste and Shaoxin - also something we caught on from the last visit. These were well done.

Back to the crab dishes, there's la mian with Japanese snow crab, beancurd (豆花), chilli oil and the works. 

The chilli was much more subdued that the appearances belied. There was barely heat and wasn't as aromatic (or toasty) as I had been expecting them to be. Which was kinda odd. The noodles were quite nice still after it was all tossed up though.

The last of the hairy crab food we had was their freshly baked custard soufflé. I was curious because it had hairy crab meat and roe. The melted roe ended up tasting like sweetened salted egg yolk similar to those black buns above. The minced bits of crab meat weren't so out of place with the hot eggy custard. Think chawanmushi. Sweet chawanmushi. Sweet and fluffier chawanmushi. Too bad these are seasonal and the season's ended because I'd come back just for them. Next year perhaps.