The Pavilion Restaurant combines the best Chinese culinary traditions with a modern
twist in a masterly way.

By Shobha Tsering Bhalla

Sometime in the late 1990s, while sampling a new menu at an upmarket Chinese restaurant in a five-star hotel, I was stopped in my gormandising tracks by a “Eureka!” moment - I discovered chocolate in the sauce for my Peking Duck!

But it had been camouflaged so well that it blended into the plummy and gingery taste of the other classic offerings at hand. The cocoa flavour was just a delicate nudge to the edge of my palate, but it was chocolate nonetheless.

To me, that moment defined the distance Chinese cuisine had travelled in the last 20 years. Taking the same trajectory as its economy, Chinese cuisine was making bold and novel strides in a symbolic declaration of the Chinese nation’s confidence in its place in the world.
Only a civilisation that is so confident in itself can afford to play around with its culinary patrimony without fear of mutating it, I remember thinking to myself then. That same thought revisited me recently while dining at Pavilion Restaurant, a fine dining place that serves traditional Chinese food with a modern twist while still retaining the authentic tastes.

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