Hua Ting Restaurant Takeaway

Encouraged by the 20% discount, we decided to have a Hua Ting Restaurant takeaway lunch. This famous Chinese restaurant at the Singapore Orchard Hotel is a stalwart on the dining scene. They have arrangements for delivery or food pickup from the hotel driveway which is always our preference whenever it is available.

Our pickup from the Orchard Hotel went smoothly. The order can be placed online. The important thing to remember is to provide your name and car plate number in the “Special Request” box. The very polite staff was able to spot us once we turned into the hotel. The package was prepared and brought to us promptly and we were away in no time.

The Hua Ting Restaurant Takeaway online menu is not very wide but probably enough to re-create a Chinese restaurant dining experience at home. The range of food includes humble dim sum dishes to expensive abalone and $34.80 Hua Tin bento boxes. We decided on some dim sum items ($5.28 for each set of 3 pieces), Signature Peking Duck ($48 for half) and a Vegetarian Crystal Vermicelli Casserole ($16). The restaurant also presents gifts to diners. In our case we received a chatek. I suppose it can give us a way to exercise our limbs at home.

The Hua Tin dim sum items were deep-fried beancurd skins wrapped around prawn paste and steamed pork dumplings. Both of these were very good. I think the pork dumplings are siew mai but with a higher proportion of prawn than pork, which we like. Both these items survived the journey well and were almost in the same condition as when eaten at the restaurant.

The highlight of our lunch was the Peking duck. Our main concern was how this complicated dish would survive the takeaway process. It was certainly a dish that was more elaborately prepared than other dishes. There were separate boxes for the pancake, the duck skin, the duck meat, the vegetables and 3 containers for sauces.

Some pieces of duck skin (picture above) had been separated from the rest of the duck. They had lost some of their crispness but were still acceptable. The rest of the duck had been cut up and presented in a separate box (picture below). The meat was fine in terms of taste but was a bit dry. It would also have been better if they had deboned the duck so that more bits of the meat could be eaten with the pancakes.

Takeaway food always look and taste better when served out of proper plates. In most cases, we are usually too lazy to do that. But for Peking duck, that was the only way. The dim sum and duck took on a “restaurant food” look once we plated them. I must say that the experience of eating Peking duck at home was a nice change from our usual debao options.

In addition to duck and dim sum, we decided to try something else from the Hua Ting Restaurant Takeaway menu. We were very pleased with the vegetarian dish of “braised Chinese cabbage, mushroom, bean curd sheet, crystal vermicelli and preserved bean curd”. I think we commonly refer to this dish simply as “chup chye”. It was a simple enjoyable dish and can go very well with Teochew porridge.