Chef Will Meyrick’s Celebrated New Menu is A Toast to Classic Chinese Cuisine
Balinese icon Mama San has expanded its menu this month, introducing a slew of delicious new dishes for its guests to enjoy. The diner forms a part of celebrated chef Will Meyrick’s highly successful Sarong Group, and has fast become a favourite of the Balinese dining scene. It’s latest offering maintains the same focus on Chinese cuisine, with a new menu paying toast to the nation’s traditional fare.
The new signature dishes are a celebration of Chinese gastronomy – picture a tempting main of roast duck topped with a rich plum sauce, and an indulgent crispy Crispy Chinese pork belly with Hanoi sauce, sweet chilli sauce and black bean sauce, joined by steamed bok choy with garlic. And to finish, an indulgent twist on an Italian favourite, a mandarin panna cotta.
Will Meyrick’s new menu pays homage to the first Chinese hawkers that settled around the globe, the destinations dubbed Chinatown where traditional and ancestral cuisine techniques evolved in time. Tradition and modernity are the keywords of these new signature dishes, which feature a clever mix of Will Meyrick food travel adventures with Chairman Wang heritage, the woman Meyrick credits for cooking inspiration across his many travels to China in the past 15 years.
It was in Beijing that Meyrick met the humble and wise Chinese lady who started cooking at the age of 6, before China opened to the rest of the world. She had to cook with limited ingredients and, according to her, it developed her sense of discipline and creativity. They’ve cooked together numerous times since, first in the world famous Black Sesame Kitchen cooking school in Beijing where she was teaching, as well as in Sarong restaurant, for a couple of events in the early 2010’s.
“It’s amazing how the small differences in cooking technique can completely change the flavours of a dish,” says Meyrick of Chairman Wang’s influence. “I initially knew how to cook Chinese food, mostly from the southern regions, but to observe the cooking technique of someone who has been doing it her whole life, so much so that it has become a natural part of her person, you absorb random tidbits of information that can change a dish completely. And that’s also what I learnt from Chairman Wang, and refer to when I invent a new menu.”
Mama San’s new menu can be enjoyed in the eclectically decorated ground floor of the restaurant, or in private in its upstairs wing which is available for private lunches or dinner for a minimum of 10 and maximum of 16.
