IF you are looking for a refreshing gastronomy break during the hot summer, an ideal place to go is the award-winning Yue Jing Xuan restaurant at Park Hyatt Guangzhou. The restaurant’s Chinese executive chef Jacob Huang has designed a summer menu of seasonal delicacies for gourmets, featuring fresh seasonal ingredients including a variety of seafood, white asparagus, crab, and tropical fruits.

“Great food and drink is not just about a pretty presentation,” says Huang. “It’s also about knowledge, creativity, hard work and respect for ingredients. Simply put, we believe that careful preparation of the very best ingredients will result in memorable culinary experiences for our guests.”

For the appetizer, the marinated pearl abalone with caviar is recommended. Huang selects abalone from Northeast China’s Dalian City and soaks them in a secret sauce for 24 hours to bring out the fresh flavor. The caviar, placed on the top, looks crystal clear and alive with fresh color, making the dish a pleasure to the eyes.

Another highlight is the marinated crab with aged yellow rice wine. Huang uses the classic Teochow cooking method in making this seasonal dish. Aged Huadiao wine and a secret sauce are used to marinate the crab for three to five hours, which makes the crab paste crystalline and sticky, and the crab meat sweet and popping, refreshing and delicious.

The pan-fried tiger prawn with quinoa is a dish of two flavors. Half of the tiger prawn is pan-fried and cooked with red quinoa to provide a nutritional boost, while the other half is made into a baked pancake with prawn meat filling, which tastes juicy and sweet with a crispy texture.

For a sweet ending, Huang chooses to cool the heat with his homemade coconut pudding. The dessert makes use of coconut from Thailand and brings a tropical flavor to the table.(Tang Li)