While most people were busy learning to cook during the pandemic, Chef Lee Choon Boon of Jeff’s Cellar and his team were busy cooking. The extended downtime became a good opportunity to look within and experiment with the resources they had around the resort. The results of those experiments formed the backbone of the restaurant’s two new menus, Prelude and Whimsical.
Those who have had the fortune of visiting Jeff’s Cellar previously—like we did last year—will know of the older two menus: the Chairman’s Favourite and Tanah. The former is a European-forward menu with a selection of the Sunway Group chairman and founder Tan Sri Dr. Jeffrey Cheah’s favourite dishes, as its name suggests. The latter was an inventive modern Malaysian menu, using primarily local ingredients. At the turn of the new menu season, Chef Lee is reinventing them with heightened ingredients, cooking styles, and executions.
“Prelude is an evolution of the previous Chairman’s Favourite menu,” said Lee. “I can’t say it’s 100% different; there are still similar ingredients such as foie gras and wagyu beef, but we changed the cooking techniques and philosophies a lot more.”
“On the other hand, we have the Whimsical menu. This is a very playful menu—we highlighted a lot of local and Asian ingredients and introduced new flavours,” he continued.
The Prelude menu shaped up to be a decadent one, featuring premium ingredients including lobster, wagyu beef, foie gras, black cod, and more. What excited Chef Lee the most were the innovative cooking techniques used this time around. “We used charcoal from Japan and wood from Banjaran [Hotsprings Resort] to barbecue the meat and enhance the beef’s smoky flavours. We also did a homemade shio koji to marinate the beef. There were a lot of techniques used now compared to the previous menu, which was more classic French or Italian styles,” he elaborated. He continued, explaining that he didn’t want to stick to a particular cuisine style this time. “I wanted to be inspired by every good thing in this menu, whether it was a cooking method, a marinade method, and so on.”
Intrigued by Chef Lee mentioning barbecue wood sourced from the resort itself, I asked him more about this experiment and how long it took his team to settle on the right mixture of woods to create the best barbecue smoke: “Quite a long time, actually,” he admitted. “We spent most of the [pandemic] lockdown experimenting with different variations before finally settling on this.”
As for his ultimate favourite dish on the Prelude menu, he immediately settled on the Foie Gras, which comes with pear caramélisé, yuzu ponzu foam, and bitter leaves with white balsamic vinaigrette. “Foie gras is typically paired with something sweet, like a fruity compote. We still used a fruit element, but it’s citrus: yuzu, lemon, and local lime. These are paired with a local soy sauce to create a Western-style yuzu ponzu,” Lee said. Usually a dish served at the start of a tasting menu, the chef explained that he did not want guests to feel like it was too heavy to begin their night. Hence, adding a citrus and salty element cuts the fattiness of the foie gras.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Tanah menu at Jeff’s Cellar last year, which made me want to find out for myself how he’s upping the ante with the Whimsical menu. Hence, for dinner, that was what I chose. Unlike Tanah, the Whimsical menu isn’t a fully local one; instead, it combines various cooking techniques and ingredients from around Asia. It was disheartening for me to learn that some patrons did not share the same appreciation for local ingredients in a fine dining menu, finding it not befitting the price point, hence the change. Chef Lee, ever the cheery and optimistic chef took it as a challenge and created something quite special out of this menu.
The dinner starts off with an Apéro trio of canapes: confit fowl leg with little shreds of ginger reminiscent of a classic Chinese dish; a fermented pickle that offered a sharp palate break in between canapes; and white asparagus “hor fun” (flat rice noodles) with lobster. The first dish felt like a hearty, soul-repleneshing herbal dish to soothe the soul, while the last dish was green yet creamy, balancing out the richness of the lobster.
Next on the tasting menu is Crab, served alongside salmon roe, finger limes, and sea herbs, then topped with horseradish foam and droplets of green oil. The crab is hefty and meaty in flavour, but the acidity of the finger lime cuts through it, while the wine pairing with a sweet French Riesling perfectly complements the dish. After a sourdough bread course served alongside French Pamplie butter and Bario salt, we come to a dish that the chef is extremely proud of: Termite Mushroom.
The discovery of this mushroom was purely by accident. While exploring the grounds of the Banjaran Hotsprings Resort, Lee noticed an area that had a concentrated activity of creatures and critters. “When an area of the vegetation has a lot of animals and insects, that means there are plenty of nutrients there,” he explained. True enough, he discovered a species of mushroom he had never before seen. “It wasn’t easy to find volunteers to try out the mushrooms, but a few of us did, and half an hour later, we were still alive!” he laughed. The name “termite mushrooms” was coined because they sprouted above termite nests, especially after a rainy day. Skewered on a branch then barbecued and brushed with local soy sauce, the mushrooms imparted a meaty, earthy, and umami flavour. It paired beautifully with the Pinot Grigio, which was also dry and earthy.
To prep the palate for the rest of the coming courses, Consommé was served next. It was a fowl-based consomme, seasoned with flowers, herbs, and creamy fermented garlic. Comforting, clear yet hearty, it was a warming experience for the palate and the gut, preparing me for my next dish. The Monkfish was next, served alongside a morel and porcini mushroom reduction, topped with Kaluga Amur caviar, truffles, and drops of herb oil. The morel and porcini reduction complemented the meatiness of the monkfish, but what blew my mind more was the pairing with a Castello Banfi Col di Sasso Toscana wine. It was selected not to go with the monkfish, but to pair with the morel and porcini sauce—and it paired beautifully.
From the sea to the land, the next on the menu was Guineafowl, a small yet hardy bird cooked with a sauce périgeux, and the Asian element being buah kulim (local wild garlic), maiitake, and a nasturtium puree. And then, one last palate cleanser—Remise en Bouche, a combination of hydrated berries and tomatoes, herbs, and passionfruit soda—before we get to the mains of Lamb. Grilled over charcoal, this lamb loin is prepared along with banana shallots and bitter salad and served with lamb jus and fermented coconut kefir. With a slight tinge of pepper, this protein was paired with an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon from McLaren Vale, which highlighted its spicy, heady flavour profile.
Dessert was yet another highlight for me. I was blown away by a bean sprout-tofu dessert hybrid from last year’s menu; it was astounding to me that Ipoh’s famed vegetable, the humble bean sprout, could find its way into a dessert. Thankfully, Chef Lee brought it back for the Whimsical menu. Beans, the final course in this tasting menu, saw an artful combination of bean curd shards, Ipoh peanut crumble (another popular snack from this limestone city), Bentong ginger powder, soybean mousse, bean sprouts, tofu gelato, and lemongrass bavarois mousse. On paper, it sounds like too many components; yet on the plate, it was a perfect union of the simple soybean.
Prelude and Whimsical are testaments to Chef Lee and his team’s prowess—yet his ambitions remain humble. “I’m not dreaming of a Michelin star. For us, the most important thing is that guests are happy. Then, more people will know about us, and hopefully, that will attract more customers. I want everyone to be happy after eating our food, that is my simple dream,” he concluded.
Whether or not there are stars on the horizon, Jeff’s Cellar and Chef Lee remain aces in this part of Ipoh and Malaysia, well-deserving of a visit.
Address: 1, Persiaran Lagoon, Sunway 3, 31150 Ipoh, Perak
The Prelude and Whimsical menus are priced at MYR725 nett respectively per guest, with an additional MYR498 for the wine pairing. Make a reservation here.
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