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Yao Wenlong’s New JB Restaurant Is So Popular, Terence Cao Had To Wait 30 Minutes For A Table

Yao can cook — very well.

Yao can cook — very well.

Yao can cook — very well.

Teach a man to cook, and he’ll open a restaurant. At least, that was what happened to Ch 8 actor Yao Wenlong, 48, who set up his own “Chinese fusion” restaurant called Sun Gourmet Kitchen in his native Johor Bahru, and now personally cooks there.


1 of 15 The menu

Located at Mount Austin, the two-month-old restaurant serves zi char favourites like deep-fried shrimp paste chicken, salted egg yolk pork chop and pan-fried oyster omelette, and also a bunch of more elegant modern Chinese dishes.

But it specialises in the hard-to-find traditional Chinese pao fan (which means ‘submerged rice’ in Mandarin). It’s a dish that consists of cooked rice served in broth, and is popular across several dialect groups, including the Teochews, Cantonese and Shanghainese. But it ain’t porridge.

Unlike the gooey consistency of porridge (where rice is boiled with stock), pao fan is just steamed rice with a usually seafood-based broth poured over it to serve. Think of it as a heartier ochazuke. Wenlong’s pao fan is a contemporary Shanghainese version.

  • 2 of 15 The look

    The narrow 100-seat shophouse space is air-conditioned and furnished simply like a no-frills Chinese restaurant. “We didn’t want to make it look so fancy; people might think the food is expensive and not come in,” says Wenlong, adding that his restaurant’s prices are “considered cheap even by JB standards”.

    It’s indeed very wallet-friendly: the lowest-priced pao fan is the Handmade Fish Curd, Fishball & Seaweed Yuan Yang Rice (that’s the restaurant’s fancy name for pao fan) that feeds two pax costs just RM15 (S$5), while a posh Lobster with Yuan Yang Rice for two pax go for a mere RM29 (almost S$10). You can customise your pao fan with a la carte ingredients like flower crabs, oysters, bamboo clams and Chinese pomfret.

    We’re also pleased to report that the restaurant has three bubble tea shops as its immediate neighbours, including a gigantic Xing Fu Tang outlet right across it (Mount Austin is like the bubble tea central of JB, with dozens of joints in the ’hood). So you can chase down your meal with some cheaper-than-in-Singapore brown sugar pearl milk, like we did.

  • 3 of 15 Fine-dining roots

    Wenlong co-owns the restaurant with his pal, a Malaysian chef known as chef Sun (hence, Sun Gourmet Kitchen). And chef Sun — together with the Sultan of Brunei — also owns popular Chinese fine-dining restaurant Li Gong in Brunei. Though he doesn’t cook here, chef Sun serves as a consultant and came up with the pao fan concept, menu and recipes, some of which are also served at his fine-diner Li Gong.

  • 4 of 15 Cooking up a storm

    Whenever he’s not filming in Singapore, Wenlong cooks at his restaurant, inside an open-concept kitchen where customers can ogle at him in action. It’s fantastic marketing. “It’s entertaining for people to have an artiste cook for them. They take photos of me cooking and sometimes I’d come out and take photos with them,” he grins.

    He mainly prepares the 11 types of pao fan offered, while a team of kitchen staff handles the rest of the dishes. But prior to opening this eatery, Wenlong admits that he has never cooked at home. “I didn’t have any interest in cooking. My wife cooks for our kids. I only knew how to eat! I mostly picked up cooking by working here (and learning his pao fan cooking chops from chef Sun),” he guffaws.

  • 5 of 15 Call him chef Yao

    This current interest in cooking, he says, stems from a longtime desire to run his own F&B business. “I’ve always been keen on F&B, but I didn’t have much time outside of my filming to focus on it. I’ve taken on fewer acting roles lately; I’m playing father roles now and soon I’ll be playing grandfather roles. Since I’m still able-bodied now, I should seize the chance to go into F&B. I want to be active and keep myself busy,” he tells us.

    Setting up Sun Gourmet Kitchen cost S$150,000. “I invested about S$60,000,” divulges Wenlong. Hardly a business novice, he has dabbled in various businesses, some short-lived, that include a defunct bistro, a bird’s nest store and museum, and a tarot card-reading fengshui consultancy chain. “If you’re the kind who gets hung up about losing money, you’re not suitable for business. I think money [lost] can always be earned again,” he chirps.

    Although he’s professionally trained in tarot card and face reading, he has handed the reins of his fengshui biz to his wife. He explains, “I started it and did the initial marketing and training, but it’s better to have a woman run the business. Female customers feel more comfortable talking to another female for their consultations.”

  • 6 of 15 Celeb customers dropped by

    According to Wenlong, he “didn’t invite anyone” for his restaurant’s opening ’cos “it’s difficult for people to get into JB”. But it didn’t stop his celeb friends like Zoe Tay, Hong Huifang, Chen Xiuhuan, Terence Cao and Richard Low from braving the soul-sucking JB traffic jam to support him.

    Even famous people have to wait for a table here. The restaurant, which opens only for dinner for now and doesn’t take reservations, has a current queue time of about half an hour (down from almost two hours when the restaurant first opened. “It was like the queue for Huawei phones,” Wenlong jokes).

    “The downside of a first-come-first-served system is that when our friends and family come by, they have to wait for a table if the restaurant is full,” he sighs. “Terence Cao came by and waited for half an hour, and he said he couldn’t wait anymore. I was really apologetic!”

  • 7 of 15 Good fortune

    But it seems like Wenlong’s fengshui know-how has greatly improved his fortunes. There are plans to open a Sun Gourmet Kitchen outlet in suburb Skudai, where he lives with his wife Jenny Tsai, 37, son Jordan Yow, 13, and daughter Yow Ruo Hui, 4 (he commutes to Singapore in his 10-year-old Toyota whenever he has filming).

    He muses, “Mount Austin is a prosperous area for opening a business, but it’s very competitive here. You either succeed from the start, or you die. And we were lucky that what we offered was interesting for customers. I cooked pao fan till my hands trembled. There was no time to drink water or go to the toilet, but it’s a happy problem!”

    The food

  • 8 of 15 Abalone with Assorted Seafood Yuan Yang Rice, from RM23 (S$14) for two pax (8 DAYS Pick!)

    There are three sizes for the pao fan: Standard, Small and Medium. The ‘Small’ pot we tried is meant for three to four pax. But the portions are so generous, it can comfortably feed five pax if you want some stomach space to try other dishes.

    All the pao fan here come with rice cooked two ways: fried and crispy puffed rice (made with “top grade” Malaysian jasmine grains), hence the name Yuan Yang. Decadent. This luxe pao fan comes with canned abalones (you get two, four or six abalones depending on the size you order), prawns, scallops, fish fillet slices and chopped shimeji mushrooms, tomatoes and spring onions.

  • 9 of 15 Everything is then drenched in a seafood soup

    The Golden Superior Stock takes some eight hours to brew with over 10 ingredients, like fish head, fish bones, chicken and herbs. It’s golden and rather like a lighter version of good seafood bisque; lightly creamy from the collagen in fish and chicken bones, with a hint of brininess from the fresh, springy seafood that were blanched in it. Very tasty with the combo of puffed rice and fried rice, which gives each spoonful an addictive crunch. This is atas comfort food at its best.

  • 10 of 15 Handmade Fish Curd, Fishball & Seaweed Yuan Yang Rice, from RM15 (S$5) for two pax

    This may be the most affordable pao fan on the menu, but it’s still pretty elaborate. Each pot is served with house-made fish puffs (called ‘fish curd’ here), fishballs, fish maw, seaweed, minced pork and pork lard. A fish-based Superior Stock broth is then poured over, and Wenlong finishes the dish with a drizzle of Shaoxing wine before serving.

  • 11 of 15 Tasty but not as fab as the abalone pao fan

    Compared to the insanely flavourful seafood pao fan, this is much lighter, though not bland. It’s kinda like eating a souped up, more flavourful version of fishball noodle soup, except with the pleasing mix of fried rice, puffed rice and bouncy fish puffs and fishballs. Not bad, but if you’ve already braved the JB traffic, reward yourself with the far tastier golden seafood broth lah. You can opt for the richer soup with the pao fan of your choice (top up just RM2, or S$0.60, for a two-pax pot).

  • 12 of 15 Signature Salted Kampung Chicken, RM28 (S$9.30) half; RM55 (S$18.20) whole

    This traditional Chinese dish is called ‘yan shui ji’ (literally saltwater chicken, as it’s cooked in salted water). Our half a kampong chicken is poached in a salted herbal concoction — laboriously taken from a master pot at the fine-dining Chinese restaurant in Brunei owned by Wenlong’s biz partner and transported to JB — for half an hour before being dunked in a 10-minute cold bath and hung up. The result is delish, savoury meat — kampong chickens are leaner with firmer but more flavourful meat — cloaked in (slightly oily) gelatinous skin.

  • 13 of 15 Crispy Stuffed Fish Fillet with Tobiko, RM18 (S$6) for four

    Thin layers of red snapper meat are deep-fried till crispy and drizzled with house-made wasabi mayo and tobiko (Japanese flying fish roe). It has fab crunch and is pretty fun to gnaw on, but a little boring compared to the other dishes. We’d probably skip this and order their other more exciting dishes next time, like the Charcoal Beancurd (see below).

  • 14 of 15 Binchotan Charcoal Beancurd, RM16 (S$5.30)

    Handmade beancurd cubes spiked with Japanese white charcoal powder and deep-fried. The delicate crispy shell is a winner, but the refined, wobbly silken tofu within is even better, like what you’d get at an upscale Chinese restaurant. Except this has JB pricing. Score.

  • 15 of 15 Bottom line

    Sun Gourmet Kitchen serves elegant, upscale modern Chinese dishes at JB prices. It’s an unbeatable pairing, really, and worth the hassle of enduring the traffic jam across the Causeway. And for a first-time chef, Yao Wenlong cooks very yummy pao fan. The restaurant currently opens only for dinner, though Wenlong says he’s planning to start lunch service soon. If you find yourself having to queue for a table, know that there are many bubble tea shops in the neighbourhood to help you tide over the wait.

    Sun Gourmet Kitchen, 7, Jalan Austin Heights 8/3, Taman Mount Austin, 81100 Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia. Tel: +60 18-377-3066. No reservations. Open daily except Tues, 5.45pm-11pm. www.facebook.com/sungourmetkitchen.

    *Editor's note: Yao Wenlong has clarified that it was actor Terence Cao — not Mark Lee as he had mistakenly told us earlier — who had waited 30 minutes at his restaurant. We have amended the headline to reflect this new information.

    PHOTOS: ALVIN TEO
    VIDEO: PYRON TAN

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