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Innovation, Chinese tradition mingle at Red Plate

Is this a Chinese dish? Has fusion stowed away on the menu? The other evening at Red Plate, the splendid Chinese restaurant in The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, confusion touches down alongside the spotted prawn risotto.

Yip “Sam” Cheung, executive chef of the restaurant, has created a tasting menu for the evening, one showcasing dishes from various regions of China (and the Chinese diaspora). Seven superlative courses have come before: some more traditional, some more modern, but all recognizably Chinese. But this prawn risotto — as it alights, it seems … Italian?

“I looked at Italian restaurants with risotto, so I thought, ‘Why can’t we create a Chinese style of risotto?’ ” the chef explained, through a translator, as he stopped by the table.

And so the chef did just that, using Thai and Japanese rice instead of arborio rice, and cooking the rice in a Chinese clay pot, not in a heavy-bottomed skillet, with continual stirring. As the rice simmers, the prawns and vegetables are added. The finished texture falls somewhere between Chinese congee and Japanese chazuke (cooked rice soaked in hot water, dashi or green tea).

Once tasted, it’s immediately clear the dish isn’t risotto, despite the menu description, despite the momentary confusion caused by its appearance. This culinary trompe l’oeil reflects not just chef Cheung’s deft mingling of tradition and innovation, but also his expansive view of Chinese food, of what it means to offer elevated Chinese menus today.

Of what it says when prawn risotto can be Chinese.

Tweaking salads and dim sum

The Las Vegas Strip hosts perhaps this country’s greatest concentration of high-end Chinese cooking, much of it drawing on Cantonese cuisine. Before Cheung, a Guangdong (Canton) native, became opening chef of Red Plate, he worked at the Mansions at the MGM Grand, the uber-exclusive villas reserved for the biggest whales and celebrities.

Chef Cheung has developed a reputation for fashioning, by request, custom tastings that mix standouts from the regular Red Plate menu with dishes created especially for the tasting. And so it is the other evening when the first of nine courses emerges into the restaurant’s sleek dining room rendered in silver, black and red.

Thinly sliced mango, melon, strawberries and scallions join hillocks of slivered roast duck, chewy jellyfish and walnuts to form a sweet-savory composed salad inspired by summer salads in Singapore and Malaysia. The chef tweaks tradition by swapping in fruit for the usual vegetables. The name of the salad translates as “prosperity toss,” and servers encourage the party to take turns tossing the salad to increase good fortune.

A taro puff with golden Osetra caviar — crunch meets brine — celebrates the dim sum of Guangdong. “When people usually have caviar, they have blini or brioche, but I wanted to try something different,” Cheung said. “I added caviar to the taro puff for a modern twist.”

Crab meat stir-fried with egg whites pays tribute to the city of Foshan, in Guangdong, where the whites are cooked with milk (not a typical Chinese ingredient) to create a rich, velvety mouthfeel. The fluffiness of the dish recalls the fleecy clouds of the region; on the plate, the clouds are seeded with pops of tobiko.

Smoke, sizzle, slice

“When you go to restaurants, Americans like to eat ribs,” the chef said, an observation that got him thinking.

For ribs hailing more from his imagination than any particular region of China, Cheung marinates short ribs in Sichuan peppercorns and soy sauce, cooks them on ishiyaki grilling stones, then finishes with a splash of bourbon. A smoky, meaty, liquored contrail streams from the ribs as they’re brought into the dining room for slicing.

Sweet and sour fish is a famous dish from Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province in eastern China, near Shanghai. Cheung remakes the classic as a tuft of scrambled egg, tomato slices, delicately braised fish and a parchment-thin fried basil leaf — all rising from a pale puddle blending tomato, bell pepper, onion, ginger and a jot of preserved Chinese mustard.

(What would you call the broth? Chinese pomodoro?)

A little Thailand, a bit of France

No Chinese special menu would be complete without lobster. The expected route? Stir-fry it with black bean sauce or ginger and scallions. Chef Cheung delights in departing from expectations, so his Maine lobster (from a tank in the kitchen) harnesses lemongrass, lime leaves and chili sauce.

“It’s sweet, sour and spicy,” the chef said of the light citrusy sauce. “It’s Chinese cooking methods with Thai flavors.”

A humbler dish follows the fanfare of lobster. It’s eggplant, thickly cut like pork belly, and prepared in a lighter kung pao style, without the cloying syrup that so often mars attempts at kung pao.

After the prawn risotto, dinner concludes with sesame rice balls rolled in crushed peanuts. Green tea aids digestion. Many Chinese meals might leave it at that. But colorful macarons accompany the rice balls.

They’re a nod, yes, to the modern popularity of macarons in Asia. But they’re also a final example (in a meal full of them) of a chef willing to cook across borders while also still being thoroughly Chinese.

Contact Johnathan L. Wright at jwright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ItsJLW on Twitter.

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