Now with a new menu this finely tuned, snagging a reservation at high-flying LING LONG won’t get any easier. Good luck getting in.
Nine months after unveiling his last “Inspirational” menu, Chef Jason Liu returns with a new chapter. His long-held target of crafting three menus annually still lies ahead, but compared with earlier years, when a single menu carried the entire calendar, his pace, like his cooking, has grown more agile. More importantly, each menu is not simply different, it is better.
If the previous season drew its soul from Shanghai and the Jiangnan region – their stories, waterways, folklore, and Haipai elegance – this latest menu turns inward.
Liu cooks from memory as much as from instinct, pairing intuition with technique. He pushes familiar ingredients until they reveal unfamiliar faces, probes textures with scientific focus, and revisits past experiences to transform them into something newly articulate.
“Every menu needs a breakthrough. I want each one to outdo the last. Ideally, every menu should be able to stand as a classic on its own,” Chef Liu said, “that’s just who I am.”
That horizon rings throughout the menu, delivered with confidence. Rooted in his philosophy – Xian Taste, Tradition, Localization, Recollection – this menu heightens Liu’s signature contrasts of flavors, brightness against tartness, heat against richness, salt against aroma.
The opening dish sets the pace. A graceful reinterpretation of a Song-era classic, layering crab roe sabayon, orange jelly, and hand-picked snow crab. A spoon of low-salt caviar brings a gentle sweetness, tempered with a bright citrus lift.
The tone pivots with geoduck confited in chicken fat, enriched with a clam-abalone jus and jolted awake by lemon pesto and a deep, briny conch liver sauce. A final snowfall of house-dried black lemon perfumes the air with citrus notes.
Tilefish, returning from a previous season, lands with newfound swagger. Its scales crackle into golden armor before diving into a yu xiang sauce whose sweet-sour-spicy profile is softened by shrimp-paste foam and brightened with hand-shelled peas.
But it’s the pigeon that hushes the dining room. Borrowing the spirit of Cantonese roast pigeon and refining it with French precision, Liu achieves a near-impossible balance. The skin is impossibly thin, crackling like a lacquered wafer while the flesh stays pink, tender, and free of gaminess. A green plum jus adds a shimmering sweet-tart lift, while roasted coral tooth mushroom and aged mandarin peel round the dish into a layered, aromatic whole.
Then comes the bowl everyone has been waiting for: Liu’s Taiwanese beef noodle soup is memory distilled. Slow-cooked broth softs tendon, marbled brisket, and charred honeycomb tripe. Black and white fungus, pickled mustard greens, cilantro, and scallions lift the bowl into something humble and meticulously crafted. It is the kind of dish that compels a table to drink every last drop.
Ginger Lily ice cream, ginger lily ice cream pairs with juicy pomelo, chewy rice pearls, and crisp yam petals. A drizzle of sake sauce deepens the floral notes and leaves a faint, bittersweet finish, like memory settling back into the body.
Liu’s cooking now is intuitive and expressive. Each course resonates like a tuned note, revealing a voice that raises the bar for his modern Chinese cuisine. The latest menu is a seasonal refresh, and it’s also a glimpse into a tantalizing promise of what’s to come.