Canberra's Malamay restaurant looks to China's west

• The Canberra Times Good Food Month full program
• Malamay restaurant review

We’re all familiar with Cantonese food, and in the past year or two we’ve been able to check out versions of Sichuan food, with the opening of Malamay in Barton and Red Pepper Sichuan in the city, both very different, but both steering clear of the light approach, the stirfries and fresh approach that dominates Cantonese. Now, Malamay is branching further out still, offering a special menu from its Michelin-starred Hong Kong chef, Kwok Keung Tung, that takes in ideas from the entire Chinese west.

One of the most unusual dishes for a Chinese restaurant is an oxtail stew on the menu. The oxtail is slowcooked for three days, resulting in fall-apart meat in a tomato-based, spiced stew, using star anise and cardamom. It’s almost Middle Eastern in its style, according to Malamay co-owner Amy Tran, and reflects the fondness you find near Mongolia for roast meats. It reminds you of a more subtle form of osso bucco, made Asian by the gentle spicing and by the fried rice cake that comes with it.

A highlight of the "great west of China" menu is the roast duck, which comes with dark, lacquered skin, spiced with cloves, aniseed and other spices. There’s lots of heat in the skin, reflecting the love of chilli in Sichuan food. It’s a dish from Xian, home to the terracotta army.

The degustation menu starts tonight at Malamay, and runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday this week and next as part of the Fairfax Good Food Month festival. We tasted the menu at a preview dinner on Wednesday night.

Malamay is one of the Chairman group of restaurants that began with Madam Yip in Dickson, then the Chairman and Yip, which is still open in the city, the Lanterne Rooms in Campbell and since last year, Malamay. Madam and Chairman were set up by then Australian National University students, Josiah Li and Danny Yip, both from Hong Kong, who came here to study. Li is still in Canberra but Yip returned to Hong Kong in 1998 and set up an internet portal company with which has had considerable success in mainland China. Yip, who is here for the Malamay degustation dinners, says by 2008, he was hankering for the restaurant industry again so he and Li set up Chairman in Hong Kong.

The food of China’s vast west reflects the diverse landscape, desert to highland, basin to the great southwestern jungle, and the diversity of tribes.

It’s a restaurant that filled a gap, Yip says, between the cheap end of Hong Kong dining and the high end that is all about luxury ingredients and big prices. It has evidently hit a note, winning a Michelin star last year and this year named at No 18 in the World’s 50 Best for Asia (Tetsuya Wakuda’s Singapore restaurant is at No 11).

The only dish from the Cantonese-focused Hong Kong restaurant that features in the specially designed menu at Malamay is its signature dish, steamed mud crab. The whole crab is steamed in an aged Chinese rice wine, a specialty cooking wine that lends a fragrance and sweetness and district rice-wine taste to the delicate crab flesh, and is made richer with the addition of chicken fat to the sauce. It’s served with luxurious-textured wide rice noodles. It is followed by a dark, sweet ginger tea, a warm food to counter the crab, classed as a cold food in Chinese tradition.

The mud crab is served with sake, a departure from the rest of the menu, which is matched with wines from boutique Margaret River producer Ocean Eight. The wines include a rich pinot gris to start that Tran describes as in the Alsace style of pinot gris, a little oily, richer and sweeter than others. The Ocean Eight reserve pinot noir, Aylward 2010, is an extraordinary wine to finish.

The Chiyo Shuzo Japanese sake comes from Australian importer Black Market, and is a surprising, strong sake not pristine, but a bit smelly and fascinating. At the preview dinner Li also opened a red sake, entirely different in style to the white, softer and sweeter. He’s experimenting with sakes, with the plan to bring more to the Malamay menu.

Tran says the food of China’s vast west reflects the diverse landscape, desert to highland, basin to the great southwestern jungle, and the diversity of tribes there, many of which lead traditional lifestyles. It is also influenced by the bordering countries, among them Laos, Burma and Vietnam, Nepal and Afghanistan. Fresh herbs are used near Vietnam and Laos. Pickles are important in the diet, and the most renowned Chinese vinegar is produced in the west.

The team looked high and low for ingredients for the degustation, including the hunt for mud crab out of season. The Sakura shrimp is flown in from Taiwan to be used in a paste that is served with a smoked chicken on a witlof leaf. This is like a haute take on duck pancakes, the chicken meat chopped small and smoked in Pu Erh tea (a famous dark, fermented tea from Yunnan) leaving an intense smoky flavour, with loads of heat also here.

Alongside is a little ice-cream-style cone filled with a king prawn mix. It has an odd sour taste, a fermented tinge that you find in other aspects of the menu also.

Also flown in from Hong Kong is the young ginger, used in a palate cleanser that starts the meal. The Yunnan-style pickles are another of the highlights – slices of apple pickled in sweet wine, pear pickled in bean paste with a distinct miso flavour, tomato pickled with plum, and the ginger picked in the first week or two of September when most firm, pickled in rice wine, leaving clean, lively, crunchy pieces of ginger.

It’s not all exotic, however. A highly enjoyable course is a simple plate of seared Canberra vegies, sweet, crunchy and beautifully cooked. And one of the weirder courses is the dessert that finishes. At the bottom of this glass is custard made of earl grey tea, so distinctive you’d never miss the flavour and can still taste the tannin and flavour of the tea as you head back to the car. On top is a delicious pile of coconut sago, and on top of that a crunchy mix that includes pop fizz to buzz around your mouth as you’re eating. It’s a crazy end to a fascinating meal.

The Great West of China dinners this week and next are booked out, but you could be lucky with cancellations ($125 with crab, $105 without crab, plus $65 for wine and sake matching).