Chengdu's high-end private dishes, Yuzhilan have attracted people's attention. The owner, Lan Guijun, is a legend of Rongcheng catering, and now he has opened a restaurant in his own house and operates in a low-key manner. The restaurant has been open for nearly ten years without a signboard, and people pass by but don't know it, until it has won the "only black pearl three-diamond restaurant in Chengdu" and the "BEST 100 Chinese restaurant list" led by Dong Keping's authoritative gourmets, and it has become more and more well-known. Yuzhilan's private style is distinctive, and even if it loses all its aura, it is still an ideal traditional private restaurant. In addition to the Chengdu store, Yuzhilan also opened a branch in Shanghai, which attracted a lot of attention, but Lan Gui did not serve as the chef, and the taste was not as good as the Chengdu store.
Private dishes opened by individuals usually do not have a professional operation team, and the owner is both the boss and the chef, except for a few waiters who are in charge of the front office, and there is no one else in the restaurant. All the products of Yuzhilan, from grocery shopping to cooking, are handled by Master Lan alone. Even all the tableware in the restaurant was designed and fired by Master Lan after learning pottery in Jingdezhen. The restaurant only accepts two tables per day and requires a deposit of 3 days in advance.
Lan Guijun has been a chef for decades, and has devoted himself to cooking in Shufeng Yuan, a Sichuan restaurant where famous chefs gather, and Panxi Restaurant, which specializes in dim sum in Guangzhou, and then worked as the head chef of the smash hit Xianglaokan Restaurant, where he has developed many new dishes and has a rich resume. Later, he single-handedly restored the almost lost golden silk noodles of the big knife and established his status as a "Jianghu vegetable boss". Golden silk noodles are now the signboard of Yuzhilan's town store, and Cai Lan once made a special trip to the store to taste a bowl of noodles as thin as a hair.
Chef Lan does not copy the old way of cooking, from pre-dinner desserts to post-dinner snacks, you can see creativity in basically every dish. The combination of ingredients and sauces in the dishes is free, and the high-end Cantonese cuisine's swallow abalone wings are integrated into Sichuan flavor, which means that the two main flavors of Sichuan cuisine, spicy and sour, have been successfully grafted into the "light and healthy" Cantonese cuisine, which is quite amazing, which shows Chef Lan's solid basic skills in handling ingredients across borders.
For traditional dishes such as appetizers, snacks, and dim sum, he added private practices to traditional tastes, all of which were improved in color, taste, and shape, and had different innovations. For snacks with unique tastes, such as strange noodles and bell dumplings, he adjusted the proportion of the recipe to make it taste more sophisticated; Ice powder, a fresh dessert, is made of roses, vanilla and other ingredients to make a Western-style flavor, with a high-value plating, which is very popular with women; The red cake and fresh green bean cake with a high appearance rate in the set meal are based on the method of external snaking, and the glutinous rice flour is mixed with a precise proportion of flour, which is soft and glutinous but not greasy, and the taste is more refreshing.
It can be said that Chef Lan has applied the various skills of his decades of chef career throughout the entire course: from desserts, appetizers, over-the-middle (the fixed dish is the town's signature "Golden Silk Noodles with a Big Knife"), hot dishes to dim sum, a total of nearly 30 dishes, each of which is full of care and sincerity.
In terms of taste, Chef Lan pays attention to restoring the original taste of the ingredients, the seasoning is just right, and the taste is enough but not too violent, even those who are not good at eating spicy food can accept the spicy aroma of the dishes. Most of the diners of Yuzhilan are very satisfied, especially the Yan Bao wing belly is generally very high, the processing of ingredients, taste and seasoning, without losing the level of high-end Cantonese restaurants.
Instead of a menu, the combination of dishes is determined by the price of a set meal or table fee, which is a common way for private dishes. The price of Yuzhilan package is divided into several grades, with the lowest being 588 yuan/person and the highest being 1588 yuan/person. For diners who focus on experience rather than pursuing individual dishes, it is advisable to choose medium and low-end packages within 888 yuan, which are more cost-effective. For packages of more than 1,000 yuan, high-end ingredients such as fish maw, matsutake mushroom, caviar, and African dried abalone will be appropriately added, which is suitable for business banquets. However, it is a little regrettable that the selection of ingredients is not very seasonal, and the same raw material occasionally appears in several dishes, weakening the sense of richness, which is also a common shortcoming of Chengdu's private cuisine.
The focus of Yuzhilan's business is on the dishes, and the service is weak. The waiter's work is crisp and crisp, but the meticulousness and care are rough, and the level is no different from that of a cheap restaurant. If the waiter can take the initiative to introduce the dishes, the guests will be more able to appreciate the chef's intentions. The restaurant has been renovated from an old house, and the Chinese decoration is traditional and generous, with no obvious highlights. In addition, at present, only cash and Alipay are supported.
