In 2015, Sichuan chef Li Junjie, who has been working in Australia for ten years, returned to his hometown after a long absence, and opened this 4416 Western restaurant located in the high-rise apartment on the 44th floor of Sunshine New Industry Center. On the one hand, it rejects the traditional Western cuisine practice of focusing on meat, and chooses to use the four seasons that Chinese people are familiar with as ingredients, and has developed many unique creative dishes. In August 2016, he led the team to participate in CCTV2's "King of Chefs" column and won the championship, making the restaurant a good story for a while.
In the hot summer, refreshing food has become the key word of the restaurant's products. Fruits and vegetables such as spinach, purple sweet potato, asparagus, and passionflower are all active ingredients in the current season (summer 2018). Appetizers, main dishes and desserts are to be admired, with the chef making spinach mousse and topping it with Argentinian red prawns, sea grapes and orange sauce. The dense mousse has the fishy freshness of spinach, while the miniature shrimp meat is dipped in orange sauce and is delicious, sweet and tender. The main dish is New Zealand filet base, served with asparagus, fennel paste, green onion pepper oil and sprinkled with seaweed powder. The rich aroma of the meat carries a little umami in the sauce, making the otherwise greasy pork rib delicate and refreshing, with a unique taste. For dessert, mint chips, coconut milk, vanilla ice cream and lemongrass jelly are delicately plated to combine the cool, sweet and aromatic taste of the ingredients.
Admittedly, not all dishes are creatively driven. One of the main dishes, the fried purple potato balls, have a good texture, are hard and chewy, and the lichen and chicken soup are sour and bland, which is the failure of the whole set meal. The confit pigeon, made with seasonal vegetables and water chestnut, has a fishy and greasy taste, and the taste is also in the bottom line. Other dishes such as corn pudding and loofah bisque are plain and flawless.
The 4416 environment on the upper floors is quite miniaturized. Its two-storey duplex apartment has only six seats and can accommodate up to 20 people. The decoration retains the original apartment style, with only the addition of paintings, chandeliers and projectors for displaying menus, which slightly loses the elegant style of a Western restaurant. The service is undertaken by the store manager alone, and the basic links such as ordering and serving are basically in place, so you can rest assured when dining. It is recommended to reserve a table 1-2 days in advance.
The menu at 4416 is not fixed, and the chef team will select seasonal foods as ingredients and change the menu at the same time. In addition, the restaurant also adopts a catering system, that is, only one set meal is provided each season, and all customers who are seated must follow the content of the set meal.
Therefore, the above are all from the 2018 summer menu. If you want to know more, you can follow the restaurant's official Weibo "no4416". It is worth mentioning that the Yunshijie Western Restaurant, located on Tianfu Third Street in the High-tech Zone, is the second store opened by 4416 chef Li Junjie in the city, and its production style is basically similar to that of 4416.
