Tucked among the florid boutiques in the lobby of Kerry Centre Hotel on the ground floor, Horizon Chinese Restaurant (Haitiange) stands out from the crowd with a wooden tablet hung over its entrance.

Located at the heart of Beijing's busiest area, the restaurant offers a quiet and cozy corner where people can look for fine food and rest. The interior is decorated comfortably in a modern and magnificent style setting people at ease once they get in. The illumination casts gentle streams on the centre on the table and people can sit on soft sofas.

The restaurant has been there for several years serving quality Chinese cuisine. But it is run in a low-key way which stresses word of mouth recommendation.

With the new appointment of chef Hong Sai Choi from Hong Kong, the restaurant has renewed its menu with the chef's special repertoire in an attempt to gain a stake in Beijing's fine dining business.

As a veteran specialist in Cantonese cooking, Hong started his culinary career at the age of nine as a kitchen apprentice. Over 30 years of cooking experience has made him a skillful chef noted for his unique fusion of Cantonese food added with western and southeast Asian cooking methods. The wide use of sauces in his cooking, which he concocts by himself, is rarely seen in traditional Chinese cooking.

Hong arrived in Beijing in March. Due to the sudden outbreak of SARS, he had to wait to take his post in the kitchen for months. But he is still anxious to present his best to diners: "We will use the freshest materials to bring the best dishes for customers," he said.

One of the chef's recommendations is deep-fried prawns with mustard. The dish is said to be different because of its special sauce of Karf mayonnayse and mustard powder topped on the prawns. The deep-fried prawns taste quite fresh and, because of the use of mustard, revives the Chinese dish with a western flavour. It helped him to win the champion chef title at the third Bon Appetit Competition organized by the Television Corporation of Singapore in 1998.

Another delicious dish is pan-fried silver cod. The fish chunks are thoroughly and skillfully cooked to give a crisp surface while the meat inside remains fairly tender. Dipped with the accompanying soybean sauce, it well enhances the taste of freshness, the ultimate aim Cantonese cooking always strives for.

Perhaps because of many years' experience working in Hong Kong and southeast Asia, Hong uses more tropical fruits in his cooking. The after-meal pudding is made of papaya, a fruit imported from Thailand. And the dessert is really a delight.

Called small cake, the dessert is actually small-sized Chinese moon cakes. But the difference is that it is a white moon cake made by stuffing custard and expensive bird nest in a white wrap made of ground glutinous rice. It tastes as good as it looks.

The restaurant prepares a picture menu to help people place orders. There are 50 new dishes added to the menu, starting from a price of six yuan (US$0.7). For about 150 yuan (US$18.3), one can enjoy a complete meal from cold dishes to dessert prepared by the experienced chef in the typical Cantonese style with a western twist.

Tel: 6561-8833 ext 41

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