Poon Choi, KK Fishermen's Seafood Restaurant, KK

Poon choi being distributed in a village in China.

I've never heard of poon choi ('basin dish') until I started reading food blogs, especially those of Peninsula bloggers. All I know of poon choi is that it is a communal dish shared by villagers in Hong Kong (back when there were villages in HK) and Southern China during festivals. Poon choi combines all the best ingredients available in one big deep dish and the many ingredients result in a rich soup or gravy that is delicious with rice. It is a clever dish because it can be prepared ahead and heated up when needed and everything in one big 'basin' saves on plates and space. It also obviously can feed an army or two, instantly.

When CL, a dear friend whom I've known since high school and pin-stripped suits (we worked in the same department in the bank) came back for a holiday last week, I took the chance to get nine of us ex workmates to sit down for a poon choi dinner at KK Fishermen Seafood Restaurant in Lintas Jaya, where Open University is located too. Most of us had never eaten poon choi and looked forward to it, jaded though our tastebuds are.

I was a little bit disappointed when the poon choi was brought to our table. I read that poon choi is a showy dish of quality ingredients, each ingredient arranged in a single layer, making many layers in a deep dish and diners consume the dish layer by layer, ending with fabulously delicious Chinese radish at the bottom, saturated with all the goodness from the meat. Our poon choi was a big platter of meat arranged neatly in sections, not layers. I've thought about it since and I think poon choi ingredients can only be in layers if it is indeed cooked for a village feast. For 10 or 12 diners at a table, if you layer the ingredients, you'll get a small deep dish or, in our case, a large dish of ingredients arranged in sections.


Poon choi of boiled free range chicken, roasted duck, sauteed prawns, braised dried oysters, pacific clams, sea cucumber, dried scallops stuffed in old cucumber (I think the scallops were semi-dried because they were soft and didn't have a deep flavor), stuffed fish maw, Chinese mushrooms, broccoli and Chinese radish.


Poon choi's fun to eat. Princesses won't enjoy it because they have to stand up and grab the food. None of us were princesses and we had a great time. Love you girls!



KK Fishermen Seafood Restaurant's poon choi is RM388 nett for 10 diners, although I think it can easily feed 12 because we could only eat 2/3 of our deep dish. You'd think that everything will taste the same but each meat still had its own flavor and texture and the sauce/soup wasn't too salty or too watery. We all agreed that the poon choi was delicious although two of my friends found that Wong Kwok Restaurant's poon choi is better, with more seafood and even larger quantity. Another friend, however, found WK's poon choi gravy/soup too watery and Fishermen's poon choi's gravy just nice. My only complain would be that there weren't enough sea cucumber to go around and the dried oysters were not of good quality and were small and bland. There were also cheap fried meat balls but I suppose I can't expect abalone at that price. Poon choi is all about meat, because in the old days in China, when people were too poor to eat meat daily, the best animals were kept for festivals.

Maybe it's because I have always enjoyed communal dining such as steamboat and yosenabe, or maybe because poon choi is different from the usual individual dishes, I am looking forward to another poon choi binge, especially with the festive Chinese New Year air, this time at Wong Kwok Restaurant. If any of you know a good poon choi in KK, please let me know.