"There's a guilty pleasure to some of the dishes, the sort of things I've ordered late at night and hoped no one is looking," Neil Perry says about his newest menu, which has a rich vein of Chinese oldies such as lemon chicken and honey prawns.
Jade Temple swings open its doors next Monday and Perry is unapologetic for looking over his shoulder to the dishes of his youth in Sydney's suburban Chinese restaurants.
![Perry's char siu.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170628051254im_/http://www.goodfood.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/z/m/1/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwzk6g.png/1498615133290.jpg)
"The problem with some of them is they have a bad name because there's too much cornflour, or the batter is poorly put together," he says. "Our lemon chicken will have a fresh, zingy sauce. There's a reason the classics are classics."
The Jade Temple menu isn't all over-chartered territory. There's a spanner crab dish with tofu and shrimp roe, black lip abalone with oyster sauce and duck legs braised with chestnuts.
"The difference between Jade Temple and Spice Temple is the Cantonese cooking at Jade," says Perry. "Cantonese is about delicate flavours and lower levels of spice. It's about dim sum, the roast meats and the seafood."
![Lobster at Jade Temple.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170628051254im_/http://www.goodfood.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/z/m/1/2/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwzk6g.png/1498615133290.jpg)
Jade will open with a limited dim sum line-up, which will expand from the last week of July with the arrival of its dumpling master Moon Kuen Ng, a chef talent spotted by Rockpool alumni in Macau. He'll arrive to a timber-shuttered room that takes some cues from Raffles in Singapore. Perry explains he felt the Bridge Street building lent itself to that, "being colonial from the high point of the spice run." Just go easy on the spice.
Open Mon-Sat noon-3pm; 5.30pm-11pm; Sun noon-3pm; 5.30pm-10pm.
11 Bridge Street, Sydney, 02 9252 1888, jadetemple.com.au