Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, Sihanoukville – Episode 5: Twenty-fifth Floor, the Royal Lunch at Wang Long and the End of the Journey
Last day, top floor. On Sunday the lift took us to the summit of the tower, to Wang Long, the Arjuna Solitaire's "royal" Chinese restaurant: Cantonese and Sichuan kitchens, eleven private rooms, arched windows over the sea, and a lunch formula unlike any other in town. Fifth and final episode of our series: Sunday, from Wang Long's green gallery to the road home.
Twenty-fifth floor: the green gallery
Wang Long occupies the top floor of the tower, reached by a gallery one does not forget: walls lacquered a deep green, punctuated by brass arches, wall lights of three opaline globes, herringbone timber underfoot and, above, a glass dome that drops the light in as it would in a greenhouse. Red anthuriums in black jars, pink marble tables, bentwood armchairs with straw-yellow cushions. At the end, three arched windows and the sea. On a console, a small boutique: famille-rose vases, blue-and-white jars, cigar cutters, as in the grand restaurants of Guangzhou where one leaves with an object.
The name, 望珑, translates roughly as "gazing at jade". The private rooms – eleven in all, for a maximum of 208 covers – hold round tables with marble lazy Susans, a crown chandelier of white glass leaves, and at the centre of each table a miniature landscape: moss, driftwood, white gravel, a dwarf pine, a ceramic jar. The staff wear brocade dresses or turquoise jackets with gold-embroidered collars; a hostess in a black qipao patterned with clouds and ancient coins poured our tea into celadon cups before the menu arrived.
Fifty-eight dollars, and whatever you like
The formula is simple and, as far as we know, unique in Sihanoukville: fifty-eight dollars a head, daily from eleven to two, to order at will from a three-page menu. Not a buffet, but dishes cooked to order in sharing portions, ticked off on the card as in a Hong Kong dim sum house. Cold starters, soups, hot dishes, dim sum, desserts: some sixty options spanning Canton, Sichuan, Hainan and Macau.
We ticked generously. First the cold dishes: clams marinated with basil, chilli and garlic in a dark sauce, served in a blue-and-white dish, sour and burning at once; a traditional beef, glazed, stacked in small slices and scattered with sesame in red oil; crisp pastry cups filled with caramelised morsels, each topped with a pink sugar flower. Then the dish that brought the table to its feet: the Kung Pao lobster, arriving in a great bowl of blue porcelain beneath a thicket of dried chillies, antennae raised to the ceiling, served by two women, one pouring steaming broth from a steel jug while the other turned the chillies, peanuts and white flesh. The steam rose to the chandelier; it is the kind of service that silences a table before it sets it talking. The same creature appears on the menu steamed with garlic and vermicelli, half a piece per person; we chose the Sichuan version, and did not regret it.
Then the whole steamed tiger grouper, opened like a flower, white flesh lifted in petals, spring onion and light soy, a cherry tomato in its mouth as tradition requires; the crispy char siu, cubes of caramel-glazed pork whose surface cracks under the tooth, laid out in a staggered row on a plate with a water-green rim, eight pieces and not one more; a crab in a golden crust, tossed with garlic crumbs and fried basil leaves in the typhoon-shelter manner, set before a sculpture of amber sugar; and, for the youngest, prawns in Maggi sauce, because a child knows what he likes. The dim sum followed – taro puffs with foie gras in their fried lace, and sesame buns with spring onion – and, to close, the Cantonese classic 杨枝甘露, a chilled cream of mango, pomelo and sago pearls, served with a mint leaf in a white bowl.
This lunch is, beyond argument, the summit of the stay, and not only because it happens on the top floor. Wang Long's kitchen is in the hands of chef Du Yinluo, and it has what good hotel Chinese restaurants rarely manage: generosity without heaviness, a menu that dares Sichuan chilli alongside Cantonese finesse, a service that knows when to pour and when to keep quiet. At fifty-eight dollars for a meal of this scale, lobster, crab and grouper included, it is also, let it be said, one of the best deals on the coast.
The road home
We came back down to the ground floor a little before three. In the lobby, the white archer had not moved from his elephant, and the emerald glass pebbles shone beneath the hammered ceiling. The car was waiting under the porte-cochère; the rain had stopped. Leaving Kampong Dewa, one sees the tower in the mirror for a long while, twenty-five floors set at the edge of the Otres road, and one thinks that Sihanoukville, which has made so much news for the wrong reasons, has here a serious argument for the right ones.
Five floors, five episodes. From the lobby to the twenty-fifth, the Arjuna Solitaire kept the promise of its "vertical journey": a hotel one visits like a city, floor by floor, with a team that carries the title of Royal Guardians without making a pose of it. We will be back for the dry season, when the sea is blue beneath the arches of the pool.
Practical information
Wang Long Royal Chinese Restaurant, 25th floor of the Arjuna Solitaire Hotel, Kampong Dewa Resort, Otres Marina Road No. 833, Sihanoukville. Cantonese and Sichuan cuisine, eleven private rooms, 208 covers.
All-you-can-eat lunch: USD 58 per person, daily from 11 am to 2 pm, ordered à la carte (cold starters, soups, hot dishes including steamed lobster, crab, grouper, roast goose and char siu, dim sum and desserts).
Reservations at arjuna.jhlcollections.com.
Previous episodes: 1. From the Ground Floor to the Thirteenth Sky – 2. Twelfth Floor, the Pool Beneath the Arches – 3. Twenty-third Floor, Cambodia in Six Provinces and a Rice Wine – 4. A Night at Khayangan Beach Club.
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