Introduction: The Art of Edible Sculpture
Chinese New Year 2026 has ushered in an extraordinary convergence of culinary tradition and artistic ambition. As the Year of the Wood Horse gallops into view, Singapore’s finest Chinese restaurants have transformed the humble yusheng platter into theatrical centerpieces that blur the boundaries between food and sculpture. What emerges is not merely a salad to be tossed, but a meditation on craftsmanship, tradition, and the ephemeral nature of edible art.
Jade at The Fullerton Hotel: Premium Winning Horse Yu Sheng ($888++)
Ambience & Presentation Theatre
Entering Jade is akin to stepping into a jewel box suspended above Marina Bay. The restaurant’s contemporary elegance, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the Singapore skyline, provides a fitting stage for what can only be described as gastronomic theater. When the Premium Winning Horse Yu Sheng arrives, conversation stops. The platter commands attention not through ostentatious size, but through the delicate precision of its execution.
The mare’s head rises from the platter with an almost kinetic energy, her mane flowing backward as though caught mid-gallop. This is Chef Leong Chee Yeng’s magnum opus—a sculpture that required 80 minutes and the coordinated efforts of three to four chefs to bring to life. The dining room lighting catches the translucent quality of the housemade champagne jelly, creating prismatic effects that shift as diners circle the table for the obligatory photographs.
Dish Architecture & Ingredient Layers
The Premium Winning Horse represents a masterclass in structural engineering disguised as cuisine. At its foundation lies a carefully calibrated bed of hand-cut vegetables—white radish providing crisp, peppery notes; carrot ribbons adding earthiness and natural sweetness; cucumber contributing cool, vegetal freshness. These aren’t roughly chopped afterthoughts but precisely julienned strands, each maintaining structural integrity while promising to shatter satisfyingly between the teeth.
The sculptural mane itself reveals Chef Leong’s technical prowess. Constructed from multiple vegetable varieties in graduated colors, it achieves a trompe-l’oeil effect that photographs almost too well—one suspects many platters are dismantled more reluctantly than usual, the Instagram documentation taking precedence over appetite.
Textural Symphony
What elevates this beyond mere spectacle is the textural complexity. The champagne jelly, which requires six hours of preparation, introduces an unexpected element of luxury and lightness. Its gentle acidity cuts through the richness of Norwegian smoked salmon, which drapes across the platter in silken folds. The salmon itself offers that characteristic velvety resistance before dissolving on the palate, its salinity balanced by the kumquat dressing’s bright citrus notes.
Fresh abalone marinated in rose wine provides substantial, almost muscular chew—a necessary counterpoint to the vegetable crispness. The rose wine marinade imparts subtle floral aromatics without overwhelming the abalone’s natural brininess. Pomelo segments burst with tart juice, while pickled ginger delivers sharp, palate-cleansing heat.
The interplay becomes most interesting during the tossing ritual itself. As ingredients tumble and mingle, the champagne jelly fractures into jewel-like fragments, its light acidity mingling with the kumquat dressing to create a bright, effervescent sauce that coats the vegetables. Norwegian smoked salmon breaks into smaller pieces, distributing its richness more democratically across the mix.
The Kumquat Dressing
Jade’s signature kumquat dressing deserves particular attention. Unlike the overly sweet, one-dimensional sauces that plague lesser yusheng, this version achieves complexity through careful balance. The kumquat provides concentrated citrus brightness with subtle bitterness from the peel, while remaining elements—likely including plum sauce, sesame oil, and a measured amount of sugar—create layers of sweet, sour, savory, and nutty that evolve across the palate.
When the full platter is tossed and portioned, each serving achieves near-perfect emulsification. The dressing clings to vegetable threads without pooling, the oil providing luxurious mouthfeel while the acid keeps the richness in check.
Shang Palace at Shangri-La: Auspicious Golden Horse Yu Sheng ($268++)
Ambience & Traditional Elegance
Shang Palace operates within a different aesthetic universe from Jade’s contemporary glamour. Here, traditional Chinese hospitality meets Shangri-La luxury—ornate screens, jade accents, and warm ambient lighting create an atmosphere of timeless elegance. The dining room hums with a particular energy during Chinese New Year, families gathered in private rooms while the main dining area fills with the percussion of prosperity tossing.
When the Auspicious Golden Horse Yu Sheng arrives, it carries a different energy than Jade’s sophisticated mare. Chef Daniel Cheung’s creation emphasizes the stallion’s profile—strength captured in side view, the head crafted from tri-colored carrot in green, red, and white. This isn’t photorealism but rather a bold, graphic interpretation that recalls traditional Chinese paper cutting.
The Cold Room Discipline
Chef Cheung’s insistence on preparing ingredients in a cold room with strict hygiene protocols speaks to professional rigor often invisible to diners. This three-hour preparation process ensures that raw ingredients maintain optimal freshness and safety, but it also affects texture. Vegetables cut and held at controlled temperatures retain crispness more reliably than those handled in ambient kitchen conditions.
Textural Composition & Ingredient Balance
The sixteen-ingredient composition demonstrates restraint compared to Jade’s twenty-three-component extravaganza. This economy of elements allows each ingredient’s contribution to register more clearly. Fresh vegetables provide the structural foundation—their crispness maintained through careful handling and timing. Pickles introduce controlled acidity and crunch variation, their fermented notes adding complexity to the fresh vegetable sweetness.
Smoked salmon appears here as well, its presence almost obligatory in contemporary yusheng, but the supporting cast differs meaningfully from Jade’s interpretation. The housemade dressing, described as sweet and tangy, likely trends slightly sweeter than Jade’s more sophisticated kumquat version, appealing to traditional palates expecting pronounced sweetness during festive celebrations.
The stallion’s mane, constructed from hand-shredded carrots in multiple hues, represents extraordinary knife work. Achieving consistent thickness across hundreds of carrot threads while maintaining the color graduation requires both technical skill and patience. During tossing, these threads intermingle with other vegetables, the natural sugars in carrot becoming more pronounced when coated with the sweet-tangy dressing.
Dynamic Movement on the Plate
Chef Cheung speaks of the design conveying “strength, vitality and forward momentum,” and this intention manifests in the composition’s directional energy. Unlike circular or static presentations, the side-profile stallion suggests movement across the platter—appropriate symbolism for the Year of the Horse, associated with progress and dynamic action.
When tossed, this directionality dissolves into beautiful chaos, the carefully arranged ingredients transforming into a confetti of prosperity. The textural experience in the mouth mirrors this transformation—initial crunch giving way to the salmon’s silken richness, pickled notes emerging between bites of sweet vegetables.
Min Jiang at Goodwood Park Hotel: Majestic Prosperous Horse Lo Hei ($288++)
Ambience & Heritage Setting
Goodwood Park Hotel carries the weight of Singapore’s colonial and post-independence history. Min Jiang, perched atop this heritage property, offers panoramic views that contextualize the city-state’s transformation from trading post to global metropolis. The restaurant interior balances traditional Chinese aesthetics with contemporary comfort—an appropriate setting for Chef Chan Hwan Kee’s six-month conceptual journey to create the Majestic Prosperous Horse.
The horseshoe-shaped layout represents Chef Chan’s interpretive choice, prioritizing symbolism over literal representation. This decision reveals a chef confident enough to embrace abstraction, trusting that the horseshoe’s association with luck and protection communicates as effectively as a sculpted horse head.
The Master Chef’s Hand
Chef Chan’s decision to hand-paint the horse motif in five-spice powder during the final ten minutes of assembly introduces an element of performance art. Unlike pre-arranged ingredients that can be prepared in advance, this live calligraphy demands steady hands and intimate knowledge of the spice’s behavior when applied to moist ingredients. Five-spice powder—that quintessentially Chinese blend of star anise, cloves, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and fennel—contributes not just visual artistry but aromatic complexity that perfumes the entire platter.
Ingredient Diversity & Textural Layers
With over twenty ingredients, Chef Chan’s composition rivals Jade’s complexity while pursuing different textural territory. The inclusion of arugula and romaine lettuce introduces peppery bitterness and structured crunch distinct from the typical radish-carrot foundation. This unexpected green element adds sophistication, the arugula’s mustard-like bite cutting through richer components.
Baby abalones provide luxury and substantial chew, their tender-firm texture requiring proper mastication—a mindful eating experience in contrast to the easy crunch of vegetables. The fried yam strips introduce golden, shattering crispness and subtle sweetness, their fried exterior creating textural drama when it encounters the wet dressing. Pine nuts and peanuts offer contrasting nut textures—pine nuts buttery and almost dissolving, peanuts providing robust crunch and earthy intensity.
Tobiko, those tiny flying fish roe, detonate on the tongue with marine salinity and satisfying pop. This Japanese ingredient’s inclusion in a Chinese festive dish reflects Singapore’s culinary hybridity, the tobiko’s texture adding playful bursts of brine throughout the tossed salad. Kombu seasoning contributes umami depth, its subtle oceanic notes supporting rather than overwhelming.
The Fruit-Forward Dressing
Chef Chan’s dressing represents the most complex sauce formulation among the reviewed platters. The base of peanut oil provides body and richness, while plum sauce contributes sweet-tart complexity with fermented undertones. Calamansi and yuzu—both Southeast Asian and Japanese citrus varieties—layer different expressions of sour brightness: calamansi’s sharp, lime-like acidity meeting yuzu’s perfumed, floral tartness.
Pineapple and strawberry push this dressing into genuinely innovative territory. Pineapple brings tropical sweetness and enzymatic brightness that tenderizes and lifts, while strawberry—an unexpected choice—adds berry sweetness and subtle acidity. The result is a dressing that tastes simultaneously familiar and surprising, its fruit-forward character complementing the salmon and hamachi without overwhelming delicate vegetables.
The slices of salmon and hamachi (yellowtail) represent a premium protein offering. Hamachi’s rich, buttery texture and clean fish flavor provide elegant counterpoint to the salmon’s more assertive character. When tossed with the fruit-based dressing, these fish develop an almost ceviche-like quality, the acid brightening their richness.
The Capitol Kempinski: Prosperity Salmon Yu Sheng (Small $98 / Large $168)
Accessibility & Modern Interpretation
The Capitol Kempinski’s offering occupies a different market position—designed for takeaway and delivery, this yusheng prioritizes accessibility and modern presentation over dine-in spectacle. Yet Executive Chef Scott Henderson’s ambition remains evident in his description of the design as “interactive calligraphy, bridging the gap between tradition and modern culinary art.”
The Chinese character for “horse” (马) provides instant cultural legibility while allowing for bold graphic composition. Unlike sculptural horse heads requiring structural support and immediate service, the calligraphic approach translates well to transport and home assembly.
Ingredient Completeness
The eighteen-ingredient composition demonstrates thoughtfulness within a more accessible price point. Heirloom carrots suggest attention to ingredient quality and visual appeal—their varied colors (purple, yellow, orange) creating natural rainbow effects when julienned. Seven types of shredded vegetables ensure textural variety and nutritional diversity, while winter melon candy and orange skin candy provide traditional sweet elements with candied chew.
The inclusion of crispy salmon skin demonstrates nose-to-tail thinking, transforming what might be waste into crunchy, fatty, umami-rich morsels. When tossed with fresh salmon flesh, the skin provides textural contrast and concentrated fish flavor. Marinated jellyfish contributes that characteristic snappy-crunchy texture and subtle marine salinity—a traditional element that grounds the composition in Chinese culinary heritage.
The Passion Fruit Innovation
The passion fruit sauce represents Chef Henderson’s most interesting choice. Passion fruit’s tropical tartness and aromatic complexity—simultaneously floral, citrus, and tropical—creates a dressing profile distinct from traditional plum-based sauces. The seeds, if included, would add textural pop similar to tobiko, while the pulp’s natural pectin creates body without excessive oil.
This sauce likely trends lighter and brighter than heavily sweetened traditional versions, its pronounced acidity making it particularly effective at cutting through the salmon’s richness and refreshing the palate between bites.
Optional Luxury
The tiered add-on structure (Yellow Tail Fish, Hokkaido Scallops, Boston Lobster) allows customization for different budgets and occasions. Hokkaido scallops would introduce sweet, delicate richness and tender snap. Boston lobster adds theatrical luxury and firm, sweet lobster meat that holds up well to vigorous tossing.
Peach Garden: Horse-shaped Yu Sheng With Salmon And Lobster ($268++)
Democratic Accessibility
Peach Garden’s six-outlet presence across Singapore democratizes access to zodiac-shaped yusheng. The fact that this horse-shaped platter exists as an off-menu item speaks to the restaurant’s responsiveness to customer desires—those in the know can request it, creating an insider’s satisfaction.
Managing director Darren Yew’s acknowledgment that “there are not a lot of horse-shaped yusheng this year due to the complexity and difficulty of plating one” makes Peach Garden’s commitment to offer it across multiple locations more impressive. This requires standardized training across kitchen teams to ensure consistent execution.
The Twenty-Eight Ingredient Symphony
With twenty-eight ingredients, this represents the most complex composition reviewed. The inclusion of crystalline ice plant introduces sophisticated crunch and mineral salinity—this succulent plant’s water-filled cells burst pleasantly, contributing visual sparkle and textural novelty. Lotus root provides starchy crunch with its characteristic perforated structure, the holes creating visual interest and allowing dressing to penetrate.
Candied walnut offers sweet richness and firm-crisp texture, the candying process creating a sweet shell around the walnut’s bitter-earthy core. This plays beautifully against candied orange peel’s bright, bitter-sweet citrus intensity. The combination of crushed peanut and sesame seeds ensures that each bite contains some nutty crunch and toasted aroma.
The “assorted pickled vegetables” likely include various regional preparations—perhaps Sichuan-style spicy pickles, Cantonese sweet pickles, and Southeast Asian achar-style preparations. This pickle diversity creates acidity variations across the platter, some bites delivering sharp vinegar tang, others sweet-sour complexity, still others chile heat.
The Corporate Spectacle: Galloping Horse Prosperity Yu Sheng
The giant format versions (5m to 20m) transform yusheng from dish to installation art. A twenty-meter yusheng serving 180 people represents extraordinary logistical choreography—ingredient prep at scale, maintaining freshness across huge surface area, coordinating the tossing ritual for such a crowd.
These massive platters function as corporate team-building exercises and Instagram-worthy branded content opportunities. The visual drama of employees gathered around a twenty-meter food sculpture, arms raised in unison while shouting prosperity wishes, creates memorable experiences that reinforce company culture.
From a culinary perspective, maintaining quality at this scale poses challenges. Ingredients at the platter’s center may receive different dressing distribution than edges. The tossing mechanics shift dramatically—what works for a one-meter platter requires adapted technique for twenty meters. Yet the inclusion of salmon, fried white bait (for crunch and calcium), candied walnut, and ice plant suggests Peach Garden maintains ingredient quality even at spectacular scale.
Neo Garden Catering: Bountiful Horse Yusheng ($488+ to $988+)
Full-Body Representation
Neo Garden’s decision to present the horse in complete form—rather than just the head or as calligraphy—represents the most ambitious sculptural undertaking. Creating a full horse that reads coherently from all angles while remaining structurally stable enough for service requires sophisticated spatial planning.
The sizes (30 to 50 inches, the largest served on a 1.5-meter table) position these as true centerpieces for corporate and large family gatherings. The spectacle of a full horse galloping across the table creates powerful symbolic resonance—this isn’t static luxury but captured motion, progress made visible.
The Gold Ingot Jelly Innovation
The inclusion of gold ingot-shaped jelly represents Neo Garden’s most distinctive contribution. These jellies serve multiple functions: visual symbolism (gold ingots being traditional wealth representations), textural variation (the jelly providing cool, slightly sweet, wobbling contrast to crunchy vegetables), and practical moisture management (the jelly releasing liquid slowly as the platter sits, preventing vegetables from drying).
This jelly likely contains minimal flavor, allowing its symbolic and textural contributions to speak without interfering with the dressing’s carefully calibrated taste. When tossed, the ingots break into irregular fragments, their golden color catching light and suggesting scattered treasure—prosperity literally distributed among diners.
Hand-Cut Vegetables
Neo Garden’s emphasis on hand-cutting all vegetables in-house reflects commitment to quality and tradition. Machine-cut vegetables, while consistent, often bruise more easily and lack the slight irregularity that makes hand-cutting visually interesting. The act of hand-cutting carrot and radish for dozens or hundreds of portions represents significant labor investment, this care perceptible in the final product’s visual appeal and textural integrity.
Traditional Dressing Components
The dressing formula—plum sauce, peanut oil, pepper, cinnamon powder—hews closer to traditional templates than some reviewed platters. Cinnamon powder’s inclusion is particularly interesting, its warm sweetness and aromatic intensity adding festive depth. When combined with pepper’s heat, cinnamon creates a warming sensation appropriate for celebration.
The crackers, lime, and generous salmon slices complete a composition that balances tradition with scale. Lime juice squeezed at service brightens the entire platter, its sharp acidity activating other flavors and preventing palate fatigue across what is, necessarily, a substantial eating experience.
Comparative Analysis: Textures Across Platters
The Crunch Spectrum
Every reviewed yusheng prioritizes crunch as foundational texture, but the sources and qualities of crunch vary meaningfully. Jade’s champagne jelly-kissed vegetables offer refined, almost delicate crunch—this is crispness with moisture. Shang Palace’s cold-room-prepared ingredients deliver pronounced snap, each bite registering clearly. Min Jiang’s fried yam strips contribute shattering crunch that announces itself loudly. Capitol Kempinski’s crispy salmon skin provides oily, umami-rich crunch. Peach Garden’s crystalline ice plant offers cellular crunch with liquid release. Neo Garden’s traditional vegetables maintain robust, confident crispness.
Silken Elements
The universal presence of smoked salmon across nearly all platters creates consistency—diners know to expect this particular velvety richness. Where platters differentiate is in additional silken elements: Jade’s champagne jelly (wobbling, cool, acid-tinged), Min Jiang’s hamachi (buttery, clean, refined), Peach Garden’s lobster (firm-tender, sweet, luxurious), Neo Garden’s gold ingot jelly (neutral, cooling, symbolic).
Chew & Resistance
Abalone appears in two platters (Jade and Min Jiang), providing substantial, almost muscular chew that requires engagement. This creates eating rhythm variation—crunchy vegetables require minimal chewing before swallowing, while abalone demands thorough mastication. Jellyfish (in Capitol Kempinski’s offering) provides different resistance—snappy rather than muscular, with a satisfying give before yielding.
Pop & Burst
Min Jiang’s tobiko introduces explosive pop—tiny detonations of marine salinity that surprise and delight. Capitol Kempinski’s ice plant (if included among the seven vegetables) or passion fruit seeds create similar bursting sensations. Peach Garden’s crystalline ice plant definitely contributes cellular pop. These bursting elements add playfulness, transforming eating into a textural treasure hunt.
The Philosophy of Ephemeral Art
What unites these elaborate platters beyond ingredients and technique is their fundamental temporality. Unlike sculpture in bronze or oil paintings on canvas, these creations exist to be destroyed. The horse heads, calligraphic characters, and full-body sculptures that require hours to construct are violently dismantled within minutes during the tossing ritual.
This built-in ephemerality—the understanding that beauty serves temporary, functional purpose before transformation into nourishment—reflects profound philosophical acceptance. The chefs invest extraordinary skill creating forms they know will be immediately destroyed. Diners photograph extensively, attempting to preserve digitally what must be sacrificed physically to fulfill the dish’s purpose.
The tossing ritual itself represents controlled destruction as celebration. Shouting prosperity wishes while flinging ingredients skyward transforms careful composition into joyful chaos. The higher the toss, the greater the luck—an interesting reversal where disorder becomes desirable outcome.
Yet something persists beyond the platter’s destruction. The memory of visual beauty, the communal experience of tossing together, the taste impressions across the meal—these intangible residues justify the labor. The chefs create experiences, not merely food. The horse sculptures serve as vehicles for something larger: connection, tradition, celebration, hope for the coming year.
Conclusion: Choosing Your Horse
Each reviewed platter offers distinct appeal depending on dining context and values.
For pure culinary sophistication and willingness to invest significantly, Jade’s Premium Winning Horse Yu Sheng represents the pinnacle—its kumquat dressing, champagne jelly, and meticulous execution justify the $888++ price for those seeking the ultimate yusheng experience in an elegant setting.
For traditional luxury within a heritage hotel environment, Shang Palace delivers refined execution and spectacular presentation at a more accessible $268++, its three-hour cold-room preparation ensuring optimal quality.
For ingredient complexity and innovative dressing, Min Jiang’s fruit-forward approach and hand-painted artistry create a sophisticated modern interpretation that respects tradition while pushing boundaries.
For accessibility, home celebration, and innovative tropical flavors, Capitol Kempinski’s takeaway option brings quality and creativity to family gatherings without requiring restaurant reservations.
For ingredient count and full-body sculptural ambition at accessible locations, Peach Garden across six outlets makes elaborate horse-shaped yusheng available to more diners, while their corporate mega-platters serve those seeking maximum spectacle.
For catering large gatherings with full-horse presentation and traditional flavors, Neo Garden’s oversized options provide impressive centerpieces with symbolic gold ingot jellies.
The Year of the Horse gallops forward with these edible monuments to craftsmanship, tradition, and the eternal human desire to transform sustenance into celebration. In their creation and destruction, these platters enact an annual ritual that connects Singaporeans to cultural heritage while showcasing contemporary culinary ambition. As ingredients tumble and prosperity wishes echo through dining rooms across the island, the horses—however briefly—have served their purpose: bringing beauty, symbolism, and shared joy to the table before disappearing into memory and satisfied appetites.