Da Ge Fan (Tangxiayong West Road)

Directness at the pass

Quality stays on the plate before it reaches the room. Yornie van Dijk, chef at Da Ge Fan (Tangxiayong West Road) in Guangzhou, works from that plain standard: keep the cooking clear, keep the pace clean, let each component arrive with its purpose intact. His first kitchen work began at Dolle Griet in Harderwijk, washing dishes at the base of the hierarchy, where heat, repetition, and the movement of service taught the discipline before any authorship could enter. Since 2022, he has carried chef-owner responsibility at Restaurant Basiliek in Harderwijk while also holding the chef role here, a dual station that makes consistency less a slogan than a daily test. Van Dijk has said, “It is important for me to ensure quality.” He has also said, “As a chef, I am clear and direct.” At Da Ge Fan, those lines suit a Teochew kitchen where restraint matters: seafood, broth, rice, pigeon, vinegar, knife work, and wok heat all lose force when the hand tries to decorate them.

Broth, crust, and the Teochew hand

The house builds its centre of gravity around Da Ge Fan, rice cooked in pigeon and pork bone broth until the bottom takes on a crisp golden crust, then finished with steamed pigeon or related cuts. The dish depends on absorption, timing, and the patient management of heat; too much weight in the broth dulls the grain, too little leaves the crust without depth. Around it, the kitchen keeps to a modern Teochew line: sashimi-style seafood cuts that rely on sharp knife work, steamed fish served for clean flesh rather than garnish, cold crab tightened by aged vinegar, silken tofu in clarified broth, and greens carried by a restrained gloss. Sautéed squid with cucumber brings the wok into the same discipline, asking for spring in the squid, freshness in the cucumber, and no excess sauce on the plate. The wine program follows that clarity with mineral-driven whites and graceful Champagnes, while aged teas carry the meal back toward the slower register of the table.

Stone, wood, and a quieter room

The room gives the kitchen enough silence to be read. Natural stone, burnished wood, and soft light set a measured calm, with discreet salons for conversations that do not need to cross the floor. This is not a stage set for spectacle; it is a small, elegant restaurant where the counter, the pass, and the tableware all work in the same key. Service moves with an upscale casual ease, attentive without turning the meal into theatre. In that quiet, texture becomes easier to notice: the crust at the base of the rice, the pearled flesh of steamed fish, the cool edge of crab and vinegar, the clean lift of cucumber against squid. The restaurant’s Bib Gourmand in the 2025 Michelin Guide belongs to this address, but the more lasting impression is made by the way the kitchen keeps returning to pigeon rice.