The leftovers were no indication that his food was no good, in fact, it was excellent. The problem was with my dining companions. The day I dined at Bali-Hi, on the chef's invitation to sample his gourmet ware, my two escorts were vegetarians and I had to eat all the non-vegetarian dishes. I had forewarned Liang that he should make small portions for me if I had to sample all his specialties, but the warning was not heeded. As a consequence,I now have to make up with him by dining there another night and ensuring there are no leftovers.

Having been at Bali-Hi for just two months, Liang is still going through customer responses and is formulatinga new menu, which should be out in a few weeks. He diligently goes into the comments made by the guests and makes notes in his personal diary. Liang loves to cook and loves to please his customers.

One thing that he has already learnt, following a short stint at the Searock Sheraton, Mumbai, is that Indians like spicy food. So he will offer more Schezwan dishes, which use a special chilly sauce imported from Hong Kong. This sauce is made from Chinese red chillies and dry chilly power to give it a different sting from the Indian chilly.

Chef Liang has laid out quite a spread: Chilli prawns, using that special chilly sauce, Governor's chicken and sweet and sour fish for the non-vegetarians and Chinese greens with mushrooms in white garlic sauce and baby corn mushroom with tomato chilli sauce for the vegetarians. This was accompanied by vegetable noodles. Before this feast, we had prawn rolls and vegetable golden corn as starters. The prawns were wrapped in spring roll batter and deep fried for the rightcrispness. The Hot and Sour soups followed with a sprinkling of sea food for the non-vegetarian. His soup differs from that of others as he has a generous sprinkling of vegetables including mushrooms and flavoured with sesame oil.

A major part of Liang's years as a chef has been in Beijing and his cooking is truly Chinese, a gold medal at the '93 National Culinary Competition in Beijing, is proof. But he admits that what he cooks in China is different and has to adapt the food for the Indian palate. ``But I try to keep it as close to the Beijing recipes as possible,'' says a timid Liang. Definitely, his food is the closest you can get to authentic Chinese cuisine in India. And I may have to go back to do justice to his cooking.