SINGAPORE – Opulent palace feasts have long fascinated audiences, from recent South Korean drama Bon Appetit, Your Majesty, to Chinese serials such as Delicacies Destiny (2022) and Royal Feast (2022).

Now, closer to home, diners can have a taste of imperial grandeur when InterContinental Singapore’s Cantonese restaurant Man Fu Yuan stages an eight-course Manchu-Han banquet of over 40 dishes on Nov 8 and 9.

The five-hour dinner feast, priced at an eye-watering $588++ a person, will be led by executive Chinese chef Aaron Tan and his mentor, Beijing-based master chef Qi Jinzhu. The event is an interpretation of the Manchu-Han Imperial Feast, complete with music performances and calligraphy to evoke the courtly splendour of the Qing Dynasty.

For chef Tan, 44, the banquet is the fulfilment of a long-held dream.

He recalls being captivated as a teenager by the 1995 Hong Kong film The Chinese Feast, which featured elaborate dishes from the legendary banquet. “I rewatched the movie on videotape about 10 times,” he says. “The culinary artistry captured my imagination, and I felt it would be the greatest honour to one day prepare such an extraordinary feast.”

That fascination stayed with him through decades of kitchen work. He started cooking at age 11 in his home town of Tanjung Piandang, Perak, as a zi char restaurant kitchen helper to supplement his family’s modest income.

He came to Singapore in 2001 to work in a Cantonese restaurant. In 2007, he switched to Western cuisine, joining a catering group before moving to the then Conrad Centennial Singapore, where he rose to the position of chef de cuisine. He returned to Cantonese fine dining in 2019, when he joined InterContinental Singapore as executive sous chef of Man Fu Yuan.

Over the years, he asked senior Chinese chefs to teach him the traditions of the imperial feast – in vain. He finally succeeded in 2023, when he met Chinese master chef Qi in Sarawak, where they were both judging a culinary competition.

Master chef Qi, 71, is a disciple of the late ...