W and G asked me whether we wanted to join them for Dim Sum with aunt and uncle. Turned out here wasn't anything vegetarian food, so hubby passed and only I joined them. They came and fetch me bright and early at 8.30am on a Sunday morning, and then went to fetch aunt and uncle, and reached the restaurant at around 10am. Because we were relatively early, there wasn't any queue and we were seated in no time. Unfortunately, we were given a seat towards the back of the restaurant where trolley traffic wasn't high.
Red Star is a typical dim sum restaurant where you look out for trolleys carrying various items. We have a menu card on the table, and for each item we get off a trolley, the server will stamp a mark right beside the item. Final bill will be tabulated based on the number of marks. Most items comes in three pieces per serving. If you ask for double servings, two stamps will be issued. The problem with this system is: because you aren't sure when the next trolley is coming by and what's on it, you have the tendency to just get things off the first trolley. With this occurring multiple times before the food you really want make its way to your table, the likelihood of getting too much food becomes very high.
That was what exactly happened to us. Although we knew that having deep fried food at the start will make for a very limited stomach for everything else, the first trolley that stopped by served exactly that. We ended up with a plate of Onde Onde (what's that doing in a dim sum restaurant anyway??) and a fried dumpling. The dumpling turned out to have a banana filling, much to G's disgust. He hates bananas. This was also when I discovered I was in some kind of trouble. When there are three pieces of food, and you're dining with two couples, the result is each couple will share one piece, while I have to eat the third piece all by myself. So you can imagine that I was filling up a lot faster than they were.
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| Onde Onde |
Next trolley gave us fried prawn dumplings and fish paste stuffed chillis. The dumpling were nice and crispy. The fish paste were of good texture (meaning no overuse of flour), and the sauce aptly flavored. These were followed by the trolley carrying steamed goodies, but of all, we were only interested in the siew mai and steamed glutinous rice. The siew mai were decent, but not amazing. The glutinous rice were pretty yummy. Then another trolley came by with deep fried battered tofu. They must have been mediocre, because it had escaped my memory so much that I had to text W the picture to ask her what it was just a moment ago... =P
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| Fish paste stuffed chillis |
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| Deep fried prawn dumplings |
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| Siew mai |
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| Deep fried battered tofu |
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| Glutinous rice |
After these 'unintentional' orders, we finally got the trolley we wanted. Chee cheong fun!! Hot, nicely steamed chee cheong fun that had a great chewy:brittle ratio (if you know what I mean. If you don't, I'm really just trying to say that the texture is still resistant to the teeth, but you don't have to struggle like a mad cow to bite it off) wrapped around delicious char siew. But somehow, I still prefer NUH kopitiam's steam-on-the-spot-with-fillings-of-your-choice chee cheong fun. It had become some kind of a gold standard for my chee cheong fun.
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| Char siew chee cheong fun |
By then we finally went off to the counters to get the other two favorites (which aunt had already decided on the ride there that she wanted those) - roasted suckling pig and century egg congee. The pig skin is nice and crunchy, and the flesh not overly oily. It was pretty good suckling pig, at a comfortable quantity. I did refrain myself because I knew I was going to have a lot more suckling pig for dinner that night (next post). The congee was fragrant, with a generous heap of fried wan ton skin added for texture and flavor. Luckily W and G only got 2 bowls to share among the 5 of us. I didn't want to be stuck in the scenario of finishing one whole bowl by myself. Another steam trolley came by and we got prawn dumplings and yam cake. I really liked the yam cake drenched in sauce. It had a good amount of yam in it, not just flour like many other places.
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| Roasted suckling pig |
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| Century egg congee |
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| Prawn dumplings and yam cake |
We waited a long long while before the dessert trolleys came around. We had the so-call signature durian pancakes - crepes filled with pure durian. It was pretty good, but nothing out of this world. Finally finished our meal with honeydew sago cream and gui lin gao. By then, I was so so stuffed. I did enjoy the meal, probably more because of the company. Food wise, they were pretty good but nothing much jumped out and impressed me. I did like the suckling pig, congee and yam cake. Given this is only the second time I'm having yum cha style dim sum (timing around helping out at my mom's coffeeshop stall didn't allow for it since young), I don't think I'm in the position to critique too much. Although I'm sure I've eaten better dim sum before, and (oops) most of them were mom's...
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