This restaurant is located on the 7th floor of Gurney Plaza. It is in the old building, across the atrium from the Golden Screen Cinema multiplex. Their specialty is steamed rice in wooden tubs with a wide selection of toppings.
The first to arrive was the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Mixed Roasted Meats. The toppings comprised roast pork, barbeque pork, roast chicken and roast duck, with a sprig of pak choy and a shitake mushroom, in a light soy-based sauce. They also added some wolfberries (aka goji berries or boxthorn berries, or kee chee in Hokkien). They are those red things you can see on top. It turned out that they add wolfberries to almost every dish they serve, and a few of the drinks as well. These guys must get a good deal buying the stuff in bulk, like, by the ton...
This dish was a little bland to my palate. The roast chicken we were served was breast meat which was a little on the tough side. The duck breast was only slightly better, but since it's not my favourite cut of meat on poultry, I may be a bit biased.
Next came the Steamed Rice in Wooden Barrel with Spare Ribs in Black Pepper Sauce. These were deep-fried pieces of well-marinated spare ribs drenched in a generous amount of black pepper sauce.
This went down a treat! The marinade has penetrated deep into the meat which gives it a spicy, smoky flavour. This may be a little spicy for younger children, mind. I'll definitely order this dish on my next visit!
I must admit the next dish looked much better in the photo on the menu, but it is understandable since the menu photo has all the ingredients piled on top, whereas in the real-life item the ingredients are cut into smaller pieces and well-distributed within the noodles.
The noodles had just the right texture and from the aroma you can tell the noodles were furiously toss-fried over one of those insanely powerful burners you find in professional Chinese kitchens. Note the lack of wolfberries; this turned out to be the only dish where they don't make an appearance.
We ordered a set of 4 Xiao Long Bao since they were on the menu. And yes the wolfberries are back!
I regret to say that these were disappointing. The skin on these dumplings were too thick and tough. The filling was also nowhere near the flavoursome morsels you can find at Dragon-i. In my opinion they should stop selling this dish and get some lessons in how to make proper Xiao Long Bao. It's just not on to get people's hopes up with these abominations.
Next up is the Steamed Rice in Bamboo with Assorted Seafood.
The assorted seafood include crabsticks, prawns, faux abalone and a wafer-thin slice of grouper (I think). The rice is soaked in a fish broth and the dish on the whole is passable, but nothing to write home about.
Stir-fried Hong Kong Choi Sum is next.
The vegetable, which wasn't very fresh to begin with, was overcooked to death. Nuff sed.
After 3 disappointing dishes, along came the Deep Fried Calamari Rings with Salt and Pepper.
This dish is surprisingly good. If you do order this dish, eat it quickly before it loses its crunch.
All in all I would go back to this restaurant, of only to order the Black Pepper Spare Ribs and Seafood Noodles, and maybe to try some of the other dishes on the menu.
Bon appetit!
GPS Coordinates: 5.437382, 100.309686
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