Summer Palace

Hello!

The long weekend is drawing to an end and as reluctant as I am to return to reality, I am equally grateful for the few days of respite from work. I actually had the luxury of catching up on sleep on Wednesday night and I felt as good as new on Thursday when I went to Summer Palace at the Regent Hotel for a dimsum lunch! (:

I first read about Summer Palace when my good friend showed me their special National Day dimsum menu and needless to say, the patriot in me was all game for a National Day dimsum lunch! Hur Hur.  

We arrived at noon and the restaurant was pretty empty, but not for long. The place soon filled up with families and couples all gathering to eat their way into the long weekend! (:

The table decor was simple and nice (: I liked that we were seated at a big table so that we could shift our food about and not have to worry about the lack of space.

I am not sure if the attempt was deliberate (I'd like to think so) but the staff at Summer Palace actually took effort to make sure your dim sum dishes gets served one after the other so that you won't be too overwhelmed by having many steaming hot dishes laid out in front of you. I'm not sure about you but I often feel very stressed by the thought of food cooling down right before my very eyes and not tasting as good as they should be so this arrangement was perfect, except that I wouldn't mind if the transition were a tad faster so that there will be fewer mini pockets of empty table time.

Before I go on, I'd like to say that I forgot to get the receipt so I've no idea how much these individual items cost but the entire meal came up to about $70, which is pretty decent in our humble opinion (: We chose to have 'ala carte' for all our dishes and the portion sizes were reduced to suit 2 people so we were nicely filled up and were not bursting at the seams so all was well and good.

We were presented with cold long beans as starters. Since we were both quite hungry when we arrived at Summer Palace, we were more than happy to eat this all up!

The first item that was served was the fried yam puff with seafood and it was a welcome change from the fried yam puff with meat that are usually served at other restaurants because this means that I can eat the entire puff for once without having to dig the meat out! Yipee! (: These were pretty good but nothing spectacular.

Then came the dainty lobster and prawn steamed dumpling if I'm not wrong. They look so pretty! (: They tasted okay but I felt that the prawn was a tad too hard.

Perhaps the most unique steamed glutinous rice that I've had because it came with a piece of abalone on the top! (: I felt that the abalone was a nice touch because it went well with the rice (:

And THE STAR of the meal finally arrived! THIS is the reason why I actually decided to lunch at Summer Palace - they were serving National Day Special Chilli Crab Baos! Oooh la la. The filling was slightly spicy but it was good! I felt so happy after eating this because it made me feel so accomplished! Heh.

Their mango and prawn fritters were SUPERB. Thankfully my good friend decided to opt for the full size (i.e. a serving of 3 pieces instead of 2) so we could have 1.5 pieces each! They are definitely a MUST try! (:

Then came the pan-fried duck meat sesame flat bun? Haha I actually have no idea what this is called and I only know that there is duck as filling. It was so-so.

And how can I ever get enough of my favourite salted egg yolk custard bun! It was made to perfection! I frankly think that this is one of the better salted egg yolk custard buns that I've had.. will go back for more in future! (:

Finally, we ended our meal with two cold desserts, both equally good and yummy (: They weren't special or spectacular but they did their job of delivering a sweet and fitting end to the first glorious meal of the long weekend.

Yup that's all for now (: Have to prep for school tomorrow! Till the next post! (: