mango puff, har gao, crispy char siew pao

S$40++ restaurant week lunch menu

for october G8 get-together, we decided to go for the S$40++pax restaurant week lunch at summer palace at regent hotel on 7.10.2013. 🙂

i don’t do restaurant week lunch these days as the offers are not great at dining city ‘star’ restaurants (often worse than credit card like UOB offers & more restrictive in menu than cheaper set lunches). also many ‘star’ restaurants do not provide menu so it is a “trust me” deal, when there are so many other good deals to pick & choose from? 🙂

anyhow summer palace provided the menu which looked fine. & we checked at the restaurant the usual lunch menu started at S$68++pax & the restaurant week menu looked better by comparison. 🙂

crispy char siew pao

sliced fish century egg tan chai soup

1/2 baby lobster in superior sauce

siew york meen sin

trio of dessert

we had trio of dimsum. the mango puff  was ok, har gao with birds nest was good consistent with good dimsum restaurant but bird nest was too small a helping to be relevant. the puffy char siew pao was good  too sweet like a char siew soh (the reason i don’t take char siew soh) whereas HK Timhowan’s version was a crispy not puffy dough & less sweet & much better.

the sliced fish century egg tan chai soup was quite strange as 1 of my friends observed. it was quite tasty (though no better than a good lie tong), a bit heavy & confusing in taste & kind of poor in presentation for fine dining.

the 1/2 baby lobster in superior sauce (those small 300g ones), which ought to be the centre-piece attraction, was kind of disappointing to me taste-wise. the meat texture was also not bouncy like usual live lobsters & the superior sauce not flavourful enough.

the 烧肉面线 – mian sian was ok not as tasty as chui huay lim. the roast pork however was a disaster. hard & tasteless. i thought it was a poor dish for such a classy restaurant.

the trio of dessert was very average. the osmanthus jelly was ok but harder jelly not as soft & tasty as HK Timhowan’s or the ones they served at the Lantau Big Buddha vegetarian kitchen. the aloe vera & mango were just ok, average.

water & cashew nuts were free. they charged S$2.50pax for chinese tea, quite fair. 4 of us took the poh lei tea. ambience was great, service professional, but the food standard was kind of below par c/w majestic or even tunglok! there was a 1/2lobster but overall taste wise this specially discounted S$40++pax menu gave less satisfaction than a similar priced 6-course lunch set at majestic. of the menu dishes, actually the dimsum were better items (except for dessert) so maybe dimsum here but it sure would be ex.

one last thing, because it was restaurant week, they gave only 1 complimentary parking coupon for 6pax. there were 3 of us who parked at the hotel & my friends kindly let me have the coupon & i noticed on leaving the carpark that the charge was S$10.75 or something! goodness!

c.h.e.f andy