The views from Min Jiang over Hyde Park were stunning on the day we visited — London at its autumnal finest. In the distance, we could see all of London’s tall buildings. I could have sat in the bar forever, drinking Min Jiang’s excellent Mai Tais, and watching the leaves turn more golden and more brown.

Because the restaurant is a narrow space, it’s hard not to have a table with a view but should you book a table (and you should), make sure to ask for a table by the window because really, the views are that pretty. London, I forget how beautiful you are sometimes. (To be honest, I really don’t forget. But it’s still nice to be reminded.)

We did not choose our own food so you will have to rely on the detailed notes over on London Unattached for a complete list of everything we ate. Fiona very capably got the restaurant staff to point out what was arriving with each dish. I always find it a little odd when restaurants invite people like us in and then don’t provide us with any information about what we’re having and don’t seem to want us to take a menu either.)

Now, although I am slightly scolding Min Jiang for not being as prepared for us social media beings as they should have been, I have to say that I really, really, really loved our slightly omniscient server, who told us later in the meal that he’d been with Min Jiang for five years. He’s a keeper, that one.

As dim sum should be, our lunch started off with a veritable parade of dim sum.  Soup dumplings, pot stickers, baked char siew puffs (can’t. stop. eating. them.), and an assortment of steamed dumplings. The highlight for me though was the yam croquette with seafood. I remember asking if it was taro and I could swear someone said yes so is taro yam? I had no idea! (LMGTFY…apparently, taro and yam are not exactly the same.)

While we were very happily demolishing all the dim sum, I kept wondering…where is the duck? What will the duck be like? When is the duck coming?

Our lovely server

And it came, along with a very shy chef who wasn’t too keen on having his photo taken. (That’s our server in the photo.) But suffice it to say the shy chef’s carving skills are excellent. The duck was — as duck is supposed to be — beautiful. Crispy skin, and darkly dark flavors.

While our shy chef was carving up the duck, I watched him take small choice bits that he carved from the neck and set them aside. These were presented to us along with a small bowl of sugar. If you’ve never considered dipping your duck in sugar, YOU REALLY SHOULD. It was pretty amazing. Stick a fork in me, I was done.

But we weren’t done! There was more! Was this one of the best days of my entire life? I wasn’t quite sure, but I was sure that if life on earth had ended at that moment — as it sort of had because the US election and had just happened and now Donald Trump would be the next president of the United States — I would have died a very happy woman. Tiger prawns, a beef dish, and some asparagus with lotus root completed our lunch.

And then they brought us dessert! Flaky egg tarts, cutesy sesame dumplings shaped like mice, and a little dessert wine too.

May all our meals be this delicious, this varied, and this interesting.

The Verdict: Go!

Thanks to  Traverse for inviting me along to lunch. And thanks London Unattached and 2 Food Trippers for the company.

The post Min Jiang, South Kensington first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Guys, I have a new obsession. I love The Sichuan on City Road, halfway between Moorgate and Old Street. (At Worship Street, if you know it.) I want to eat at The Sichuan all the time now. I love it. I mean, firstly, I love Sichuan food in general. But secondly, I really just love the location and the offering. Sometimes, I like the staff. The sweet guy on my first visit, who was from Chengdu himself, has been my favorite. Other times, I have been somewhat unlucky. That being said…if you had to choose, what you would rather? Friendly, efficient service or someone who actually knows the food? (Ideally, of course, I’d like both but what if you had to choose???)

Most of all, besides liking the food, I like the prices. A small bowl of dan dan noodles for £4.50!! A very large serving of ma po tofu for £7.50! It’s truly amazing. If I still worked across the street like I did for many years, I would eat here EVERY DAY. Every day. Check out the lunch menu! Did I mention they are open on weekends? A sit-down Chinese restaurant on City Road — and a Sichuan one to boot — that is open on weekends during the day? It’s like my dream has finally come true!

The chef used to be at Bar Shu. Also, Hutong at The Shard. So he’s the real deal. And so is his food. Note that the decor is nothing spectacular, and neither are the loos.

The Verdict: You should go. Look for me. I’ll probably be there.

The post The Sichuan, Shoreditch first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Assorted Dim Sum

Cheung Fun

Cocktails!

Shumai and other Dumplings

Hakkasan Hanway Place was seriously one of the first restaurants I ever went to in London as an adult. (My 1993 London visit while I was in university doesn’t count for anything. One day, I’ll tell you about the sleeping arrangements.) My first visit to Hakkasan was in 2001 when I was here from the States for six weeks for work and the “Design Guy” came over and took us all out to Hakkasan and paid too. He must have read about the restaurant in one of those design magazines because this was 2001 after all, before blogs and Yelp and all those other Internet-Web-App things.  My, how times have changed.

All these years later though and Hakkasan itself has not changed all that much. It’s still the darkly sexy place it once was and I still get a little freaked out when I try to find the door to the loos. Ah! They’re behind that wall/door thing! I get it! Hakkasan has also expanded, thanks to our friends at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a very sovereign and very wealthy sovereign wealth fund. If I were Mr. Yau, I would roll around in all my money all the live long day. Maybe, just maybe, I’d buy a small island somewhere. A tropical one.

Although I don’t have Mr. Yau’s money, I did find myself at Hakkasan Hanway Place the other weekend, thanks to the kind invite of Fiona from London Unattached and the lovely PRs behind Hakkasan. We were joined by A Girl Has to Eat too, and as with our Duck & Rice experience, I was happy to let AGHTE do all the ordering. She’s very, very good at it!

Only we really didn’t have to order much except for some cheung fun. Because Hakkasan Hanway Place is offering a new Sunday set brunch special. And it’s an amazingly good value, even though this is going to seem like a big number when I tell you the number…

It’s £58 quid. And it is so so worth it because…

For £58 quid, you get all this…per person!

Drinks…

• Choice of cocktail
• Louis Roederer Brut Premier NV Champagne, France 12% half bottle
• Choice of after dinner cocktail

Food…

• Crispy duck salad with pomelo, pine nut and shallot
• Har gau
• Scallop shumai
• Chinese chive dumpling
• Duck and yam bean dumpling
• Royal king crab and truffle roll
• Baked venison puff
• Smoked duck and pumpkin puff
• Golden radish crab meat pastry
• XO seafood and water chestnut lettuce wrap
• Stir-fry black pepper rib eye beef with merlot
• Seasonal vegetable
• Ginger and spring onion fried rice
• Selection of dessert

If that’s not amazing, I don’t know what is. For £58 quid!! I mean, like I said, I know that’s a big number, but talk about getting your money’s worth!! Sure, there are some misses on the menu — I didn’t die over the lettuce wraps — but there are more hits than misses and that counts for something.  Check out the full menu online and then drop into Hakkasan on a Sunday afternoon and then roll yourself home! Vegetarian menu available.

The Verdict: Nothing not to like!

I was a guest of Fiona’s and Hakkasan. I did not pay for my meal but I did tip on the full amount. 

The post Sunday Dim Sum Brunch at Hakkasan Hanway Place first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and say to myself, “I wish I could have Chinese food for breakfast.” I consider heading to Chinatown to see what’s open. I know Royal China on Baker Street opens at 11 am on Sundays but that is too late.

Enter Chinese Laundry on Upper Street! They will be open from 8:30 am during the week! And they’ll serve Chinese breakfast! Like Chinese pancakes. And buns! This seems like the answer to my prayers, but yet…only MY prayers. Will other people want to eat Chinese pancakes so early in the day? (Particularly the denizens of Islington?) I am not so sure. I would love to see the market sizing on this one.

Right now, the restaurant is in soft launch mode, and the only thing they are serving is all day Chinese breakfast. If I were a real restaurant critic, I would not write about a restaurant in soft launch mode. But I’m not a real restaurant critic am I? So there you go. I dropped in at 12 on a Thursday and despite many people staring at the menu in the window, I was the only one in the place. I had a pleasant table looking out onto Upper Street (and all the people staring in the window) and guess what? I had the Chinese pancake. And a pork belly baozi, which was absolutely huge and a little too bready for me. But the Chinese pancake was delicious and whoever fried that egg knew what they were doing.

I like the idea of Chinese Laundry, and I like the kitschy decor. I’m just not so sure other people will like the idea of Chinese Laundry. I guess that means more Chinese food for breakfast for me, but I hope I am not their only customer.

The Service: Sweet and helpful throughout.

The Verdict; Thumbs up on the Chinese pancake.

The post Chinese Laundry, Islington first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

The Duck and Rice is the latest outlet by design supremo and superstar restaurateur Alan Yau who is best known for the Michelin starred Chinese restaurants Hakkasan and Yauatcha,and the high street dining chains Wagamamas and Busaba Eathai. With The Duck and Rice, Yau pays “homage to the ‘holy’ [sic] British drinking establishment” by converting what was once the rather shabby Endurance Pub into a modern day boozer on the ground floor and a funky Chinese restaurant on the first. (KN note: I don’t understand why the restaurant uses [sic] in that sentence on their website.)

It’s an interesting new approach to Chinese eating, and it certainly adds a new twist to the concept of east meets west. I went to The Duck and Rice with Krista from Passportdelicious.com and we both agreed that we loved the ambience of the restaurant. It was very COOL with a dynamic energy that made it a great dining venue. Krista was happy for me to order and so I did my best to order as much food as I could with the £50 that received for writing about the UNCOVER app.

We started with some sesame prawn toast (£6.50) which had been recommended in many reviews. These proved to be really enjoyable and had been expertly prepared with a generous spread of tasty and well-seasoned minced prawn topping. The sesame seeds worked well to complement the flavour of the prawns, and the toast was crispy and admirably did not taste oily.

Venison puffs (£4.80) are a take on another dim sum classic, the char sui (BBQ pork) puff, and here they were delicious, packing in lots of great flavour. The sauce in the filling had the right level of consistency and sweetness and was very authentic tasting. However the pastry was ever so slightly underdone and not quite flaky enough. A few more minutes of cooking time and these could have been perfect.

Jasmine smoked pork ribs (£14) were sublimely tender with a great flavour. But the ribs needed more sauce, and the sauce needed more spicing. Nevertheless, we really enjoyed the ribs. We both agreed it was better to have good quality ribs that were well cooked with not enough sauce, rather than badly cooked ribs with too much sauce.

A dish of wasabi prawns (£10.50) contained some good quality battered prawns that were sweet and meaty. But we didn’t enjoy the wasabi mayonnaise that came with the prawns as it was too rich and a little sickly. Serving the mayonnaise as a dipping sauce would probably have worked better. This would have also meant that the batter on the prawns would have stayed crunchier for longer.

Our final dish was the No23 (a reference to how in some Chinese restaurants you order by the number). The No23 was a chicken chow mein (£9.50) which we both found a little disappointing as it tasted flat. The dish lacked for that fragrant (香), almost slightly caramelised effect that you normally get with really well cooked Chinese wok noodles, and this usually comes from having the right level of wok heat.

We both enjoyed The Duck and Rice, especially for its great ambience and funky vibe. As for the food, notwithstanding some weak spots in the cooking, this was fairly tasty with the occasional glimpses of authenticity. The service was pleasant and friendly, and far better than what you would get in a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Price wise, we were rather impressed with ourselves for managing to order as much food as we did for about £50. That said we found the 13% service charge (rather than the standard 12.5%) to be quite cheeky.

Food rating: 3.5/5

Service rating: 3.5/5

(Hi…it’s Krista again…)

So A Girl Has to Eat and I were pretty much in agreement on all of the dishes, although it’s fair to say that I probably would have rated this on an overall basis more like a 3 than a 3.5. When you start thinking that your local Chinese take-away does a better job than Duck & Rice, well, that tells you something.

Also, we had a small snafu when we first arrived that A Girl Has to Eat doesn’t mention, and I really want to talk about it. We arrived at the restaurant just in time for our booking, and I forget if I said this or if AGHTE said this but one of us said, “Oh, and do you have a note about our voucher with Uncover? There should be a note in our reservation about our £50 voucher?” We were very polite in asking this and remained polite throughout. The female host though was kinda rude. She told us that there was no note and she would know about it. At which point I said something like, “I have the email confirmation from the PR. I can show it to you…” and she really didn’t even want to see it, and repeated that if indeed there was a voucher, she would know about it. At that point, I think I said, “Maybe there’s a manager you check with? I really do have an email from the PR and I’d be happy to show it to you…” Can you guess what she said next? You guessed it…she reminded us that she would know about the voucher. She didn’t even give us a chance! Then, all of a sudden, a nice young man appeared out of nowhere and said “Do you mean the Uncover voucher? Yes, they called earlier. It’s all sorted. Follow me.” He apologized to us but I just go so mad at the woman at the front. I hate when people insist that they are right to the point of not even giving someone a chance. And well, once she realized she was wrong, I expected more from her.

Best of all, visiting Duck & Rice was fun for me because it reminded me of my “With each passing day, your ovaries are dying” Internet date many years ago. Now that’s a good story!

AGHTE and I dined at Duck & Rice with a £50 voucher from Uncover, the last minute lunch and dinner reservations app. We received the voucher in return for writing about Uncover.  

The post The Duck & Rice, Soho first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

The pace of change. For years, my stretch of City Road in London was desolate. Empty. There was a Pret a Manger, but not much else. We got excited when the pixtos place opened up, but after too many bad meals there, we were no longer so keen. And then I left the city. And everything good happened. The dodgy Chinese ballroom became Rotary Diner (more on that some other day), and the dodgy Chinese takeaway window became YUM BUN. And Yum it is. Very, very yum.

Yum and PACKED. My colleague Echo warns me we must go early or else we must wait. And we do go early. But still we wait. The queue is deep. But for £7.50, we get two buns and some pot stickers and we sit in the window of the old dodgy Chinese ballroom and watch the hipsters cycle through the Silicon Roundabout and I wonder…why are my lunches in America so f*cking boring.

And then I also wonder WHAT IF, but then I get sad so we leave.

The Verdict: Cheap, cheerful, and yum.

The post Yum Bun, London first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

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Sun Wah BBQ
5039 North Broadway
Chicago, IL

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, May 4, 2011

The Victims: Aileen, Bob, and their two young doppelgängeren.

The Background: Fact: On my birthday, I like to eat Chinese food. I think it’s a childhood thing. We always used to go to Hunan Dynasty back on Strong Island and my brother and I would split the “Pu Pu Platter” which involved fire and multiple sparklers. Kids like fire, what can I say?

For my actual birthday this year though, I was in London. No Chinese food. (Not that there’s no Chinese food in London…it’s just that I have this certain set of friends that will only eat at a certain level of restaurant.) So we went to the very white and very pristine St. John Hotel instead. (More about that sometime soon.) But the desire for Chinese food was still there…so once back in Chicago, I rallied up my troops for what I was hoping to be an onslaught of DUCK.

Problem #1: Aileen and Bob have never had crispy duck or Peking duck before. They seem unsure of the concept. Bob admits that he’s never had any sort of duck before! I pause momentarily…to get to this point in life and to have never had Peking duck or duck rillettes or any sort of duck?? I think I would die.

Problem #2: If you want real Peking duck, you have to order it 24 hours in advance. Whoops. There goes that idea.

Combine Problem #1 and Problem #2 and I order a quarter duck and proceed to drink all of Aileen & Bob’s Pinot Noir. (Note: it was not a full bottle!)

Bob let me have some of his hot & sour soup. Normally, I think sharing soup is WEIRD. But Bob’s small was so huge, there was no way he could finish it all, even with the doppelgängeren. Plus, I think the doppelgängeren are a little too young for hot & sour. This was pretty excellent and it was also super CHEAP. $4.50 for the huge bowl? Wow.

There is no vegetable I love more than Chinese broccoli. But you know what? This just wasn’t very good. I felt like it tasted bad…like it was just about to go off. Aileen and  Bob kindly gifted me the leftovers; I woke up the next morning, opened the fridge, and was struck with the gaseous stink of broccoli gone bad. Yuck.

The egg rolls were good though. Hard not to like deep-friend anything, I suppose.

OK, so back to the duck. I thought for sure I could convince them to give me some pancakes/buns with my 1/4 duck. NO DICE. They gave me plum sauce. They gave me veg. They refused me pancakes. Only, apparently, if you order the Peking duck. We debated asking the table next to us if they would give us any of their pancakes. I even told our server I would take someone’s leftovers. No love. No love at all.

The Decor: It all felt just a little bit dirty. Again, I’m all for a good hole-in-the-wall (although Sun Wah is so big it could never be consider a true hole-in-the-wall), I’m getting a little concerned by the number of Chicago restaurants which have never seen the end of a high pressure water hose.

The Verdict: Meh. Everyone seems to love this place, but my experience was just not so compelling. And to refuse me pancakes! Blasphemy.

The post Sun Wah BBQ, Uptown first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Lao Sze Chuan
2172 Archer Ave (in Chinatown Square, on the very end)
Chicago

Date of Last Visit: Wednesday, January 26, 2011

The Victims: Grubwithus

The Damage: $24.50 each plus a $10 corkage fee.

The Background: I went to Chinatown on a dark and dreary and frankly freezing cold Chicago night. I almost didn’t make it. (When will it end? Really. When???)

But I was going to Lao Sze Chuan, a place I’d been to time and time again with my Chinese colleauges between 1998 and 2004. I used to let them do all the ordering. They liked that about me. They  introduced me to tripe and changed my life.

This time, I was there with Grubwithus, the social dining experiment. (You should try it.) There would be no tripe this time. We were still all strangers to each other.

But we did start out with these very fat and very delicious pork potstickers. I felt greedy. I AM greedy.

Szechuan-style dried beef was fiery.

I liked the String Beans in Spicy Black Bean Sauce but wish they hadn’t cut up the string beans.

This was probably my least favorite dish–Baby Baicai with Black Mushroom sauce–and that’s saying a lot because it was still pretty good.

This Sole Fish Cutlet in Chili Bean Sauce was my absolute favorite dish of the night. I kept going back for more. No one stopped me.

Also excellent, the Salt & Pepper Prawns. I wanted to get an order “to go” and eat them on the train and offer them to strangers.

Around this point of the evening, I lost track of my picture-taking as the Lazy Susan spun round and round and the red wine in my glass got lower and lower.

And then the desert came. Lao Sze Chuan makes my kind of dessert…Crispy Sweet Potato cakes. (You might know that I like very few desserts. I am more a savory person. However, I do make exceptions for macarons, lemon tart, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and mango sorbet.) These were, in a word, stellar. They say people drive all the way down to Chinatown just to pick up an order of Lao Sze Chuan crispy sweet potato cakes, and now I know why.

The Verdict: I love it here. Really. We also had Chef’s Special Dry Chili Beef, Tony’s Chicken with Three Chili, Szechuan Smoked Tea Duck, and Garlic Chinese Broccoli. And they were all awesome.

And the giant panda watched over us as we ate.

The post Lao Sze Chuan, Chinatown first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Date of Last Visit: 19 November 2010

The Victim: Tim

The Damage: $10 each

The Background: My employer’s location in downtown Chicago is not a bad one. If you like shopping. But if you like Chinese food (like I do), you’re in a bit of a wasteland. This is a problem for someone who was used to having Chinese food for lunch at least once at week in London.

So somewhere, somehow, I had read about Hong Kong Cafe. There was a quick search on Yelp for Chinese close to my office, which turned up raves. And then there was the LTH Forum (the local food boards), where a core of Chicago foodies declared (and photographed) their love.

It was time for a visit.

Hong Kong Cafe is on the 3rd floor of an office building full of jewelers. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never visit. We didn’t take the lift up to the restaurant, but I did think the lift was photo-worthy.

The Hong Kong Cafe is in the Mallers Building. The restaurant used to be a coffee shop. I like old signs like this.

The cafe still looks like a coffee shop. I was tempted to order a grilled cheese and a root beer float.

My colleague and I both opted for the lunch special. $7.45 for soup, egg roll, rice, and main. My hot and sour soup was really really good. Served piping hot with just enough of a kick to it. And full of very good things. I confirmed that this soup did not come from a bucket. The proprieters make everything fresh and on site.

My egg roll was flaky on the outside and full of more delicious things on the inside. In my haste to finish it after that first perfect bite, I neglected to more closely investigate the ingredients. The sweet and sour sauce is home made. In short, I could have done with another one of these.

For my main, I opted for the Szechuan chicken with peanuts. (Kung Pao Chicken?) My colleague and I both noted that our dishes weren’t overdone with meat like they can be in some places. For both of our dishes, the highlight was on the vegetables. (Tim ordered the Three Delicacies, which included beef, chicken and prawns. And lots of vegetables.) My dish was packed with peanuts…A LOT of peanuts. This is a good thing in my book. Ah, and the chili sauce you see there in the background? GREAT stuff. And homemade as well. Tim and I both cleaned our plates. (Although in truth, I may have left some white rice behind.)

The Verdict: Sometimes you come across a basic place where the food is made with care, the service is warm and friendly, and the price is totally right. The Hong Kong Cafe is all that, and more. Simple.  I’ll be back.

P.S. For various reasons, I’ve been on a bit of a blogging hiatus this past week. This will all become clearer later. Don’t fret. I’m sitting on a backlog of posts….Hub 51, San Soo Gab San, Shiso, and the Logan Square Farmers’ Market. Plus some more!

The post Hong Kong Cafe, Jewelers’ Row first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Date of Last Visit: Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

The Victims: American in London, Mr. American in London, Su-Lin, Mr. Noodles

The Background: American in London was on the lookout for General Tsao's Chicken. Apparently, this in an American staple. Despite my American-ness, I don't think I'd ever had it before. In my house growing up, our choices were pretty much limited to chicken and broccoli or beef and broccoli. I was never a sweet and sour fan, and I tend to gravitate AWAY from the deep fried dishes. (You've got to, with a hobby such as mine.)

Number 10 had been on my radar for a while because of a Chowhound thread or two. The Chowhound folks rave about the Szechuan items on the white board, and we probably should have thought about that as we ordered. Because in the end, it was the Szechuan items that really stood out.

 
The spicy aubergines were deliciously (surprise) spicy and melted away into cool hotness. I love when aubergine is cooked so perfectly as to not be too mushy. Let's face it. Eggplant gets mushy. It's a good cook that can make this work.

 
The boiled beef was AWESOME. This is one of those dishes that I think I could eat every day for a very long time. I might kill some tastebuds in the process, but that's okay.

We had some other dishes but really, they paled in comparison and I can barely remember them. The only other dish I do really member was a sliced pork of some sort. The pork tasted old. I wouldn't recommend it.

The Verdict: I don't know if I'd go out of my way to go to Number 10 again, but if I did, I would definitely have the boiled beef and the spicy eggplant. And I would stick with the Szechuan dishes. The rest is just not very interesting.

The post Number 10, Szechuan in Earl’s Court first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.

Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant, Crossharbour

Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant, Crossharbour

9 Oakland Quay
Inner Millwall Dock
London E14 9EA

The Victims: Echo, Bill, Echo’s mom, Tong-Tong (so cute!), Ying, Xiang

The Damage: Unknown. Team China paid for me.

The Background: When I first started this blog, I had this idea that it would help me explore London.

While that was certainly true in the early days, lately I’ve found myself suffering from TFL malaise. If it’s not in EC1 or N1 or WC1 or MAYBE W1, I really don’t want to go.

I think about the old days, when I would happily trot over to Notting Hill or up to Belsize Park. Not so much anymore. I’ve become a homebody.

So it was good that Echo prompted me to get on the DLR one Sunday afternoon (the 4th of July no less) and head out to Lotus Crossharbour for some dimsum. The DLR on a sunny Sunday afternoon is really really lovely. I need water to make me feel sane and plodding along on the driverless train through Canary Wharf and into Crossharbour is certainly a peaceful little journey.

Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant Menu

This is an old image of the menu for Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant and it’s a little out of focus. You might find the menu online more helpful.

I arrive at Lotus Crossharbour and to our table. The restaurant really is floating!! I’m the only native English-speaker in our group today: Echo has brought her mother who is visiting from China and her adorable daughter Tong-Tong. Three generations. Awesome. I let everyone know that I like taro. And parsnip. I’ll pass on the chicken feet, but sign me up for anything with seafood. There is much consultation and then the parade begins. As always with dim sum, I have no idea what I’m eating. But it’s all pretty fantastic. And the light is perfect so every photo I take comes out gorgeous. (Except for that spot that looks like steam in the middle of each photo, but that was because I needed to clean my lens.)

Good Chinese broccoli. But not enough garlic for my liking.

These are my least favorite dim-sum. Too stodgy. I actually know what these are called…they’re char sui buns.

No idea what these were, but they looked neat, all spherical and such. (Almost like that lamb ball, huh?)

These were fantastic. I gladly would have had more. Anyone want to tell me what they are? I can’t remember what was in them either, except that they were fantastic.

I’m also a huge fan of the lotus leaves, packed with rice and God knows what other sorts of delicious substances. These were well done.

Tripe. Been there, done that. Way too many times. And unless it’s spicy, it’s just not for me. (But I do give myself points for continuously giving tripe a shot.)

Prawn dumplings. Perfect, really.

Taro. This is honestly my absolute favorite.

Can’t for the life of me remember what was in these, but they were good. I’m sorry that this is the least informative blog post ever. But aren’t the pictures lovely?

After the taro, these were my 2nd favorite. No idea what they’re called. I think they’re parsnip cakes? Anybody?

Just like the tripe, with chicken feet, I’ve been there, done that. Not for me.

The Service: The service at Lotus Chinese Floating Restaurant is severe. They really did not want us to order in small batches. Everything had to be ordered at once.

The Atmsophere: Kinda nice sitting there, looking out onto Crossharbour and the water.

The Verdict: I liked Lotus Crossharbour. (Although I totally couldn’t tell we were floating.) I thought all my food was pretty good, but I probably need to eat more dim sum to truly write anything remotely close to informative here. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.

The post Lotus Floating Chinese Restaurant, Crossharbour first appeared on Passport Delicious | Solo Travel Blog | Solo Female Travel.