Haute Dim Sum

The Shang Palace at the Shangri-la Hotel has been receiving a lot of press lately due to its recent $4 million refurbishment, so we decided to head along there last Sunday to check out whether it deserves all the hype surrounding its Dim Sum.

Well this place might be popular but we certainly weren’t expecting the level of security required to enter the hotel! Turned out we chose to visit on the same day as an international Defence Secretary convention… first our taxi was directed to a holding bay where it was searched for explosives, then we were ushered through an enormous armed barrier, past some snipers at the door (yes, really!) and then finally once out of the taxi, we and our bags had to pass through airport-style x-ray and metal detectors.

Once inside the place was swarming with armed police and military personnel – and I mean swarming, there were even three armed policewomen in the Ladies restrooms! So it was a relief to reach the relative calm of the restaurant – I say relative, as this place itself was buzzing, but thankfully with the chatter of large groups of friends and family enjoying their Sunday yum cha, rather than police radios and guns being loaded (ok, I made that last bit up for effect, but you get the picture…).

The first thing I loved about this restaurant was its tea menu – no just asking for Chinese Tea here – they have an entire menu of different premium Chinese teas, from different regions, each with their own unique properties. To add to the fun, their tea ‘menu’ is displayed as a set of Chinese fortune sticks, with each stick representing a different tea.

I have to confess to getting thoroughly over-excited by this and painstakingly making my way through each stick, reading its explanation and slowly narrowing it down... to a shortlist... to a short-shortlist... until we finally made our decision – the Peony Blossom Pearl Tea.

I drink quite a lot of green and white tea, but I have to say I hugely enjoyed this – it had a real floral flavour to it, not sweet but very delicate and exceedingly easy to drink vast quantities of!

Once we had finally chosen our tea, our minds turned to the Dim Sum menu. Again we had to endure a rather painstaking process of narrowing down our choices as so many different dishes sounded appealing, but even we conceded that eight dishes between the two of us was perhaps a little too greedy. We started off with a couple of old favourites (as Mr Greedy Glutton said, we needed a few regular dishes against which to benchmark the quality)

I can honestly say that this is probably the best Har Kau I have tried yet… big statement I know, but they really were delicious with their big, juicy, fresh prawns.

Unfortunately the Xiao Long Bao was rather disappointing after the Har Kau – not that flavoursome at all, which is a huge let-down when it’s one of your faves.

Moving onwards, we also ordered the Crab Meat Spring Roll with Egg White, which made an interesting change from the normal vegetable filling.

Crispy Beancurd with Prawn, elegantly presented wrapped in seaweed

Deep Fried Prawn Dumplings with Mayo

And the rather interesting and hugely tasty Sesame Fried Ball with Barbecue Pork, which was oozing with delicious char siew.

We were both fairly full by this stage, but I couldn’t resist trying one of their desserts, and so ordered up some Gelatinous Strawberry, Mango and Cream Dumplings. These were particularly odd – exceedingly sticky (the type that sticks your tongue to your teeth) and very sweet – not unpleasant, but certainly not on the top of my list for ordering again.

Pricewise, the dishes weren’t much different from the Crystal Jade’s or Yum Cha, but what threw the bill off balance was the tea ($8 per person) and the high price of the “pickles” ($5.00), making our overall bill about 50% higher than normal.

So was it worth the hype (and the extra expense)? Well the ambience of the restaurant is lovely, and we really felt like we were a world away, despite the proximity to Orchard Road (and perhaps it was the airport security at the entrance, but throughout lunch I had a real holiday feeling about me). The Dim Sum dishes were certainly more elegant than any other I have tried – right down to the little pancakes they were served on (kind of like an edible doily!), with some interesting twists on the norm… and of course there’s that fantastic tea menu.

Having said all that, I can’t imagine the two of us coming back here in the near future as there are so many other places to try and it didn’t impress me that much… However … if there were a group of us looking for a nice place to go for a weekend brunch, I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest it…
Shang Palace - http://www.shangri-la.com/en/property/singapore/shangrila/dining/restaurant/shangpalace