Crystal Jade La Mian Xiao Long Bao, Scotts

Dinner with Junie. I had almost forgotten about the existence of this place at the basement of Scotts which I first visited (and was introduced to) about 3 years ago. Was recommended their fried pork ribs with soup noodles and their fiery bottled peppers on the table. Today 3 years later, the quality of the food seems to have remain the same and I actually sat on a table just one away from the one I did 3 years back. This place brings me memories.

One of the things I liked about this la mian outlets of Crystal Jade was that the food here is generally quite nice and the price is on the whole, reasonable.

braised beef in hand cut kway teow

This dish came with tender braised beef and hand cut kway teow that has irregular thickness. I guess those must be hand made instead of machine pressed rice noodles. And it's quite good.

Fried rice with ham and prawns

I enjoy a good fried rice and the ones here haven't disappointed me yet. The ham in the fried rice taste like the air dried ones and there's quite a few prawns in there. It's comfort food which I can wolf down in large quantities.

Picked or sauteed jellyfish

Tofu and century egg

Xiao Long Bao

Vegetable and meat dumpling soup

Fried buns with salmon and mushrooms

There are a couple of personal dislikes I have here, one of which involves the vile herb coriander which was found in the dumpling soup. My dislike for the herb makes me very sensitive to even trace amounts of the taste. The other involves the fried buns which was suppose to contain salmon and the stuffings look to me like 95% mushroom. That to me is simply bad practice because I could hardly taste the salmon. And the name of the dish can be reasonably construed as intentionally misleading because it wouldn't have made any difference if the salmon was absent.

Apart from these couple of peeves, it was on the whole pretty good especially the fried rice which I always enjoyed from any Crystal Jade outlets. The total bill ran to $49.90 and offset by a $30 voucher from Junie. That made a pig out for 2 at $10.