Paradise Dynasty, Causeway Point

Family meals are sometimes fun. There's more people involved and more food can be ordered. Communal dining is not just a wannabe trendy buzzword from recent years. Many of us have been enjoying it for ages.

Here's some stuff from Paradise Dynasty (1 Woodlands Square, Causeway Point, #05-16/17/18, tel : +65 6894 6322). That's the fried rice above, which was quite competent. The lack of residual oil is one particular benchmark and those up there are in the leagues of Din Tai Fung.

Braised duck tongues. Supposedly in oyster sauce but I tasted a lot more spices going on than just oyster sauce. The meat was tender, chewy and I suppose it's probably not something you would want to order if you are very hungry since it was some effort for small rewards eating this. Otherwise, this was pretty tasty.

These are their mao shan wang durian xiao long bao.

Truth be told, I'd rather eat the durian. This texture was desiccated for a fruit that is supposed to be creamy and the trademark aromas of the fruit was muted.

These brown stuff floating on the top are called malva nut. I've just learnt that after having had them in cheng tng since I was a kid. Which part of the nut makes these, I don't know yet. The wait staff mentioned that this item wasn't dessert, but it tasted like dessert. Sweet and chilled with bits of diced pear.

Some fish in some Chinese wine sauce. This was soft and flakily delicious from the flavoursome sauce.

These are supposed to be sour and spicy potato strips (酸辣土豆丝). The rendition here is far less sour and spicy than I had expected. The flavours have been diluted for whatever reasons, so we're never ordering these here again.

This last dish that almost never arrived was steamed bullfrog. There's scallions and chilli and a sauce that reminded me a lot of fermented black bean sauce. That sauce would have been excellent with white rice. I'm impressed. The heat was a slow and steady build up until as we were about to be done, I felt the burn on my lip. The meat from the frog was smooth, fairly tender as frogs go and easily slurped off the bone. Even those on the torso. I'd come back for this again.