Li Bai, Sheraton Towers

I've been wanting to come to Li Bai (Level 1 Sheraton Towers, 39 Scotts Road, tel : +65 6839 5623) for a long time. The restaurant is located at the basement of Sheraton Towers even though the address puts them on the first level. To the food...

This was a dim sum lunch. Had their century egg and pork porridge. Pretty good. I did not expect to like their crunchy fried crullers (油条) as I generally don't enjoy crunchy fried crullers.

The menu described their har gow to include bamboo shoots. Couldn't taste any of those. The prawn stuffing was springy and full of bite but was also absent of sweetness.

Their scallop and white asparagus dumplings were pretty good though. I thought they managed to achieve a balance of two delicate flavours pretty well with these.

Siew mai was delicious. The flavours of the ingredients were defined in a way that each of the ingredients were individually identifiable, enjoyable and came together nicely.

Chicken claws were slurp off the bone tender. I was surprised that the flavour from the skin was lacking though.

I ordered this because it was called Californian orange chicken. Or something like that. It's fried chicken that stir fried with a sweet and sour sauce that's presumably made with oranges. It's actually kinda nice in the same way sweet and sour pork are.

Deep fried pig intestines had light and crispy skin. Not bad tasting these were.

These crystal dumplings with mixed vegetables (碧绿水晶饺) were outstanding. I'm guessing that the vegetables were stir fried before being stuffed into those crystal skins and subsequently steamed. So filled with flavour. Smoky and savoury would be good words to describe them. I'd come back just for these.

In Li Bai, I have found the fish paste noodles that I've been searching for a long time. Fish paste noodles that were made on order, scorched in the wok before being tossed in the stock with the other ingredients. In this case, the other ingredients were some plump prawns and mushrooms.

Flavour and texture was pretty much what I had been looking for. They've outdone Imperial Treasure Fine Teochew Cuisine. I'd come back here for these too.

Stuffed as we were, we managed some black sesame dumplings coated in peanut powder.