"We came on a Thursday at noontime so I leave room for benefit of the doubt and COVID circumstances, but this meal was genuinely regrettable. We ordered 6 dimsum plates between two dim sum lovers. It took half an hour to receive the last plate after ordering (check-box menu style) and the first took ten minutes to arrive. Having worked in dumpling restaurants myself, I imagine the first eight to ten minutes might have been the time it took to put some frozen dumplings into a steamer. The following intervals may have been owed to a lesser number of stoves or staff, although there at least seemed to be a healthy number of front staff for the half-full restaurant.Time taken aside, the meal itself was so disappointing that we couldn’t bring ourselves to finish. And that takes a lot! Any pieces of prawn were tough (perhaps from overcooking or recooking) and every dumpling was folded with skin so thick and starchy that I left pieces off. The har gows were broken and the xiao long baos were all skin (reminded me of pork rind), chewy meat and literally no soup. The prawns in the ha Cheung were shrunken and tough while the sauce, although fully absorbed into the folds held no flavour. We received the prawn crisp balls whole, had further difficulty tearing them open, and were met by an unmistakeable “this is not fresh” foot-like smell.After pecking at the plates we took the leftovers home out of habitual guilt. We hate waste but I don’t expect anyone to be reaching for them before they end up in the garbage. It was worse than “below average”, it was terrible. We would have been better off ordering frozen from western brands at the local Safeway. ?"
House Special Chow Mein
