Eating @ Shanghai Dim Sum (Richmond Hill)

1:41 PM

For today, my work colleagues were available for lunch and we decided to try out another place I found recently in my work area. This restaurant was called "Shanghai Dim Sum" and the online reviews mentioned a lot of positive comments regarding their ... XIAO LONG BAO (XLB)! Before this restaurant, the pho xua train was here ...

Visit Date: 8/18/2016
Food Rating: 3/5

Service Rating: 3.5/5

Atmosphere:
This restaurant was located in the most poorly designed plaza for parking (with this one direction way). There was additional underground parking available in this plaza. Located at the corner of the near the entrance into the plaza, Shanghai Dim Sum was half packed with customers. It was very well light, clean and we managed to get a corner booth window.

Service:
Most of the servers were women with number name tags. They were helpful and understood our requests for cold water. A very graphic menu was provided and we just needed to write down the ID tag for the food items on a small paper.

Food Comments:
The menu was very good at this restaurant. Almost every dish on the menu had a graphic image. In addition, there was this crazy deal for Xiao Long Baos at this restaurant. You can check out the image in the Non photo section. You can get 4 XLBs for the price of $1. The price goes up if you order a second plate. The same trend applied when ordering the crab and pork XLB!

For this lunch quest, we ordered the following dishes:

Silk Skin XLB (pork) - $1
Silk Skin XLB (pork & crab) - $2
Pan Fried XLB - $3
Pan-fried Pork Dumplings - $5
Burger with Beef and Parsley - $7
Stir Fried Rice Cake - $9
Wontons with Pork and Veg Soup - $8

Many of the dishes were very disappointing in comparison to my other reference restaurants. Stir Fried Rice Cake was missing that flavour and texture level compared to the version at Yu Garden. It really seemed like the rice cake was overcooked. The pan fried pork dumplings were good but I thought it could have been better if the skin was thinner. It had a ton of oily juices inside. So eat with care!

The burger with beef and parsley was average. I had versions in Tianjin and it tasted WAY better with a lot more meat fat. Fresh parsley should have been used for this dish.

Regarding the XLBs, they were above average compared to Asian Legends but worst in comparison to my favourites at Northern Dumpling and Yu Garden. They had a lot of oily soup inside the dumplings. You could taste the crab strongly in the crab and pork XLB version (good sign!). The Pan Fried XLB was too gimmicky. The whole point of the XLB was to eat it in one mouth and the addition of the fried bottom complicated the texture process.

Overall, the food was decent for it's price point. This was probably the cheapest place you can find for XLBs with the best quality/price ratio. There is definitely a lot of options/restaurants in the area if you want a better XLB.

Food Photos: