PUBLISHED September 26th, 2013 02:25 am | UPDATED April 14th, 2016 05:24 pm
Yes it’s that time again. It’s coming up to the weekend. You want decent dim sum. You don’t want to pay an arm and a leg, and you don’t fancy any of the usual suspects. Where can you go?
The same script runs through my head almost every weekend. And so the story goes, of how I discovered The Cathay Restaurant. On trawling through my options, I was surprised to discover this restaurant tucked away in a corner of the The Cathay. Oh, and when I say tucked away, this isn’t in reference to the size – far from it, being a 190-seater restaurant. Even more surprising is how long it’s been around for – tracing its roots back to 1940, when it once served European fare, today it serves up Chinese cuisine and is a facet of the original building.
There is a wide, appetizing dim sum menu on offer here and the little parcels are by and large executed much in the same way as some of the quality dim sum that can be found in Hong Kong.
The Fried Carrot Cake with XO Chilli Sauce ($10) is one of their signature dishes – and being big fans of this dish, we of course had to try it! Steamed to perfection with a perfect springy texture and a wealth of flavour from the XO sauce it came thoughtfully presented in a bird’s nest structure. A good start.
The steamed items are done very well here, with the texture of the casing spot on – just take a look at the Steamed Scallop Dumplings ($4.80) to see what I mean. Beautifully plump and wrapped around a fantastically juicy prawn.
A stalwart of every dim sum menu, the Steamed Glutinous Rice in Lotus Leaf ($4.50) was perfectly cooked and played host to a generous amount of meat inside.
And fans of the Steamed Xiao Long Bao ($3.90), it’s also worth making these part of your order too.
The Deep-fried Beancurd Skin Roll with Seaweed ($4.80) was a happy marriage of beautifully light, fried skin and plump prawn filling and not one bit greasy like other renditions can be.
Unfortunately the porridge here, although thoughtfully presented, is not their strong suit. The chicken version at $8, which we tried, was just a little lacklustre for our liking.
Not to be missed here is the Steamed Yolk Cream Bun ($4.20). We just loved the fantastically oozy sweet-salty goodness hiding at the centre of the buns – we could have eaten 10 of them!
Offering quality, good value dim sum, we’re very happy to be adding The Cathay Restaurant to our go-to list of dim sum restaurants. And if you’re thinking of a cheeky weekday dim sum lunch, you can take advantage of their 20% off dim sum lunch promotion Monday through Friday.
Written by Ms Demeanour.
On this occasion the meal was compliments of The Cathay Restaurant