Another day , another dim sum. Or so I thought as I walked into Shang Palace. This place is well known for its food and for not compromising for the Indian palate. When I was informed that they had started a lunch serve based on the food from the Forbidden City in Beijing, I was intrigued and since I had been on the look out for dim sum recently I jumped at the chance to visit last week.
Once a year there is a street festival at the Forbidden City where food is served using age old recipes. It is these somewhat lost recipes that Shangri-La Delhi is recreating for their Sunday brunch.
My absolute favourite item in this meal was the Barbeque Pork Bun. I have eaten a bun or two around the world but there was definitely some black magic done with this one. I have never experience a bun so soft and the filling was delicious. I would return for an entire meal of this alone.
The twice cooked lamb chop was soft and tender and not made on the grill so the asian flavours were well seeped into the meat. They use New Zealand lamb which is lovely soft meat.
The lobster dumpling looked beautiful as it came topped with a little ring of green onion. To make it more luxurious perhaps, it was topped with some Beluga Caviar. In my opinion that was not needed, the dim sum with a mouthful of sweet lobster meat was the clear hero on that plate. The same was on a pre plated duck pancake. The duck skin was awesome and it shows they do an awesome duck, the serving was a little large for my mouth though and I had to cut it in two.
The stir fried scallop with snow peas was a great dish as well. Enough scallops to make anyone happy. Lightly flavoured and not drowning in sauce that you couldn’t taste the scallop.
For the main course I loved the Steamed Seabass in Sichuan Chilli Sauce. A perfect accompaniment to the Egg Fried Rice. The fish had a great flavour and the chilli was not overwhelming. While the serving was that of the whole fish, it was deboned so it was eaten easily.
One thing is for sure, the food was great and somewhat different from what I have eaten in other Chinese food places. So whatever they are doing is working well. We only got a sampler of what they serve but it was enough for me plan a return for the whole shebang.
I won’t comment on the service as due to the esteemed company I was in, the service couldnt have been better.
If you are looking for something a little different from a regular dim sum lunch then this is certainly not to be missed. This special brunch though is for a limited time only.
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