One box off my bucket list.

I’ve been wanting to eat at Red Star Restaurant for the longest time. The draw was not only delicious dim sum but that they still retained the old style of having the dim sum ladies pushing trolleys of dim sum around the restaurant. Once a prevalent practice in most dim sum restaurants, Red Star is now the only place (that I know of), that still does this. I find the current way of ordering dim sum by filling out slips of paper simply soulless! The main reason it has taken me so long to eat there is because you’re supposed to get there early and I don’t do early on weekends. BUT, an exception was made last weekend and it was definitely worth it.

In recent years, I’ve heard that the standards have dropped at Red Star and I have to say, if what I had was not comparable to what they served in years past, that must have been some frikking good dim sum. Despite it just being my mum and I having brunch, we ordered a whole plethora of food and almost everything was delicious.

We had the deep fried prawn dumplings (crispy on the outside, creamy and succulent on the inside), century egg porridge (tasty and light), paper-wrapped chicken (very tasty), carrot cake (light and aromatic without being too oily), rice noodle roll with prawn ji cheong fun (delicate rolls with fresh prawns lightly covered in sauce), prawn salad(delicious), and century egg platter (served with a lot of vinegar). Of course, we had to order the har gao prawn dumpling and siew mai, which we had to wait ages for. To be honest, the har gao, which I never fail to order at any dim sum place, was a disappointment. The skin broke apart because it was soggy. The siew mai was better, but not awe-inspiring.

The stand-out dish for me, which sadly, is only served during the Lunar New Year period, was the deep fried nian gao (Chinese new year cake), sandwiched between sweet potato and yam, then battered and deep fried. Amazing. Crispy skin, soft, pillowy sweet potato and yam and finally soft, chewy nian gao. Not overly sweet, and just a bed of amazing flavours. If you go to Red Star during the Lunar New Year period, definitely order this.

The service wasn’t the best, but to me, it’s part of the whole Cantonese restaurant vibe that brings back memories of eating dim sum with my parents as a child 🙂 I’m already looking forward to my next visit.