Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Lei Garden - Le Cantonese Garden of Singapore!

Lei Garden Restaurant
30 Victoria Street
#01-24 Chjimes Centre,
Singapore 187996
Tel: 63393822

I’m back with my fork in my right hand and a wooden spoon on my left. I haven’t been writing/blogging/updating mainly because my canon has died on me and so I have to send it to the service center and so I couldn’t take pictures of things in my kitchen and the food that has been going into my mouth. And I guess I have been lazy, there were a few reviews I meant to write but never did. Nonetheless, I’m back!



The most traveled and tasted form of Chinese food in my opinion is the Cantonese cuisine. Go to any big city and you would find a teahouse or a place that serves up dim sum. I won’t be cheesy and cliché and tell you that dim sum means “dot heart” and so it involves love and all that kind of thing, instead, I’ll just tell you of where I had really good dim sum – Lei Garden. Lei Garden might be one or the best Cantonese restaurants in Singapore. In addition to its setting in the old church compound of Chijmes, it’s a nice place to go as a family or just for good food and a good place.

We had the usual dim sum fanfare of ha gao, siew mai, char siew pau, char siew sow, carrot cake and such. One of the dim sum dishes that I liked was the lobster tail that was wrapped with crispy vermicelli. Why it was good? It was light, not too oily, crispy, and did I say there was lobster? Some thing else that we tried that was outside the dim sum menu was the crab noodles (it has been a while so I can’t really remember what it is called), however I can remember that it was great, the fragrance of the crab permeated the soup and it was classic Cantonese food – light but not tasteless. There isn’t any doubt of the quality of the food here, but I was a little disappointed with the level of service for a place of such high standing. Sure it’s a Chinese restaurant and maybe Chinese people can be rude, but waitresses should wait on people, and I had to ask for my char siew sow 3 times that I was worried they were going to give me 3 servings and stuff it down my throat if I refused. Maybe it is to make it seem more authentic and to add to the usually noisy and riot scene that is prevalent in dim sum restaurants, I don’t know, but if you can gloss over the service, the food isn’t to be missed. The menu is a little pricey, but we managed to have a dim sum lunch for 5 for S$80.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good Dim Sum is hard to find and Lei Gardens remain one of the top few places to get my weekly doses. thumbs up!

3:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The food is excellent as expected of Cantonese restaurants. But the noise is unbearable. Like a fish market. I cannot barely hear when my partner spoke.

12:39 PM  

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