That Chinese Sharks Fin/birds Nest Place

[Jingthing]

Many of you know that large Chinese place just south of Royal Garden. I have been there before and also to their place in Bangkok for the sharks fin soup (delicious, and yes I know politically incorrect).

So I decided to try some of their other menu items, as fairly priced good Chinese restaurants are thin or the ground here.

They have a "special" menu including dim sum. Sum (sic) comments:

The har gow (shrimp in steamed shell) fell apart when picked up. It also contained one medium sized shrimp instead of the more traditional ground shrimp/pork ball mixture.

The rice roll with dried shrimp came completely different than as pictured on the menu. The picture on the menu was of the traditional steamed preparation. What came was a greasy, oily, fried pancake kind of thing.

Asked for mustard as I like that with dim sum. All better dim sum places have this. Was brought farang mustard (doesn't work with dim sum). Was then told they don't have Chinese mustard.

The dim sum items are priced at 49 baht. A good deal if they were better.

Tea. This was a language issue. I tried to get a pot of tea instead of a cup as that is traditional with dim sum. The waiter wasn't interested in working it out with me and just ran away. Eventually I had to get up and point to the pots they had sitting on the counter to get my point across. Not criticizing the waiter's lack of English, am criticizing running away and not even trying to understand.

Ma po tofu. Asked for extra hot and spicy. What came was that lower grade Thai tofu circle tofu cooked in a bland red sauce with fine chopped vegetables. Not horrible but not worth 150 baht either.

BTW, the pictures on the menu of the whole crispy and whole soy sauce chicken at 300 baht look very good. But you can't really trust the pictures, can you?

Edited July 23, 2008 by Jingthing