Rising Sun's all-you-can-eat dim sum

As soon as we’d been seated, a dish of hot dipping sauce was delivered to our table, along with a pot of Chinese tea. Jac tried the dipping sauce, and yes – it was as hot as it looks!

I started to get a little impatient though – we did sit there for a while with our tea and hot sauce, waiting for waiters to visit our table with food, watching other people around us tucking into their spring rolls and steamed dumplings. It was 11am or so when we got there, I hadn’t had breakfast, and I guess I was really hungry. Thankfully, eventually, food arrived! We started with a little plate of fried squid tentacles. They were quite salty, and Jac didn’t really like their sambal-like flavour. You know, when I was a kid, those immensely 3-D suckers would have really grossed me out.

From then on, the waiters kept stopping by with their (very noisy!) trolleys or trays of food, asking if we wanted whatever they had to offer. These pork spare ribs looked ugly and knobbly, but they were quite tasty. We realised we might need something cold to drink to help wash down all the saltiness. The tea was good, but a little too hot to drink to quench thirst easily! Jac asked if we could have some water, and the waitress returned with a glass bottle of water (you know, one of those large wine bottle-sized glass bottles restaurants and cafes like to use) – but just the bottle, no glasses. Jac asked her if we could have glasses, and she returned with… one glass, which she handed to Jac. Um… thanks? We just ended up sharing the glass.

We had to say yes to a serve of siew mai (steamed pork dumplings). But these looked strangely naked to me! Where’s the little orange garnish on top?

Next, pork wrapped in beancurd skin. I love beancurd skin! But yes, this was an extremely porky meal.

I got a little excited when the next dish to appear was steamed stuffed beancurd. Yes please, yes please!

These salt and pepper chicken wings were OK. They looked a little old, dirty-oil old – but they were absolutely steaming hot underneath the batter. The chicken beneath the crusty batter was actually very moist.

These were beef balls, I think – they tasted very much like sausage meat! They were served on a lettuce leaf and a black vinegar sauce. The lettuce leaf was nicely wilted from the heat of the beef balls, and Jac enjoyed it, maybe even more than the beef balls – she always has to have something green, especially when the rest of the meal is so meaty!

The char siu pao (BBQ pork buns) were smaller than average, but I think smaller pao are a great idea for dim sum when you’re eating all sorts of other goodies. They were quite nice, with discernible pieces of BBQ pork inside.

A waitress came by with two buckets on a trolley. One contained pork and century egg porridge, and the other, sago pudding. We asked for one of each. I was served a bowl of porridge topped with chopped spring onions and a fresh sprinkling of white pepper. Jac took a mouthful of the porridge and made a face – no, it wasn’t the century egg that put her off. It was the watery taste of the porridge! She’s been spoilt by my mum’s flavourful thicker-style porky porridge, and just didn’t care for the more watery-style restaurant porridge. I thought it was OK, and the little bits of shredded pork were quite nice, but yeah, my mum’s homemade porridge wins, hands down!*

Jac wasn’t keen on the vegetarian noodles (noodles, spring onion, mung beansprouts), but after all that meat I welcomed this meatless dish. They were very plain and simple, but quite nice. The beansprouts were still quite crisp, providing a contrasting texture to the other more chewy meaty/proteiny items on our table.

We ended our meal with a couple of rounds of deep fried items. The spring rolls had a little too much skin, I thought. You can see in the photo that the spring rolls had a lot of “roll” to them.

The prawn toast was pretty good. The little sesame seed-encrusted triangles were served with a light sweet and sour (the pink variety!) sauce. By this time Jac was getting very full and wanted to leave room for her pudding, so I must admit I ate most of the prawn toast.

Jac enjoyed her sago pudding very much. The little pink bits you can see in the photo were watermelon. The cold pudding was quite watery in flavour. I think Jac couldn’t help but compare this to the mango sago pudding she had at Marigold’s while we were on holiday. Marigold’s pudding was richer and fruitier, in content and flavour. Jac also thought there was too much sago and not enough liquid in Rising Sun’s quite shallow dessert bowl.