Sorry for the lack of posts, you see, Ms Golden Mouth has lost her Golden Voice and has been on a porridge and fish soup diet for most of last week. And Ms Golden Mouth hates porridge and refuses to write any reviews on that dish.
Okay, enough with the writing in the third person, yes, I have been sick and have lost my voice for the second time in two weeks (can you imagine being on medical leave for 4 days in two weeks!). So anyway, I did however manage to pop out for some dim sum when I was feeling better. We went to Noble House by Tung Lok at UIC Building. To be honest, I was a bit hesitant to go at first as I knew it was by Tung Lok and that usually means it's on the pricey side. However, the bf wanted to go (hence, his treat!) and his friends also assured us that it was quite alright prices.
When you arrive at UIC building on a Sunday afternoon, you wonder if you are the right place, cause it looks like this run down office building and on a Sunday, the whole CBD area is a ghost town. Cue frantic calling of friend to check and double check that we were at the right place. At this time, the weather was also nuts and the heat was really getting to the me in my already weakened state. As we shuffled along to the lift lobby, we saw the big sign, NOBLE HOUSE BY TUNG LOK LEVEL 6. I guess they must face many people calling them asking if they were really in UIC building etc. heh.
Reaching the restaurant level, any doubts that this was a dodgy restaurant were cast away. The lobby is bright with a high ceiling, a vast contrast from the exterior of UIC Building which is brown and old looking. The menus were kinda strange, they had a "Healthier Choice Menu" which immediately got chucked away by us, they had some ala carte buffet thing going on, only their last order was 2.15 and we only reached that place at 1.30pm and there was also a limited dim sum dishes on that buffet menu, so we decided to stick to our original plan of ala carte dim sum.
The four of us ordered the following dishes
1. Egg tarts (4 pieces in one serving)
2. Char Siew Sow - Roasted Pork in Honey BBQ sauce in a light flaky pastry (4)
3. Har Gow - Steamed Shrimp Dumpling (4)
4. Siew Mai - Steamed Pork and Shrimp Dumplings (4)
5. Banana Fritters with Prawn (3)
6. Cheong Fan (Prawn) - Steamed Flat Rice Noodles with Prawns inside
7. Char Siew Pau - Steamed Buns with Roasted Pork in Honey BBQ sauce
8. Lotus Seed Pau - Steamed Buns with Lotus Seed Paste
9. Steamed Yam Cake
10. Lotus leaf Rice*
11. Porridge (this turned out pretty good~ hmm.)
The dishes ordered are actually my standard dim sum orders, depending on how many people I'm dining with anyway. Okay, I also wanted to order my chicken feet dish and the pork rib dish, but no one else at the table wanted it. I think these are really your dim sum staples, and any restaurant attempting to serve dim sum, must get these right.
Taste wise, this place did not disappoint. But that is really to be expected for any Tung Lok Group Restaurant. Prawns were fresh, but again, I regard this as a base level. When I eat dim sum, I do not expect the prawns to be anything but fresh. It's like when you order a fish from a seafood place, you'd expect it to be fresh rather than not fresh. The thing about this place is that the food is quite forgettable... really. Nothing really stands out as a must try or that will make me crave to go back there. It's more like a place I'd go if I were in the neighbourhood or if someone else suggested it, I wouldn't object. It's alright in my books. I've also googled some other reviews of the place, apparently, their dishes seem to draw better reviews, rather than their dim sum stuff. I might consider going back there if the bf's friends want to go back to review the regular dishes as well.
The total damage for that was about $95 or about $24 per pax. I still think its a bit over priced for something that is OKAY. Its good dim sum, but I don think it was value for money. Perhaps I am biased cause I really only like Yan Palace at Hong Lim Complex. I swear for what we ordered, it would only have amounted to The guys also brought up their other favourite place, Red Star also located in China Town, but I hate the noisy atmosphere there and I think that place is really mediocre in quality and definitely not worth the ridiculous 30 mins to get a table.
*The waitress kept telling us that they didn't have the regular lotus leaf glutinous rice but they had a small (her small was apparently something 6 inches round!) variation. So we ordered that and it turned out to be fried rice in lotus leaf! She also kept telling us that we might not want to order the paus cause that SMALL lotus leaf thing was quite a big serving. But the BF loves his paus so he insisted on ordering it. And guess what was the last to be finished.. the paus! cause everyone was so damn full by then... GRR..
NOBLE HOUSE
Level 5, UIC Building
5 Shenton Way
(S) 068808
Tel: 6227-0933
Opening hours: Daily from 11am to 3pm for lunch and 6.30pm to 11pm for dinner
