Dimsum Feast at Xin Tian Di

Dimsum is one of the greatest things in this world.  Seriously. It’s Chinese tapas, or maybe tapas should be called the Spanish dimsum.  Small bites you can have anytime of the day.  And even if they are steamed, they don’t suck.

Dimsum is traditionally a light, tea-time meal.  But with my cousins coming from all over, we decided for a dinner time dimsum overload in Crowne Plaza’s Xin Tian Di.  All you can eat, baby!

Xin Tian Di is a high-end Chinese restaurant.  Well, I’m assuming it is — it’s in a hotel!  I’m expecting top notch food and service here.  The cost is P1,188.00 (or $26.40) but we used a discount card here (50%)so it was a pretty fair deal.  There are worse ones out there like Yong Jin‘s all-you-can-eat dimsum for around 500 or 600 bucks and is only available from (I think) 6-10PM.  Or something like that.

Anyway in Xin Tian Di, you’re basically given a menu where you check the stuff you want and they steam the dimsum to order and serve it ala carte.  OK, so let’s get it on.

First few items were the Abalone Mushroom Vegetable Dumpling, Steamed Crystal Prawn Ha Kao, Steamed Seafood Dumplings in Superior Stock, and Steamed Siomai Pork Dumplings.  All were pretty standard, wouldn’t waste space on these.  A lot of guys loved the Superior Stock Dumplings, but I didn’t.  I’d change the “Superior” description to something like “Better Than OK Stock” and I’d avoid the seafood dumplings.  The dumpling casing broke too easily and we don’t want casings to break when it shouldn’t, don’t we?

There’s really only one way to describe the Stone Fish Dumpling (stone fish fillet with shrimp and carrots): yuck.  Bland and looks like steamed Japanese paper.  They could’ve at least put lipstick on this pig.  The Wanton Noodle Soup with Roast Duck was so-so.  The duck was tough. And I’m not exactly sure if the Glutinous Pork Puff was really the Glutinous Pork Puff.  Skip the Steamed Buns because it’s just steamed buns.  I distinctly remember ordering Steamed BBQ Pork Buns, though.

Skip the Yang Chow Fried Rice, too.  It’s pretty common.  As was the Steamed Minced Beef Balls with Beancurd Skin.  Plus, there are better Sliced Beef Noodle Soups out there.  A lot better ones.  Do get the Steamed Fresh Squid with Garlic.  I was surprised this was served as a dimsum dish, but it wasn’t bad at all.

The Deep Fried Flat-Shaped Rice Noodles with Beef (or what you would usually call hofan) looked really promising, but was overly salty.  And coming from me, that’s saying a lot.

There are real winner dishes, though.  First was the Steamed Xiao Long Bao Shanghai Style.  Not great, but not bad¹.  Real solid that should give the other places a run for its money.

Stock up on the Chili Dumpling, which is a spicy dumpling with pork, shrimp, button mushroom & chili sauce.  It was a real winner.  I love spicy food, so there was an immediate appeal here.  The filling was quite nice and it just worked.

Chicken feet is my favorite dimsum and their Steamed Chicken Feet in XO Sauce is pretty damn good.  I kept ordering these all night and was definitely better than what a lot of other dimsum joints serve.

And if you love chicken feet, you’d be absolutely nuts to not order the Steamed Duck Wings with Chili Sauce.  It’s practically the same sauce, but brings a different texture.  You don’t find these in a lot of dimsum places, so do not miss out on these.  Easily one of the consensus favorites of the night.

They also serve a mean Steamed Pork Ribs in XO Sauce.  Better than most places you get this dish — in fact, one of the best I’ve had.  I probably had 5-7 orders of this all night.

The Sesame Butchi was the only dessert I tasted.  Was OK, but I was honestly too full at this point.  I heard that the Coffee Pudding was a real winner but our orders never arrived.

OK, so the food wasn’t bad at all.  A few misses, but the hits were pretty good hits.  Better than the average dimsum dishes in some cases.  So why am I rating this fairly low?  Service.  It was absolutely turrible.  I understand the confusion of serving 30 people a shit load of food.  I even understand when your steamer goes kaput².  What I can’t accept is the servers screwing with a customer to the point that fairly peaceful and patient individuals were pissed enough to complain and scold the staff.  Imagine telling a server telling a customer that she has no idea about the table’s orders and wasn’t her responsibility to know.  What’s this now, a telecom service hotline?  The shitty service was enough to ruin the whole experience.

They say before come for the food but come back for the service.  Well, I guess I won’t be coming back anytime soon.  There are more than enough quality dimsum places in the Metro to choose from.

Dimsum Feast at Xin Tian Di 2012-01-26

imsum is one of the greatest things in this world.  Seriously. It’s Chinese tapas, or maybe tapas should be called the Spanish dimsum.  Small bites you can have anytime of the day.  And even if they are steamed, they don’t suck. Dimsum is traditionally a light, tea-time meal.  But with my cousins coming from all …