Fook Lam Moon    福臨門  

So normally my family I have a few dim sum places that we consistently go to. Not necessarily because the food is amazing but more so because my parents, like a lot of people, are creatures of habit. Anyway, for some odd reason my parents decided to book a table to Fook Lam Moon for dim sum on Sunday. I made sure for them to call the night before and reserve the BBQ pork pie & the egg tarts since I was a little concerned with either:

1) Them running out of either dim sums
2) Having to wait 10-15 minutes for them to make it

Environment: The place is spacious and seating is relatively comfortable for Cantonese restaurants standard.

Service: Service was pretty good but not without flaws. For some reason I feel the waiters are a little careless when serving. For example we ordered 2 different pots of tea and one waiter refilled my dad's tea cup without asking him what tea he had. Although with that said he was extremely apologetic and immediately gave my dad a new tea cup with the tea he wanted.

Food: We ordered a good selection of dim sum:

BBQ Pork Pie (蜜汁叉燒酥) - Visually the size looks a little sad (it's quite small) but it's big on taste. The pie exterior has kind of a crumbly cookie texture and a great compliment to the 'creaminess' of the BBQ pork. The BBQ pork was very flavorful and in a way the bite size nature of it...was just right contrary to my initial impression. Yum.

Steamed Crystal Prawn Dumplings (筍尖鮮蝦餃) - I think in terms of prawn dumplings this is pretty close to perfection. The skin was perfect thickness and the prawns had great 'prawn' flavor. One thing that is hard to do is to have a filling that both feels generous and texturally also not too solid. Did it blow my socks off per say? Maybe not...but it was still a very good prawn dumpling.

Pan Fried Cured Meat and Radish Cake (香煎蘿蔔糕) - The radish cake had great consistency/texture but the real star of this dish was the fried cured meat...it was really tasty! The flavor was quite intense but just right. Throw in a little sweet sauce...I quite liked this dish.

Stewed Honeycomb Tripe (炷侯金錢肚) - Overall a pretty decent dish and the tripe was quite tender. Although with that said it was about the same tastiness as the stewed tripe dishes at other dim sum places. Pretty decent.

Steamed Rice Rolls With BBQ Pork (叉燒爽滑腸粉) - The skin exterior was quite nice and thin while the BBQ pork inside was just as tasty as the BBQ pork in their BBQ pork pie. This was more of subtle dish and was quite good.

Deep Fried Prawn Spring Rolls (鮮蝦炸春卷) - When I first ate this I nearly burnt my tongue since it was piping hot! Overall quite a good dish. The spring roll was super crispy and the filling was quite flavorful.

Deep Fried Prawn Balls (炸多士蝦丸球) - Fook Lam Moon really knows how to deep fry their dim sum. It's basically the interior of the prawn dumpling but the exterior is like fried shrimp toast (炸蝦多士) but in ball form. The exterior was really crispy and light while the filling felt substantial and flavorful. No idea why we ordered this dish but I'm glad we did. Tasty.

Fresh Baked Egg Tart (酥皮蛋撻仔) - Another signature item from Fook Lam Moon. The egg custard portion was very creamy and 'eggy' while the pastry portion was light and flaky. It almost completely falls apart when it enters your mouth. I personally favor the western pie crust style egg tarts but these bite sized egg tarts at Fook Lam Moon were of high quality.

With all these positive things said about their dim sum I do wanted to mention a minor negative...consistency. We actually ended up order 2 orders of the shrimp dumpling and the egg tart and on both occasions I think our first order was better. Could it have been that our palette reacted differently after eating so many other dim sums? Maybe...but my here's my minor gripe about them:

2nd order of shrimp dumplings - Still a very good shrimp dumpling but this time it was slightly overcooked so the shrimp filling feel a tiny bit dry and more solid.

2nd order of egg tarts - I think they overcooked this slightly as well since the pastry feel more 'cookie dough-like'. Although still quite good the pastry took a little more chewing unlike the earlier light and flaky egg tart we had.

Overall I see value in these higher priced dim sum dishes from Fook Lam Moon. Would definitely come back again for dim sum.