Chao Yang Restaurant    朝陽飯莊  

This restaurant is located in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui, Isquare. The view at the restaurant is absolutely stunning, and I have to say it serves one of the best lamb in town. The services are a but slow and min spending is required for the window seats, but well worth it!

This is a slightly above average Shanghainese restaurant. I've been here twice and have tried several things. Below are some of the dishes I have tried.

Starters

Drunken pigs' trotters - These are very crunchy (and a good source of collagen too). The texture is good and they are not too 'drunken'. If you like the texture of jellyfish and the taste of drunken chicken, you'd probably like this as well.

Jellyfish with shredded chicken - This is pretty good. The jellyfish is not too hard or soft and the sesame sauce is not overwhelming. I don't understand the presentation though. It's kind of hard to get the stuff at the bottom of the bell pepper though.

Mains
Roasted duck - The roasted duck looks amazing but it looks better than it tastes. There is nothing special about this duck. Some of the meat can actually be quite chewy too.

Chicken soup with wonton - The soup has lots of chicken taste. The wonton has a good balance of meat and vegetables in it. I would recommend this soup.

Lettuce wrap with minced duck - This is a dish that uses the leftover duck, otherwise you can ask them to cook the duck in soup instead. The minced duck is cooked nicely.

Fried scallops with lotus root - The scallops and the brown sauce go well together. Lotus root is crunchy.

Dessert

Tofu Fa - Comes in little wooden pots and looks very cute, which is the only reason why I ordered it. However, the tofu fa is not smooth at all and is a bit too hard, making its texture exactly like tofu! It also only comes cold. Not recommended.

Fried egg white - The fried egg white itself is no different from other Shanghainese restaurants. The only special thing is that it comes with strawberry sauce and icing sugar, which does give it a nice twist.

Suddenly felt like having Shanghais food and when I called the restaurant at 2, I was told they got a full house. Calls were made to other Shanghais restaurants in TST and they were all fully booked, I decided to try my luck for walk-in.

Got there at 7 and they could offer me a table immediately. It did sound like to me that it was not a full house at all? Anyway, it's not what I'd expect as they position them as fine dining.

We ordered 2 soups, 1 appetizer, 1 noodle and 2 entrees. For the soups, my friend said it was one of the worst hot & sour soup he has ever had. It tasted funny and if you're a big fan of classic hot and sour soup, you may give it a skip. My soup was the pickled vegetable with egg white and shredded fish. It was only mediocre since they made it too gluey. The pickled veggie was also too light in terms of the flavouring.

We had a marinated common carp in wine. The texture of the meat was somewhat like preserved fish but the wine did smell good.

For the entrees, we had a tofu dumpling. They basically used the tofu as the dumpling skin. It's also 1 of the best dishes we ordered for the nite. Light but refreshing. We also ordered a sauteed shredded fish with bean sprouts and salted egg yolk, the closest resemblance of "golden shrimps", something I wanna have so much. The bean sprouts should be a nice balance but they just put in too much and made the taste of salted egg yolks way too weak.

After so many times of disappointment, we just decided to skip the dessert....

P.S. The waiters and waitresses at there have no knowledge of the menu. I asked about what soups they offer and they couldn't even give me an answer. They also have poor listening skill. What a let down for a "fine dining" restaurant.