DDD 45 (now closed)

Here is one of my favourite dim sum/yum cha places. It's owned by a chef from Shangri-La Hotel. They make great roast duck (one of the best I've had in Chiang Mai!), some basic but very nice dim sum dishes eg. prawn dumplings, BBQ pork buns, Cream buns, etc.

Just an aside - the steamed dim sum dishes are great, however, the fried dishes (eg spring rolls or taro dumpling) are only fried in the morning, so they get cold by lunch time - not great...but would be alright in the morning, I think.

The roast duck at DDD 45 is lovely, and unlike many other restaurants, the meat is tasty. The sauce though, is slightly sweet. I don't have photos of the roast duck here, but the roast duck noodles are especially delicious!

Below is the photo of crispy pork rice. The sauce is the same as duck sauce. You can help yourselves to the two different types of chillis! The one on the left is a kind of preserved chilli in vinegar (very nice!), but my favourite is the sauce on the right, which I think contains garlic, shallots and soy bean paste, amongst other ingredients. It has a spicy and kind of nutty flavour. This sauce is so amazing I can just eat it by itself! Hmm may be I should have focused the camera on the sauce, not the rice!

The BBQ Pork Egg Noodles are lovely too, flavoured by the versatile duck gravy.

The prices are pretty reasonable too. The dim sum dishes are 25 baht, and the rice and noodle dishes, 35 baht. Not bad!

DDD45

Chiang Mai-Mae Jo Rd

Near the corner of Super Hwy

Close to Thepanya Hospital (next to 7-11)

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy Chinese New Year!

Here we are again, Chinese New Year! I hope everyone will have a prosperous year of tiger!

So what did we have for our family CNY dinner? This year we went to the ever reliable China Palace, at the Holiday Inn. The food and service there is always great, and prices reasonable! This year we broke away from the traditional Chinese New Year dinner (eg. having whole fish, abalone and muscles, the hair like vegie, etc). Here are some of the dishes we had:

Mixed-entree: Deep-fried prawn balls, spring rolls, deep-fried pork (sweet), and an egg dish that you eat with lettuce (San Choy Bow style). Everything was lovely, especially the pork. (I have an extra-sweet tooth this week, for some reason!). Everything also looked very grand on the silver dragon serving platter.

Chicken with Chinese Herbs: This was really lovely and light. The herbs were fragrant without being over powering.

And what is a Chinese celebratory dinner without Peking Duck? Thai style Peking Duck is very different from what I had in Beijing, where a lot of fat is eaten with the duck skin. In Thailand, duck skin served is crispy, and very little fat - I guess this makes a "healthier" version, so we can eat more! The great thing about peking duck is that you get two (or sometimes more) dishes from the one duck. This time we had the meat stir-fried with pickled cabbages and bean sprouts - delicious!

Stir-fried tofu with vegies: This dish looks better than it tastes, but still very nice!

Another dish worth mentioning is Calamari Stuffed with Prawns - unfortunately, the photo didn't turn out, but it was very interesting and scrumptious. The calamari outer were coated with what I think might have been salted egg yoke, fried and topped with a salt and chilli mixture (which looked and tasted like instant noodles' seasoning!). Yum!

Needless to say it was a great meal, and we were all extremely full and happy! : )

China Palace, Holiday Inn

Chiang Mai-Lamphun Rd

Tel: 053 275 3000