Hong Kong Lucky Restaurant (Dim Sum & Hong Kong style food)

When we talk about dim sum in Chiang Mai, there are several usual suspects - Yang Zi Jiang;  Fujian (at Dhara Dhevi); the China Kitchen at Shangri-La Hotel (which now also has great Sichuan food); and China Palace (at Holiday Inn) - which has been my family's go-to dim sum place due to the very reasonable costs and quality (about 30-40 baht / dish).

Now, we have a newcomer, Hong Kong Lucky Restaurant, owned by the same owners as Hong Kong Lucky Cafe at Nimmanhaemin Road.

Could this be the best dim sum restaurant in Chiang Mai?

Certainly the variety is there. Hong Kong Lucky Restaurant serves 35 dim sum dishes, including favourites like Hakao (steamed prawn dumplings), Siew mai, Deep Fried Taro Dumpling, Steamed Chicken Feet in Black Bean Sauce (my personal favourite!), and some other dishes that I haven't really seen in other dim sum places in Chiang Mai eg. Baked Bun with BBQ Pork.

I must say pretty much everything I tried was great.

Of particular note:

The Pan Fried Turnip Cake was lovely and full of flavour. There is a jar of homemade chilli oil on the table. On the first couple of visits, I piled on the chilli oil (I loved the chilli oil!), and it tasted great. On the third visit (in 3 weeks), I realised that the turnip cake tasted pretty amazing just by itself. Actually, on this visit, I did not use much of the sauces provided on the table at all.

Deep Fried Dumpling with Shrimp - This was excellent. The dumpling skin was light and crispy on the outside, and lovely and soft on the inside. Very nice texture and taste.

"Lava Custard Bun" - sorry, I don't know the name of this bun, but it's absolutely delicious. Served steaming hot (be careful, the lava is hot!!), the bun is filled with creamy eggy custard that oozes out of the bun like lava when "opened". Mmmm,... heavenly! Perfect as an end to the meal.

As mentioned above, everything was very nicely done. As we order the dishes a-la-carte, everything comes out steaming hot.

The atmosphere feels very much like a Hong Kong restaurant. There are even a few karaoke rooms upstairs. The teapots even have the plastic spouts attached to them to prevent tea from dripping.. which I think is a mark of a true Cantonese restaurant!

As for the price, the price of the dishes range from 60-130 baht, most of the dishes were around 80 baht. On my visits, we paid between  200-300 baht/person, depending on how much was ordered.

The Kitchen

Definitely a place we can keep going back to time and time again, especially since there is a whole heap of other non-dim sum dishes. Incidentally, I have been to dinner at Hong Kong Lucky Restaurant as well, and the food is also great. I especially liked the prawn wonton soup (you can choose to have it with or without noodles).

Hong Kong Lucky Restaurant
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hong-Kong-Lucky-Restaurant/136351880030697?fref=ts
5/6 Soi 7, Ratchadamnoen Road
Sriphum, Muang, Chiang Mai
Tel: 099 535 8883
Parking is a little difficult, but the restaurant saves 3 parking spots for customers in front.

Shang Garden @ Shangri-La Hotel (Now China Kitchen)

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope everyone has the most wonderful and happiest year ever, and of course, filled with delicious food!

Today, we will visit Shangri-La Hotel's new Chinese Restaurant - Shang Garden, a much welcomed addition-at least to me, and I'm sure to many Chiang Mai residents!... and it's not just any Chinese restaurant... it's a restaurant that offers dimsum... and the food is great!

Shang Garden's Hong Kong chef, Jackie Chan, came from Shangri-La Hotel in Bangkok....So things are already looking pretty good! After my first dinner at Shang Garden on 30th Dec 2013, I was very impressed with the food, and the price seemed pretty reasonable for the quality, but the service that night though, was very lacking and slow. It could be that they were quite short staffed, but we decided we could put up with the slow and not so great service (as the food was so good) and go back to have a dimsum lunch before my brother and his family go back to Australia in the afternoon. Fortunately, the service this time was much better, but the tea refilling rate was still pretty slow so we had to rely on a bit of self-service there. (It's not a big deal, but you'd expect the service to be perfect in a 5 star hotel, and especially if you'll be paying 10% service charge on top of the food prices.)

OK...on with the food review!

Deep Fried Mashed Taro with Shrimp and Chicken. This is my brother's favourite dimsum dish. It's very nicely done at Shang Garden, very nice "pastry", firm yet crumbly, with mild filling with subtle flavours. It was served kind of luke warm though... would have been better if it came out hotter. 140 baht.

Xiao Long Pao - steamed pork dumplings (with soup inside). Very nice skin and lovely soft pork filling. Be careful eating these though, as the skin is quite delicate. If you accidentally poke a hole in the "skin", some of the soup might leak out! 70 baht.

Baked BBQ Pork Pastries - (front dish in the photo below) - These were great! Buttery melt in your mouth pastry with sweetish BBQ pork filling. 60 baht.

Steamed Crispy Rice Rolls with Shrimp - (back of photo)  This is a really special and surprising dish. Highly recommended if you come to Shang Garden. Looks kind of ordinary, but as I bite into the soft looking "fresh spring roll", there is a surprising crunch!  There's a crispy spring roll inside the rice paper wrapping. Served with hoisin sauce. 90 baht.

Crispy Noodles with Seafood - This is also a pretty special dish. Lovely crispy noodles (which is also pretty nice eaten by itself) with stir-fried seafood and vegies with lots of gravy/thick soup which you put on the crispy noodles. The noodles stayed kind of crispy and a little chewy in the gravy - very nice. 460 baht.

My 6 year old nephew and 3 year old niece (who are rather fussy eaters) loved the Steamed BBQ Pork buns so much  2 extra servings were ordered to take on the plane. I thought the buns were rather nice too - the "skin" very soft and smooth. 60 baht.

The total bill for 5 very full adults and 2 kids came to about 2700 baht (including tax and service charge).

Shang Garden
Shangri-La Hotel

Opens:
Lunch: 11:30am-2:30pm
Dinner: 6pm-10pm

Tel: 053 253 888

Website: http://www.shangri-la.com/chiangmai/shangrila/dining/restaurants/shang-garden/



View Shang Garden @ Shangri-La Hotel in a larger map

Yangzi Jiang

We were rather excited to finally check out the 1.5 year old Yangzi Jiang ("Yangzi River") Cantonese Restaurant. Having previously been to and really enjoyed its' older-sister restaurant, Mei Jiang ("Beautiful River") on Changklan Rd several times, we thought Yangzi Jiang would be a sure bet for Thailand's Father's Day dinner.

Yangzi Jiang is situated in an elegant home in the trendy Nimanhaemin Area. It's quite famous for dim sum/yum cha, and authentic Cantonese dishes. Having grown up with Cantonese cuisine in Sydney, it was exactly what I have been craving! We were even more excited when we overheard someone on the next table say, "Everything here is good!", exactly our sentiments about Mei Jiang.

So there we were, pouring over the rather large menu and interesting sounding dishes. Finally, we settled for:

Salmon Spring Rolls - what a great start! This turned out to be my favourite dish. The rolls were filled with salmon fillet, celery stick, and something white and creamy - perhaps mayonnaise. The Salmon Spring Rolls were served with more salty/sweet tasting creamy mayonnaise which complemented so wonderfully with the salmon. The celery gave each bite a crunch. Scrumptious!

Stir-fried Squids with Morning Glory and Chilli Shrimp Paste - this was also a rather interesting dish. I think the "Chilli Shrimp Paste" used here is Belachan paste, or at least tasted very similar to it. The squid was very nicely cooked - firm but not tough to chew, and the morning glory was delicious with the salty, rich and aromatic flavour of the shrimp paste, garlic and a hint of ginger.

Yangzi Jiang's roast duck was also quite good - in the sense that we could tell that the duck was of good quality - great texture and nice crispy skin, and not much fat. Unfortunately though, it tasted rather bland. The best thing about it was the bed of chewy peanuts and the tasty sauce under the duck! We soaked up the sauce with a very lovely mantou (Chinese bun), right out of the steamer.

As an aside, I would put Yangzi Jiang's roast duck at number 3 so far in Chiang Mai. The best was at Mandarin Oriental's fabulous Chinese Restaurant, Fujian, and my second favourite, a little local eatery owned by the chef at Shangri-la Hotel.

Fried Eggplant Stuffed with Mashed Shrimp with Chilli and Salt. The golden coloured stuffed eggplants looked pretty good, but oily. The first few bites were quite nice, especially if eaten with the very lightly fried garlic (which still had the raw taste), chilli and salt mixture. The spiciness of raw-ish garlic and chilli helped to breakdown the oiliness a little, but unfortunately not enough. We couldn't finish off the dish and I felt like needing a good cup of tea afterwards!

Finally, the last dish, Fried Yin Yang Vermicelli with Roasted Duck and Sichuan Pickle. It was an interesting dish, and tasted rather good too, but a shame that it was also too oily.

All in all a bit of a mixed-bag experience. Some of the dishes were great, others not so. The service was quite good in the beginning, but became a bit more inattentive as they got busier. That's understandable though, because they pretty much had a full house - being Father's Day and also having long weekend tourists coming up from Bangkok.

I will go back again - I think they deserve another try!

The price worked out to be about 300 baht per person without alcohol.

Yangzi Jiang (Cantonese Cuisine)

10 Nimmanhaemin Soi 5

Suthep, Muang, Chiang Mai 50200

Tel: 053 225 313

Open: 11:30am-2:30pm and 6pm-11pm.

Booking recommended.

Or, if you'd like to try Mei Jiang (Hong Kong Style Rice, Noodles & Congee)

191/17-18 Changkhlan Plaza (near Shangri-la Hotel)

Changklan Rd

Changklan, Muang, Chiang Mai 50100

Open: 11:30am-2:30pm, 5:50pm-9:00pm

Tel: 053 821 112

Does not take booking.

*Update: 13th March 2011

Yesterday we went back to Yangzi Jiang for dinner. It was still a mixed-bag experience! The restaurant was full again. The service was pretty slow and mostly inattentive again.

This time we ordered:

Peking Duck (800 baht + 7% VAT) - I must say the Peking Duck here is excellent! Possibly my favourite in Chiang Mai. The skin was light and crispy, and all the fat has pretty much been scraped off. The pancake was very well done too - the texture just right, soft and supple enough not to break. The pancakes didn't stick to each other either. I noticed almost every other table also ordered the Peking Duck.

We also had a choice of what to do with the meat and chose the noodles - stir-fried. It came a long time later. The waitress explained to us that so many people ordered Peking Duck it was taking a while to carve. When the noodles finally arrived, we were quite excited. However, this turned out to be nothing special and flavourless. The duck meat was quite tough and chewy. The noodles turned out to be 100 baht extra - this wasn't mentioned in the menu.

The stir-fried vegetables was also excellent - very fresh crispy vegies, but very expensive at 120 baht as the serving was very, very small.