Dian Xiao Er 店小二 (Marina Square)

Exemplary service. Great food. I'll definitely come back

Was celebrating a friend birthday and decided to settle for Dian Xiao Er.

Tried the set dinner meal with seven or eight dishes. Dong bo rou is very well done. Not very oily. Rest of the dishes are pretty nice too.

Deco wise just have the feeling of those inn in ancient time.

You can't help but take a second look at Dian Xiao Er when you walk past it. Every bit of the shop is designed to look like an old inn you watch in those ancient chinese shows. It isn't just a passing novelty, I still enjoy the experience every single time I am there.

The duck meat with herbs is a must-try. The meat is tender, fragrant and really sweet. The Mongolian spare ribs is another must try. It's well roasted, really tasty and yummy. I was also bought over by the spinach with three kinda of eggs. It was my first time trying that dish, and I've been ordering it elsewhere but none as good as my first at Dian Xiao Er.

Service is quite good. They will always remember to refill your tea and are pretty responsive.

One downside of visiting Dian Xiao Er is that because of the huge crowd and long queue, I always feel a little rushed to finish my food. The servers seem pretty eager to clear my plates. But you can't really blame them because the queue is always very long!!!

For those of you who haven't been there, you should really queue for once and try the food.

It's been a long time (2yrs) since I've eaten here.

Nice revamp to the menu that surprised me!

Food
We took the executive set for 5 pax, generous portion of food. Nice herbal roast duck that is not too strong to suit every one's taste bud.

Ambience
Not much change still decorated like Long Men Ke Zhan ^^

Value
Take the executive set that is slightly more expensive but better food.

Service
Prompt to serve and courteous service provided.

I was first introduce to this restaurant by my boyfriend then, now husband. I only eat my mum's braised duck without skin and very seldom do I eat duck meat outside until I came to Dian Xiao Er.

I love their duck meat especially the roast duck, the skin of the duck is crispy. Yum yum...

The last 2 visit to the restaurant, my husband and I had their set meal (4 dishes + rice)and we love it. I think it could be served for 3 instead of 2.

They now offer some discount for their set meal which I feel that it's worth it.

Oh yes... I forgot about their service. It was good at Marina Sq. Their staff were friendly and they tell you what dish it is when served. They topped up plain water without requesting for it.
Some of them do offer to inform us of their CNY promotion where there are discount now. Once cross over to 2009, no discount available.

Had our dinner at Dian Xiao Er today.

We ordered Dong Po Pork, Chinese Tea, Sweet Celery, XO seafood fried rice and Xiao Er's beancurd. The Dong Po Pork was less tender than the one we had at T3 but it has less fats on it. Overall, it was still as good.

The waiters and waitresses were very professional and took pride in their services. They will automatically pour tea for you when they noticed that your tea cup is half filled and also will clear the empty dishes after the last piece of food has been taken.

Overall, the experience I had is as good as the one I had in Dian Xiao Er (T3).

Great job guys, keep it up.

We actually went to this place because a friend of a friend decided it’s a good place to eat. Since I've never been to any of the outlet before, so here we go. The waiting time was not too long, since we reach there around 8.

We ordered (For 5 hungry people)
1. Herbal Roast Duck
2. Fragrant Nestum Prawn
3. Mongolian Spare Ribs
4. Deep Fried Kai-Lan with Meat Floss
5. Sesame Deep Fried Chicken x 2 (I explain later)
6. Buddha Jump Over the Wall (for 1)
7. Winter Melon Soup (for 3)
8. Soup of the day, boil spare ribs & vegs (for 1)
Note: We ordered all Medium size, except for the soup, that only got 1 size.

Anyway, if you are a roast duck fans, you won’t be disappointed. Its fragrant, got crispy skin, tender meat and glaze with the herbal sauce. If they have the pancake like Beijing Roast Duck, you might mistaken this for Beijing Roast Duck. I give it 9 out of 10.

The Fried Kai-Lan with meat floss is something unique. They only use the stalk of the Kai-Lan, stir-fry it and top it up with meat floss and black fungus.

The nestum prawn, spare ribs and sesame fried chicken are good but nothing to special to write about. No comment on the Buddha Jump Over the Wall since it was not me who ordered it :( The winter melon soup is nice and tasty, since it’s boiled with dried scallops.

Service:
The staff are friendly and attentive. However, I personally feels that the staff are over friendly and over attentive that you don't have the privacy when you are eating. I think that the staff still need to find the balance on the service part.

The staff ask if we have UOB card since we order the deep fried sesame chicken, we said no at first, but inform her immediately after we realise that one of us have UOB card. However she said, the order has been put in the computer, and can't be change. So we end up with 2 plate of Deep fried sesame chicken.

To their credit, we wanted to order the winter melon soup at first, but it was all out. Subsequently, she found out that new batch of soup is ready, so she check with us if we want to order the soup and so we did.

Had lunch with another colleague to this outlet. Love their roast duck since I first had it at T3 outlet. We ordered the following for our lunch -

1) Herbal roast duck (十全）- the herbal sauce is too sweet for our liking, would prefer the 当归 flavour. Nevetheless, the roast duck skin crispy as usual (Rate : 3 out of 5)

2) XO sauce with French Beans - crunchy french beans, but the XO sauce is not strong enough (rate : 3 out of 5 )

3) House specia Xiao Er Beancurd - 5 pieces of special tofu which is too hard and big. Felt like eating fishcake than tofu (Rate : 2 out of 5)

4) Soup of the Day - 三色罗卜汤 - double boil fatty spare ribs with few slices of carrots, white radish and green radish soup. Flavourful. (Rate : 3.5 out of 5)

5) UOB Promotion - spend above SGD 50 get free Sesame Deep Fried Chicken - fried chicken is crispy on lemongrass + sesame sauce. (Rate : 2.5 out of 5)


Service - Attentive & Prompt. Have yet to call out the waiter to refill my tea. Another girl attended me from my back. Courteous.

My virgin experience at the Vivo branch was close to perfect. So I was really excited to see another branch yesterday at Marina. My friend and I had:

- the old style steamed fish
- the 'chang shen bu lao' soup
- the sweet and sour pork

The place is famous for the duck I know but we were not hungry enough for duck :)

Unfortunately, I didn't feel the same UMPF as I did at Vivo. The fish was so-so, not as flavourful as Vivo's somehow. The soup was nice, but it did not make you sit up and say with big big eyes "WOW! SHIOK!". And the sweet and sour pork was nice but seriously rather normal. Like typical tze char outlet kind.

Space a bit cramped. So much so that many pairs of people shared tables of 4 with other pairs of people. We could hardly hold a decent conversation. That, I didn't enjoy.

If I return, I will prob go to the Vivo outlet. But honestly, I much prefer Soup Kitchen

Thursday (6 Sept 07). JC and I were looking for a place to have dinner. We passed by this place and it was still not open for business yet and there wasn't a queue outside at all. Normally, there would be hordes of people sitting on the stools along the walkway, queuing for their turn. We had a great idea. The long queue here had always put us off from dining here, so we decided capitalise on the situation today. We promptly looked though the menu and decided on what to order. There is also an early bird discount of 12% for the first 10 customers during lunch and during dinner. We were table #1 for dinner and were issued with an early bird discount token to be used during payment.

F&B:
Roast Duck with Angelica Herb ($10.80++)
The duck was nice and crispy. The gravy did taste of the Agelica Herb, but it was rather salty.

Fried Rice with Seafood & XO sauce ($10.80++)
The fried rice was nice and I liked the seafood in it, but absolutely no hint of XO in the taste.

Ambience:
The decor is unique. The interior is done up to resemble those quaint kiosks/stalls in ancient China, complete with the wooden tables and stools. It appealed to me. There was also a great view through the windows of the outside.

Value:
Satisfactory.

Service:
Very good. The staff were attentive and very polite.