Mian Mian Ju Dao Formosa Delights

It is a small restaurant located at the basement of The Cathy. It was so quiet when i visit this restaurant(around 12pm). I was the only customer thus i find it quite surprising when there wasn't any other customer in the restaurant besides myself.

Menu is simple, there wasn't any signature dishes. I ordered a plate of stir-fried kangkong with garlic and hotplate tofu.

The hotplate tofu took about 15 mins to arrive, served pipping hot on a hotplate. There were several pcs of egg tofu on the hotplate, cooked in special chilli sauce. The outer layer of the egg tofu remains a little crispy but sticky. The sauce is a little on the oily side.

Stir-fried kangkong

Horrendous! The vegetables were covered in oil! My lips were ''shiny'' and ''glossy'' when i took a few mouthful. This dish is certainly oily. I feedback to the manager in charge and he would look into this matter.

Service is neither here nor there. Since there wasn't any other customers, the staff just linger/sit around to do their own things. Based on this experience, it is unlikely that i would go back again.

I had an unfortunate incident at Cathay last week, I went to Mian Mian. 40 mins before the movie started, my wife was hungry and we had to go somewhere to grab a bite and I had to drop in at Mian Mian Ju Dao because it was the least crowded.

Ordered 2 drinks and 1 set of Xiao Long Bao. It took 35 mins to come with the excuse that food is only made when ordered, absolute brillant efficency! 1 xiao long bao made per 4.37 mins, these people are real pros! And guess what there was 2 cooks plus 1 head waitress and 1 malay waitress, all huddling around the kitchen... perhaps helping out.

The skin of the Xiao long bao was uneven, bloated, and definite both the dough and the meat was over cooked. If you want to imagine how it looks like, soak a dead body in botanical garden for three days, and cut off the corpse thumb. Yeap, that's how it look like.

To be fair to them, perhaps these people were exhausted after serving the other only table, with a couple. Oh well, they must have had a great meal cos when we first entered, they have cleaned up their plates and bowl.

What I ordered: 2 water chestnut drinks/ 1 Xiao Long Bao/ 1 Forced pickle/ 2 Forced towels.

Drinks were ok, came in one of those bottled plastic container, properly made somewhere else by someone else.

There's no ambience, with rag tag type of furniture and a Malay waitress who didn't understand my "FORMOSA DELIGHT" request in chinese - bloated Xiao Long Bao.

Had an appt in The Cathay and so needed a quick meal. Partly 'cos of the school holidays as well as the availability of the ticketing box office in the basement (previously don't have), most of the food outlets/kiosks are packed with ppl (mostly youths).

Here wasn't as packed and so decided to have my quick meal here. Ordered a taiwan-style beef soup noodle ($6.80) and it was not bad. :) Noodles were handmade and were 'toing toing' as I bite into them. I like! Beef was ok only. Not as tender and soft as I prefer them to be. There are many other food items such as dim sum which I prob give it a try next time.

Wait and kitchen staff were primarily Chinese and so communication almost had to be all in Mandarin. Noted that there was problem in communication when a cacausian family who could ONLY speak English tried to place their orders as the wait staff who could barely speak English backtracked immediately. Luckily there was one of the wait staff (think is a non-Chinese) to attend to this family. Hmm..not that speaking Mandarin is not acceptable but I guess in a multi-racial society and being located in town to boot, to be able to communicate in at least basic and simple English will help. Esp for wait staff who will be fronting the customers.

Answer: GoHere! That's if you like Chinese food

Up to my early-twenties, pre-and-post movies have always been McD, KFC, Seah St Deli, some pasta joint, you know - angmoh food. You know the reason...It's just not cool to eat Chinese when you think you are "an angmoh hidden in a Chinese body".

Anyway, those days are gone! With China being in the economic spotlight and "Mandarin Cool" campaigns, Chinese food is making a steady advance up the Singapore "food favs" list. Nope, not talking about the Singapore Hawker food. I'm talking real Chinese food that have classy kungfu sounding names like "Dao Xiao Mian" (direct translation "Knife Shaven Noodle"), "Xiao Long Bao" (dt: "small dragon bun", "Zui Ji" (dt: Drunken Chicken), "Song Zi Yu" (dt: "Squirrel Fish").

Imagine watching a kungfu serial between two pugilists with dialogue from the menu:

Pugilist one: Today, I will show you my family skill - the Dao Xiao Mian!

Pugilist two: You think what....you think I, Xiao Long Bao, don't know how to counter your two-bit martial art with my lethal swordskill...the Deadly Heavenly Sword! Heeeyah!

P1: Don't blame for me for my knife being heartless!

P2: Let your horses come over! If I die, my brother, Song Zi Yu will come after you and your family. So will my grieving darling, Yang Zhou Chao Fan, come after you! You will die under his Big Condor Knife as he has developed this ridiculous skill with this Big Condor Bird in the North! You will never have a day of peace!

P1: Ok ok....you win....you want to try this "Jui Ji" I recently marinated with the best Shao Hshing wine in the region? I saw this huge bird hanging around with this small boy and I caught the bird because it looked like a chicken....

Ok, that's a "foodie" adaptation of the Jin Yong "Legend of the Condor Heroes" story.

Anyway, here's the review for the restaurant:

The xiao long bao is not exactly Din Tai Feng standard, but it still holds its own with its own strengths.

First, the xiao long bao is not "sissily" measured, weighed and prepared by a factory assembly of Singaporean chef assistants in a 4 x 4 glass enclosure. At Formosa, it is prepared in manly Chinese style with flying swordsman and inner strength....I mean, by manly Chinese chefs who multi-task between whacking strands of noodles from a big chunk of dough and deftly wrapping little molds of pork into dough skin to (TA DAH!) become "jiao zhi" (pork, or pork and veg or veg only dumplings) and xiao long baos (little pork soup buns).

In terms of appearance, the jiao zhis don't look any different from other jiao zhi places. But the flavour of the pork has just the nice balance of "porky" taste and marinate. Also, there's nothing to complain about the fine balance between the amount of carbs versus the protein filling. Perhaps overlooked by many, but when you eat with my friend who loves to leave the non-meat filled sides of the dumpling skin on the plate, its easy to discern the meat/carbs balance in the dumpling equation.

As for the xiao long baos, I did say that they are not like the sissy high class ones served at Din Tai Feng. The reason is because, upon bite, you know that the dumpling skin thickness is the result of an experienced chef - it's neither one nano-millimetre too thick, nor too thin. It's just nice, in a non-lab-controlled way.

Also this xiao long bao is created to be "civilised". The gravy flows out with the bite unlike some other places where you've got to ask your fellow diner to sit at the next NEXT table for fear that the gravy will power-squirt its way onto their brand new Liz Clairborne blouse. So if you want "bursting" and "scalding", this xiao long bao is too gentlemanly for that.

The gravy is also neither oily nor bland. Yes, the gravy is liquified pork fats, but for some reason, drinking the gravy sorts of makes you want to lie to yourself and say that it is the "double boiled pork stock".

In the dumpling sections, you may want to try their "kai kou jiao zhi" (dt: open mouth dumpling). Out of curiousity, I ordered a portion ($8 for 8) and then I waited and waited. When it finally arrived on my table, I understood why the dumplings took so darn long to arrive. They were made from freshly chopped up green leafy veg (hello calcium! Goodbye cancer!) and they were stir fried with some egg ( I say some, because 8 of those mini dumplings couldn't possibly) contain a whole egg...even a 55g one). Accompanied by the jade green dumpling skin, the "kai kou jiao zhi" was a glowing sight of healthy but tasty food. Anyway, it was gone in 30 secs...(my friend and I were hungry)

At Formosa Delights, there is another kitchen inside the restaurant that holds 3-4 chefs (also from China) that are in-charge of cooking anything else that is not in the "dumplings" and "fresh noodle" section. This kitchen is one of the fastest and effective kitchens I've seen. It also looks so bright and clean from the outside. Sometimes during the lull periods, you'll have 1-2 chefs looking out from the kitchen at you. Just watching you eat. That's like my father's luo han fish watching us from his fish tank that looks directly at our dining table.

Right, the food. I've ordered these from the kitchen and here's the feedback:

1) Stir Fried Beef with mixed veg in dough skin

Served separately from the Dough Skin, you are expected to scoop a spoonful of the beef dish onto your dough skin and then eat it "peking duck" style. Do I like it? You bet!

Just getting me involved in the food preparation (wrapping) was one of it. The second was that the beef was well-cooked without blood (I've never had blood in my beef in Chinese restaurants ever! So that itself is good news!) and tasted like it came from a good quality piece of cow...maybe like sirloin or topside that had taken a frozen cattle class flight from NZ or OZ.

Furthermore, the dish was not salty and was just nice (at least for me).

2) Stir Fried eggplant with pork (for non-pork eaters, you can request for chicken) ($8 or $12)

This is one of my favourite Chinese dishes and the last time I had this dish was in a Chinese restaurant in Abu Dhabi. Let me just say that, visiting a Chinese restaurant in Abu Dhabi is a futile attempt in getting the Chinese "fix".

This dish was served with no fuss and looked a little oily. But which Chinese cooked Chinese dish isn't? Taste wise, it was fine. Nothing out of the ordinary but it was good, nonetheless.

3) Fried rice with chicken ($6.80)

Ah...fried rice. Fried rice here is, not Din Tai Feng standard because of the different grain used. But I don't care about the grain. I care about the taste. Bite wise, the grain was neither dry not soggy. It was just nice. Taste wise, it had everything fried rice should have, a little garlic, a little more oil than I'd prefer and "wok heat". The "Wok heat" is everything to fried rice and this place had the "wok heat" to bring out that unmistakable texture of the rice.

4) Steamed fresh water fish with some "ma la" thingy

I had this quite a while ago, but I do remember that the fish. Actually I was quite full by the time the fish was served, but I managed to try a morsel. From that morsel, I could tell that the fish was quite well-steamed and the gravy on it tasted quite good - not too mouth-numbingly spicy.

5) Dao Xiao Mian stir fried with chicken

The noodle is really something. I've never been a fan of the Shanghainese "nian gao" which is a doughy chewy noodle like thing. So I had my doubts when I ordered this noodle. Shaved off a big ball of dough into hot water, I had the impression that the noodle would be chewy and all things I don't like about noodles.

When the noodle arrived, I tasted the safest thing - the gravy. It was tasty and thick and I wondered why until I tried it with the noodle. The noodle itself had a resistance to it, as if it was flirting with your incisor teeth, but gave way smoothly to the bite. It was thick it a nice way and probably the experience of eating this noodle is one of a kind, incomparable to your fettucines or yellow mee....I liked it! Smothered with the tasty gravy, this noodle really showed off its strengths - it held the gravy on every noodle surface giving each mouthful the "WOOMPH" of noodle-ly tasty goodness! I must say that the chef really knew what to do to bring out the best of this noodle.

If I was to describe this noodle as a person, I'd say it was a down-to earth peasant with plain and simple looks, who gets along with everyone and is just waiting for a chance to shine.

6) Hot and sour soup

I hated it! Sorry, it's just not hot and sour soup that I know. It was watered down and had superficial taste that didn't invoke 2nd or 3rd layers of flavour that usually comes with Hot and Sour Soup. Not sure what I'm talking about? Go to Min Jiang at Goodwood hotel. Then try the one here.

Formosa Delights also has some snacks that they list under their dessert menu:

1) Mango pudding - not bad. I've tasted synthetic ones, but this one tastes alright

2) Sesame paste - the sesame flavour is a little too muddied with the milk they use to prepare it. One look and you'll know that it's different from the oens you get at the dessert stall along Temple Street

3) Herbal Jelly - not much to brag home about. But I do hate to see the plastic cup mould in the jelly that just screams of "convenience".

4) Red bean pancake (Deep fried)

One of my favourites and should be yours too - that's if you don't mind fried dough and seeing the oil seep through the paper doily

5) Red bean ingot (Deep fried)

Ok, you've got me, I'm a red bean paste sucker! This one I like too! But because unlike some cheapskate restaurants, every inch of this "ingot" has red bean paste stuffed into it! Even the curvy sides....don't understand, go and order one and by impressed by the detail and generousity

6) Yam paste biscuit (Deep fried)

Made with mashed yam, I didn't like this much because there was more fried dough in it than the yam. But the funny thing was that, the mushy dough inside also tasted quite nice. I may be mistaking the "mushy dough" for "mushy dough" but I suspect it may not be dough but some form of white colored root vegetable

5 reasons why you should come here:

1) If you are watching a movie at Cathay and want to have a simple, non-fussy and not too pricey meal before or after the movie.

2) To try China Chinese food that is unpretentious and for the pleasant and clean environment

3) Service is pretty good and they are very obliging in most ways. There was one time when my friend was late and I had put aside some food for her. The manager spotted it and asked me if I would like to have the food heated up for her when she came. That's definitely Lei Garden service standard or better

4) 10% discount if you manage to get a card from them. They give it out at the first floor of Cathay. Or, you could just ask for it before you enter

5) Free "trip" to China. Check out the servers' Mandarin. You'd feel like you are in China except for the nice white light and tiled floors.