Taste Paradise 味之樓 (ION Orchard)

Went to Taste Paradise to celebrate one of my friend’s birthdays! Everyone’s slowing turning 21, it’s gonna be my turn soon. Truly on the way to growing white hair. But I still love birthdays, it’s an added reason to publicly show your friends how much you treasure them haha.

Taste did not have CUSTARD BUNS that day!! Probably cos we were late and they ran out. But our faces totally fell when the waitress told us that. Note to self: reserve custard buns when making reservations for your table.

Some of the things that stand out and must be ordered: (non-existent liu sha baos), char siew baos, char siew sou, crabmeat and shrimp roe fried rice, egg tarts, chee cheong fun with scallop/ prawn, xo carrot cake (not pictured).

Char siew sou here is one of the best versions in Singapore. The pastry is incredibly buttery and flaky. Melts in your mouth once you put it in. And after biting into it, you taste the hot and sweet char siew bits in your mouth. Mind you, it’s not just any old fatty colored meat in there, it’s the real deal.

Generally, Taste Paradise serves up tasty, good quality dim sum that won’t disappoint. Need to return to eat those elusive little CUSTARD BUNS yo.

I didn't note the exact prices of the dim sum, but prices generally are around $4 per dish. Bill comes up to a little more than Crystal Jade or Imperial Treasure, but the ambience is slightly more exquisite and some of the stuff are really worth paying that extra money for. 

Had dinner here a few times with the family, and I think it's slightly overpriced. Nothing to shout about, but that's a story for another day. 

Everything aside, when you think of Taste Paradise, think of C-U-S-T-A-R-D B-U-N-S.

look here for more! http://natxzx.wordpress.com

Meater strikes again !

This time, we celebrated my brother's birthday at Taste Paradise on the upper floor of ION. Nice place overall, with the successive Chinese Dynasty first emperors as part of the crew.

This is one of my few experiences in a Chinese restaurant with Filipeeno waiters. Cannot speak Mandarin in a Chinese restaurant !?

They charge corkage here, so folks like me who love their French should either stay away, bargain, get connected, or just pay up.

The food: Beijing Duck was good. Beef steak ? Much better grade of beef found at Majestic (which Taste Paradise probably took the recipe of this dish from). Cod fish was so-so. Super over-priced vegetables. XO bamboo clams was pretty good with enough meat.

The pace of service was almost as fast as the new Chinese Bullet train going from Beijing to Tianjin, read: SUPER FAST ! They were either trying to burst our stomachs or going for the record pace of serving ! I could hardly swallow the XO bamboo clams before the 4 other dishes were flashing in front of my face. Was this the speed the Chinese emperors ate their dinner ?

Overall Ok, but beware the too-keen-to-UPsell-captain !  

We are Singaporeans returning for a visit.  We wanted to try the leading dim sum restaurants during our brief visit so we dropped in for appetizers at 11:30 am on 17 Feb 2012 without reservations.  We were politely told that we have to vacate the table by 12:45 which is ok with us.  We were the second party to be seated and within a half hour, the restaurant was full.

There was a large number of wait staff, perhaps almost one per table although some were clearly new and couldn't identify the dishes being served.   English was not their forte as Mandarin wasn't mine.   

Everything we ordered was good.   The tea is pricey.  Will return but won't order tea.  This was only an appertiser for us and costs S$38.66 for two.

XO Carrot cake $7.80

Steamed Tofu       5.80

Prawn N Mango   4.80

BBQ Pork Pastry  3.90

Fried Taro Puff      3.80

C. Tea (2)      7.60

 

One of my favourite places for dim sum, but the place is awfully crowded (especially during weekends) so advance booking is a must. We had about 10 dishes, including a variety of dim sum, appetizers and a very good stir fry gai lan with jellyfish. The combination sounds abit odd, but believe me, it works. Love it, will definitely order it again the next time round. Some of the better dim sum include the very famous liquid custard buns. I think I can finish 3 servings on my own. The buns are so liquid, even when cooled, so be careful when you are eating them, or else you will end up with a mess. The liquid centers are savory and sweet at the same time, as they are made of custard and salted egg yolk. Other steamed offerings like har gao and spinach seafood dumplings are also well made, with very fresh prawns encased in thin translucent rice flour skin. 

Felt abit cheated by the western style spring onion rolls though, as I expected real 葱油饼 (as per described on the menu). They were simply narrow fried spring rolls with spring onions inside.  The smoked duck spring rolls were also quite disappointing. They were basically spring rolls with a few tiny strips of smoked duck inside. Fans of chicken feet should order the chicken feet stewed in abalone sauce instead of the usual steamed ones. They are so good! Reminds me of the ones I had in Hong Kong. I will definitely be back again to try out their a la carte menu. Hopefully it is as good as their dim sum! 

For detailed review and photos, please visit here http://exclusively-ivyg.blogspot.com/2011/11/you-i.html.

Was here for dim sum lunch with my boyfriend. Had to wait for 15-20mins even though reservation has been made beforehand. Overall the dim sums were nice but I find them too pricey. Probably diners are paying for the ambience and setting too.  

Their dim sum are quite good. The setting and ambience are posh. Order the regular types of dim sum and peking duck. The duck is quite good. However, felt thirsty after meal.

For photos check out http://www.brownieinvancouver.com/2011/11/taste-paradise-dim-sum-singapore.html

Nice ambience for Dim Sum.

For full review and pictures, please refer to: 

http://rollingwrites.blogspot.com/2011/07/taste-paradise.html

This place is a good place to refresh your Chinese history. There were paintings of Chinese emperors hung in the restaurant. As you ate, all you saw was: 赵匡胤，李世民 etc. 

We ordered the usual stuff like har gow (shrimp dumpling) and siew mai. The prawns were fresh and the skin of the har gow was thin. I love those thin skins, because it's like this that you can really taste the prawn!

There was also the chee cheong fun. I preferred the prawn chee cheong fun to the scallop one, because I couldn't really taste the scallop in the chee cheong fun. i.e. they must have been really small, because all I knew I was eating was the skin of the chee cheong fun.

The charsiew is sweet, encased within a crispy crust!

And then, there's my favourite egg tarts. These buttery pastries served piping hot are totally awesome! These little jewels are expensive though- $1.20 per small piece.

We also ordered xiaolongbaos, pumpkin 锅饼, the deep fried mango roll, custard bun, mango pudding and the aloe vera with lime dessert (along with dry ice).

Good dimsum is worth a go, even though it may not come as cheap as many other places.

Do you often go beyond ground level for ion orchard? As far as I know, not many do that. Taste paradise is on the fourth floor of ion orchard, and many people(like me) will actually think that unless they have quite a fair bit of extra moolah, they will not really go up.

Taste paradise offers Chinese cuisines including dim sum, this time round I'm here for the dim sum lunch. Dim sum ordering is ala carte, so I asked the manager what are the noteworthy items. To my surprise, he said ordering  dim sum is common sense(What?), and then went ahead and ticked a few items on the menu that are frequently ordered. I decided to show some uncommon sense by choosing a few which he did not ticked. He could have meant that all of them are pretty tasty, but he could have used some better words.

Enough about that, the interior of the restaurant is very very dim, and lucky me was brought to a room with a large glass window overlooking Shaw Lido building and . The dining furnitures are classy Chinese looking (duh) chairs which does not compromise on comfort.

Ordered

Click here to continue review with pictures and other food reviews

for pictures: http://hungryinsingapore.wordpress.com/2011/07/16/taste-paradise-lunch/

I finally got to try the famous Taste Paradise at Orchard ION today. i made reservations for 2pm. the other time slots were 11am and 12:30pm. on weekends they serve dim sum until 4:30pm. I bought a Paradise Group member card for $68. There's $77 stored value which can be used immediately so why not?

The restaurant was quite big. There was a main dining area, with tables scattered all over, private rooms, and also a ‘dark alley’ which I was led to, which is away from the main dining area. On the left of the alley were booth seats which was partitioned from the next by a full length wall. It is good for 2 people and is quite private, where you wouldn’t have people looking at you, and you won’t be distracted by the crowd at the main dining area. It’s good for couples. The only downside was that it was far from the window and was rather dark, which is why my pictures aren’t very good here.

Despite being seated at a secluded area, the attention of the service staff was still quite easy to catch. My tea was refilled periodically. The service was typical of chinese restaurants - mainly foreign wait staff and rather rowdy with their walkie talkies.

Chrysanthemum Tea - $3.80++/pax

Crackling Pork Belly - $12.80++

This was not one of the best I've tried. Shang Palace's rendition wins hands down. The skin was not very crackling contrary to the name, and the meat was quite rubbery instead of tender.

Classic Double Boiled Daily Soup - $12.00++

The soup of the day was fish maw soup. It was tasty like it should be.

Pan Seared Foie Gras with Caramelised Apple - $16.00++

For foie gras, $16.00++ is definitely reasonable. And to make things better, this was quite good! I would definitely have this again. The blueberry sauce complimented the fatty foie gras really well. There was a puff pastry below the foie gras and caramelised apple, but it was nothing to shout about. On it's own it was rather tough and not very flaky but having everything together it was perfect.

Ironic to the fact that I was dining at a chinese restaurant, I think my favourite dish of this meal was this. The only rival would be the Custard Bun.

Baked BBQ Pork Pastry - $3.90++

This is definitely one of the best char siew soh around! However, I personally preferred Royal China's. If royal china's was rated a 10, this would be 9.5. The pastry was of the perfect crispiness and fluffiness. There wasn't any sick oily taste. The char siew was lean too.

Ha Kau - $4.80++

This was nothing very extraordinary. I've had better ones at Feng Shui Inn (Guest Chef Mak) and Royal China. However it was passable in terms of quality where the skin didn't tear or stick and wasn't too thick.

Siew Mai - $4.80++

This was more outstanding than the ha kau, I feel. Not extraordinary but I think it's one of the better siew mais I had so far.

Steamed Chicken Claw with Black Bean Sauce - $3.80++

I usually will not try the chicken claw but I tried it today. Not too bad. It's my first so I can't compare.

Deep Fried Prawn and Mango Roll - $4.80++

Having tried Chef Mak's prawn and mango roll at Feng Shui Inn (and loving it), I ordered it. However, the pastry for this was pale in comparison. It has sick oily taste and the breaded skin meant that it won't be the flaky sort which I had before. However, the mango filling was very good! It was sweet, like Hong Kong's Hui Lau San mango desserts.

Steamed Cheong Fun with Honey BBQ Pork Filling - $4.80++

The rice rolls was smooth and soft, which I liked. The char siew filling was normal. However the sauce was too soya sauce/ black sauce kind of salty for my liking. 

Steamed Custard Bun - $4.50++

We ordered 2 servings of this. This was the highlight of this meal, having heard so much about the custard buns from Taste Paradise. I am a convert.

Not only was the salted egg custard so delicious, the bun itself was fluffy and tasty. One is not enough, even if I was stuffed full.

Mini Egg Tarts - $3.60++

We ordered 2 servings of this. The pastry as flaky and the custard was tasty and soft! One of the better egg tarts around.

Mango Pudding - $5.00++

This was average at best. It was the firm type rather than the soft pudding type. In fact, I preferred the one from Imperial Treasure Bakery!

The bill for 2 was $113.58. $77 credit was used to offset the meal.