It’s dim sum time again! This time we are heading to Zhou’s Kitchen, a mid-tier casual Chinese restaurant under Tung Lok group (TLG). Judging by its menu and interior, it is clear that Zhou’s Kitchen caters to the palates and pockets of diners from all walks of life. For its Anchorpoint branch, Zhou’s Kitchen is uniquely housed in a separate double-storey building known as the ‘Copperdome’, just outside the sub-urban shopping mall. There’s also two other outlets at Square 2 and Far east square.

Zhou’s Kitchen caught my attention mainly because of their high tea buffet which is at $16.80++ per head. Initially when they just launched this buffet, it was only on weekends, but they had since included in weekdays as well.

The interior was simple and decorated according to their theme of orange and green. There’s a total of 34 items to choose from the menu, which included some appetisers, soup, dim sum, rice & noodles, and desserts.

Prawn Crackers ($3 for 3 pax)
Zhou’s Kitchen provided prawn crackers for us to munch while waiting for the dim sum to be served. And just in case you’re thinking, they were not free. They charged us $3 for them since we had 3 person, so i guess its by head count.

Wonton
We was expecting wonton but it came in the form of the fried wonton skin instead. Fillings were minimum, but the sweet tangy sauce that accompanied the fried crispy skin was not too bad to start your meal.

Beef slices
I didn’t know what to make of this, i felt that the beef slices was average, the taste was forgettable, but then again, my friends thought it was not bad.

Salad prawn with mixed fruits
I’m a sucker for salad, so anything with salad wouldn’t taste that bad to me. The salad prawns were crunchy, a refreshing appetiser. But no doubt too much of good things could turn out to be bad too, as the salad dressings would be quite heavy.

Drunken chicken
This was easily the most unmemorable dish out of all the ones we had. Drunken chicken? Like what my friend said, it tasted more like “pig tails” to us (not that we had eaten pig tails before).

Pan fried chive dumplings with chicken
I ain’t a fan of chives, so anything from me about chives dumplings would surely be negative. You need to try this for yourself to find out.

Mini Egg tarts
Now, this is the real deal. By far one of the better dim sum i’ve for this meal, the mini egg tarts beared a reminiscent to the ones i had at Wah Lok, smooth and eggy fillings. And like before, mini egg tarts only posed the problem of being too small. But hey, we’re having dim sum buffet, this was all-you-can-eat, so no issue there. I lost count of the egg tarts i eaten that day.

Steamed pork and shrimp dumplings
As always, there’s pork, shrimp, fish roe in the Siew Mai. But Zhou’s rendition had a twist by adding in mushrooms as well. Although the taste of mushroom within siew mai didn’t really enhanced the flavour, but you got to give it to them for doing something different from the norm.

Steamed BBQ pork bun
Any char siew buns which had three parts would do for me. The one here was not bad, and although its very filling eating buns, i couldn’t help myself to two of them.

Steamed shrimp dumplings
The shrimp was good, crunchy and fresh. However, the skin was too thick and sticked to the teeth after eating it. But if you just wanted to make the most for your money, just order and eat as much as you can. Otherwise, i wouldn’t eat too much of it as the overly thick skin made me feel sick of dim sum.

Steamed pork ribs with black bean sauce
I always didn’t fancy ordering steam pork ribs, since there’s always hardly any meat on this type of steamed ribs, and unlike those “pork ribs king” which are popular in Zi-char stores, there’s nothing for you to chew on the bones here.

Fried rice with chicken and salted fish
The fried rice was surprisingly quite good, the wok flavour was evident with every grain of rice, and the clever use of salted fish did enhanced the taste of the fried rice. I’ll have ordered second servings if not for the fact that rices were very filling.

Deep fried prawn paste chicken
Their deep fried chicken marinated with prawn paste sauce, or Har Cheong Kai, was a laughing joke. The chicken was skinny, bare to the bones, the prawn paste was weak. I could hardly finish one chicken wing. Period.

Baked flaky BBQ pork pastry
The bbq pork pastry, or char siew sou, fared better than the rest. Although not excellent, but it’s still worth having second helpings if you are a fan of char siew sou like me.

Steamed custard bun
Their steamed custard buns brought back bad memories like the ones i had at Victor’s, the custard wasn’t cold, but they were very hard, unlike those good ones which had warm custard fillings oozing out with the lightest break of the bun.

Total bill was $66.30 for 3 person, which worked out to be around $22 per person. TLG is well-known in the local culinary scenes with their chains of restaurants, thus i was thinking Zhou’s kitchen couldn’t be that bad. But having been there, ate that, i would say their dim sum wasn’t worth the effort.

No doubt it’s cheap for all-you-can-eat buffets, you can gorge yourself silly, but i’ll rather eat less in quantity, and more in quality. I won’t bother going back again for their dim sum buffet, for a short while, i even felt sick of dim sum after eating so much that day, that’s why i disliked buffets, especially so if the food ain’t good. And by the way, there were 34 items, we tried quite many of them, but i didn’t show all the pictures out since the rest was either not worth mentioning, or we didn’t try them.

You are always welcome to visit ladyironchef for a full-up on this trip. Whatever written herein are my genuine feelings expressed in words. Food, my dear, is what they call an adventure!

The father-in-law suggested the place for dinner and we figured it must be ok given that it comes under the Tung Lok franchise.

First off, the place is not supposed to be for fine dinning, so if you go expecting posh chinese food, you certaintly would be disappointed (as one of the previous reviewers was). While the restaurant is housed in a nice stand-alone shophouse, the whole get up (food, prices, ambience, layout) really reminded me of Crystal Jade!

There was some American Express promotion going on, but unfortunately, our server wasn't conversant in any language (chinese, english, cantonese, we tried them all) and wasn't able to articulate what exactly the promotion was about. I still am not clear. It's either 1-1 or spend x and get 1 free dish or something. In any case, we ended up getting three free dishes. But before any of you rush off to try the place, the free dishes were extremely small. (The non free dishes were also very small). We had a salmon dish where there were a few small pieces of salmon and when I took one, before my taste buds could react, the piece was lost in the mouth.

To be fair though, the food was not bad and the total price came up to be very decent with the Amex promotion. Fairly typical Tung Lok fare and good enough for a sat night out with the family (like going to crystal jade lah). We had a whole range of dishes, from the wasabe prawns to the roast pork with mustard dip, sweet potato leaves etc. We actually ordered a steamed patin but when it came, it was overcooked (the fish was all dried up and twisted upwards - like it was fried!). We sent it back and half an hour later, they came to say that they had run out of fish. Oh well.

Word of mouth got me here...

We ordered the following dishes:

1) Dong Puo Rou - this wobbly fatty pork came in typical braised sauce and served with buns. Melted in your mouth and tasted very flavourful - good old comfort food.

2) Beef brisket noodles - the noodles were average, but the beef tasted quite bland, and I must say I 've had better ones before.

3) Steamed glutinous rice with crab - this one scored point. It was delightfully light yet sufficiently infused with sweet crab juices with a generous dose of garlic.

On top of above, we had some dim sum dishes which were quite good.
Overall quite an enjoyable meal.

As a fine restaurant, I can't believe that it is really a restaurant for families to dine in there! Zhou's Kitchen is skewed towards small families --- when I had dinner with 10 other family members and friends one night, I am surprised that TLG or whatsoever did not plan a 10-man menu for us. Or at least TLG could do --- inform us, 'oh, what a large group of people, may I suggest you order more dishes, 'cos our portion size is quite small' and so on:(

Other than that, the food and value is passable, not to forget the unique house Zhou's Kitchen is in, opposite IKEA. Next time, if I really need fine dining after a trip in Anchorpoint or Queensway, I would rather settle for the Swedish restaurant opposite Alexandra Road, as I would like to surprise my friend our appetite for exotic food:)

Zhou's kitchen is part of the Tung Lok group of restaurants so I expected a decent standard. Also, the local reasonably-priced chinese cuisine market is currently monopolised by Crystal Jade. Although Crystal Jade has an incredible fan base judging from the long queues almost everyday and it has mushroomed all over Singapore and sometimes having 2 or more branches in the same building, and the standard of the food has no less diminished over the years, i felt that we are all getting tired of the menu. Nevertheless, i think this concept of offering small portions, decently priced, tasty chinese eats is only going to grow in popularity and there is a niche for more restauranteurs to jump onto the bandwagon as more Singaporeans/ Yuppies tend to eat in small groups and not many of us are able to gather a group of 10 to eat in traditional Chinese restaurants where the servings are huge.

Went to try out Zhou's kitchen on a Sunday brunch. Located well out of the city center, i like that it's not too crowded and parking is abundant in Anchorpoint or even at Queensway shopping center.

The decor was clean and cheerful, with the glass windows creating an illusion of a big airy area and looking out onto some high end car showrooms. Not bad to whet the appetite.

We had a few dim sum dishes :-

Steamed pork rib with black beans - Pork was not too fatty, pretty decent but lacks a bit of seasoning. Don't think the black bean taste has seeped into the dish yet.

Pan fried prawn roll in bean curd skin - a staple of dim sum... The bean curd skin was nicely fried till it was crispy, fluffy and melt-in -your mouth. The chef i think forgot to drain out the oil so it was soaking oily. Minus 1 point.

Fried prawn wanton in Mayo - The wanton skin was crispy and tasty

Lychee boat congee - Hmmm. Somebody forgot to add salt. It was pretty bland, but brownie points for generous portions of ingredients.

Stir-fried sambal potato leaves - somehow the stalks were a bit firm and chewy, unlike the plump juicy stalks i'm used too. The sambal was passable.

The star really was the Sharks' fin dumpling in superior broth... Going for $5 per bowl for a dumpling the size of my fist- it's a steal. The dumpling was bursting at the seam with shark's fin, baby mushroom... Interesting texture and the broth was delicious. Not recommended for the environmentally conscious of course. But as a foodie, sometimes you must eat without conscience. Hahahaha.

I think Zhou's kitchen needs a bit more work to give Crystal Jade a run for their money. But i will return because there's no Q, the food is not too bad, nice quiet location and prices are decent.