Summer Palace @ The Regent Singapore

It's been a long time since we last went down to Summer Palace for a Dim Sum lunch. Summer Palace has been at Regent for many years. Some hits and misses from them over the years, but I would say the food here is above average.



The entrance of Summer Palace after coming out from the bubble lift in the hotel.



Iced water is served free of charge, just like most Chinese restaurants in Singapore. Of course, the charge of water is usually factored inside the costs of towels and nuts.



Didn't like the complimentary appetizer, which was a weird Chilled White and Black fungus. I guess I could not appreciate fungus served chilled. Prefer them warm and fried or boiled in soup.



Everyone loves fried crispy food, including us. The Crispy Prawn Balls were a hit with us. But hopefully they can squeeze out more of the oil as we can still see the glistering oil on the prawns.



BBQ Pork Pies (S$4.80) - Quite big and chokeful of diced char siew and sweet sauce. The chef has done a good job with the flaky and buttery crust.



The must order at any Dim Sum restaurant - Steamed Prawn Dumplings (S$5.00) or commonly known as Har Gow in Singapore and Hong Kong. The version here is similar to what you would have in most places. Skin is thin and delicate though.



Soup of the Day (S$12.00) boiled with bamboo pith, herbs and other seafood. The soup base is clear chicken soup.



Tried their Eight Treasures Fried Rice (S$26.00) cooked from scratch in claypot years ago, and this time decided to re-order this dish again. Standards was good and each claypot could serve 4 diners. Something unqiue is that instead of the usual jasmine rice, different types (8 to be exact) of rice grains are used. So you get 8 kinds of flavours, textures and nutritions.



Another Dim Sum staple - Siew Mai with Scallops (S$6.00) . Everything was fresh here. No complains.



Ended with a savoury dessert - Custard Buns (S$3.00) . The most anticipated thing to do with Custard Bun, is to peel it.



Witness the golden cream flowing out from the buns. All custard buns should be eaten and served pipping hot, and not left for a long time untouched on the table.


Summer Palace
1 Cuscaden Road 3F
The Regent

A&W: A Pictorial

Visiting A&W was a must on my itinerary during my family's short getaway to Indonesia. I had Googled the location of the A&W outlets in Batam before leaving Singapore, and I was definitely glad to hear from the tour guide that we'd be dropping by Megamall for some shopping! The lack of an information counter and the shopper-unfriendly mall configuration didn't help, but I eventually found A&W on the ground floor of the shopping centre.

The fried chicken was slightly dry. While the curly fries were nicely crispy/fluffy, it was a pity that they were overly salty.

A&W Strawberry Milkshake & the classic A&W Root Beer Float. Of course we had to upsize the latter.

Waffles with vanilla ice cream

This was the other A&W classic that I had been so eagerly anticipating. I would have been certainly disappointed to leave Batam without rekindling memories of having the same warm and slightly salty waffle with cold soft serve as a little girl. 

Though this was not the best waffle-and-ice-cream combo I've had, I relished every bite of nostalgia... if only someone would bring A&W back to Singapore! While the prices of the other items were comparable to those from fast food outlets in Singapore, this was a steal a 19090 rupiah (about S$3).

Waffles with strawberry ice cream

A better name for this would have been "waffles with soft serve ice cream and strawberry sauce".

Waffles with chocolate ice cream (waffles with soft serve and chocolate sauce)

A&W

Megamall, Batam