Lunch at Mainland China - a chain of upscale Indo-Chinese restaurants. Many branches across many Indian cities.
Most people seemed to be there for the buffet:
But my mum, dad and I are most definitely not buffet people.
I think they’ve changed the menu since the last time I was here a couple of years ago. I’m not a huge connoisseur of Indo-Chinese. Mainland China tries to appeal to a more upper-middle-class clientele with its offerings.
I couldn’t discern anything traditional about these dim sum.
My mum and dad are very very fixed in their ordering. Spring rolls - vegetarian and chicken ones. No photos and fairly pedestrian. The best thing about them was a spring onion based dipping sauce. My mum has stir fried mixed vegetables in a sort of light cornstarch based sauce. My dad has Hakka noodles.
He also loves the accompaniments of pickled cucumber and kimchi that are offered on the table gratis (is this banchan adopted into an Indo-Chinese setting?)
I ordered one jumbo prawn as a black pepper garlic preparation, with a side of steamed rice. It was ok, but now I’ve had the Trishna prawns in Mumbai which were much much much better (Trishna more expensive, but worth it). The only thing I would say is that the black pepper part of the pepper sauce was nicely prominent here, and I think the Trishna prep had white pepper which wasn’t very discernable. The steamed rice was enough to feed a family of six. Photo of the prawn, which you can’t really tell is a prawn.
The highlight of the meal was a starter of crispy mushroom cheung fun. There was a thin crisp layer in between the mushroom filling and the steamed rice flour wrapper. Very well executed, very tasty and my parents have resolved to order this the next time they come here.
The bill:
The service was excellent. And there was an earthquake just after we were seated, but it lasted less than a minute and no evacuation was required.
