One thing that strikes me is how many chains there are in the mall. Perhaps the higher rent necessitated the financial backing of larger enterprises, even if they are local chains.
I will comment on a couple that we visited from the Chowdown crawl yesterday.
MY Dumplings:
Bamboo ap: I grew up eating canned ‘bamboo shoots in oil’ so I am familiar with the sweet/ savory combo taste. Their version is quite agreeable and I think I devoured half the dish leaving little to my chow partners. (sorry!) its also cheap for an ap. $4
They pointed out to us that we should order from the dumpling section (vs other stuff on the menu) so we got:
The regular XLB:
Its a decent tang bao version. Thin skin with soup.
The loofah and shrimp dumpling:
I don’t get the loofah and dumpling taste combination. The loofah was also a little bit undercooked (intentional?) so the slightly crunchy texture was a bit odd to me.
Place filled up by the time we left around 12:30.
Liang’s:
Quite honestly I didn’t pay very close attention to the food at Liang’s as we started talking about recent developments of Chowhound. Multitasking between eating and discussing was not my strong point.
What I seemed to enjoy though they are not great:
- big noodles with beef tendons
- pig ears and tripe ap
What I didn’t particularly remember:
- taiwanese sausage
- squids
- ji cai wonton soup
I drank loads of water for about 8 hours after the meal. Place was fairly empty. This was the first time I visited Liang Ma Ma since the mama (Liang, Chen, etc.) craze started 5? years ago. Given the fairly empty place the popularity seemed to have waned. To me we didn’t come across a ‘I must return for this’ dish during the meal, and if the water drinking is directly attributable to Liang’s, then this combination may be part of the reason.
