Monday, August 27, 2012

Dim Sum Buffet at Chynna Hilton Hotel at KL Sentral

During our weekend jaunt up to KL last weekend, we decided to abandon our reservation at Jogoya because we had a late checkout (3.30pm) from the hotel and we had to catch the 5pm bus (which was just next to the hotel) to the airport.

After some last minute searches on the net, we found out that one of the top 5 Chinese restaurants in KL was located about 20+ floors down from our room - Chynna. I made reservations for 12noon but we were too stuffed from the breakfast buffet that we ended up going down at 1pm instead.

The decor of the restaurant was definitely Chinese-style with all the lanterns but far from being gaudy, the decor was tastefully done up without being overdone (too "cheena"). For the dim sum buffet, one could either have the buffet with 1 bowl of seafood soup at RM55++ or buffet with 1 bowl of sliced abalone soup at RM98++.
After we were seated and had made our selection from the menu, a waiter dressed in traditional Chinese Manchu Garb came over to our table and poured us a cup of welcome tea from this tea pot with an extremely long spout. I think only a few Chinese restaurants have that! Anyway, other than that one cup of welcome tea, drinks were not part of the buffet.

We placed our order for the dim sum items about 1pm and it took the restaurant 15 mins before serving the first item - fried Thai fish cakes which was very good. We finished the dish in about 2 mins and waited for the next dish which took another 5 mins to come. There was some sort of a cooking/steaming area at the side of the restaurant but it didn't seem like anyone was manning the counter at all. So we got a tad worried about how long it would take for all the rest of the items (this is a buffet, mind!) to be served given that we had to check out at 3.30pm.

After asking the waitress to hurry with our orders, the next dish was finally served - char siew baos. Warm and soft fluffy buns with sweet juicy fillings. Very good stuff.

My CEB ordered the porridge which I didn't have any of but he said it was decent. I on the other hand ordered siew mais which looked rather unappetizing but was in fact done very well. The pork was tender and wet, and when poked with my fork, fell apart in nice bite-sized pieces.

As you can see from the picture below, we also had beef balls, har gaos (prawn dumplings), and rice rolls with scallops. Every item except the rice rolls (which was too plain and tasteless) is worth a try!

I had a second order of the scallops dumplings (pic on the right) and another dim sum item which looks like stuffed balls of some sort - I can't really recall. My CEB had a second order of the Thai fried pan cakes. We also had other dim sum items in between but I can't recall what they are because I was too busy eating to take more pictures.

We ended with dessert - one gets to choose one dessert from a choice of 4 desserts on the menu. I ordered ice cream with red bean and this dish gets a huge thumbs down from me. Not because this is Chynna and I expected the dessert to be of a certain quality but because on its own, the dessert tasted awful - the red bean was tasteless and watery and of course, a heap of flavored ice mixed in did nothing for the dish at all.

Before we left the hotel, my CEB bought mooncakes from Chynna for his mama-in-law. A box of 4 mooncakes cost about RM80 for 2 snow skin mooncakes and 2 baked mooncakes.

The Slog Reviews: 8/10. While the large majority of the dim sum items at Chynna are definitely palate-pleasing, Chynna would do better if the service was much faster (there were only a few tables occupied at that hour and they were still so slow!) and if the quality of the desserts on the buffet menu was improved. Still, I would definitely visit Chynna if in KL and the urge for dim sum strikes me. Will be back.

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