Come weekends, there are many restaurants serving either brunch or buffet. For the Chinese restaurants, they either offer dim sum, a la carte or buffet with the full variety of dim sums and some dishes thrown in. For buffets served in Chinese restaurants, it is impossible to try all the dishes in the menu. Most of the time, I will normally pick my favourites and get the serving staff to recommend some ‘signature’ dishes too.

Dragon Bowl, which is a newly opened Cantonese Restaurant at the Marina Square, serves a la carte buffet lunch and dinner. If you are not in the mood for buffet, you can order just the dim sum or dishes from the a la carte menu. The buffet menu is divided into a few categories—soup delight, premium items, superior items such as salmon sashimi, dim sum (22 dishes), appetisers, fresh seafood delight, rice and noodles and buffet special. There is also a dessert counter serving fresh cut fruits, herbal jelly, mango sago pudding and osmanthus jelly.

I was told by the serving staff that for the premium and superior items, I would have to place my orders at the beginning and it is only limited to 1 serving per person. In order words, midway through your meal, the restaurant does not allow you to order if you hadn’t done so earlier. You will also be charged for leftovers too, so be sure to exercise prudence.

When you enter the restaurant, you will be attracted to a large circular lighting that acts as a centrepiece. It livens up the place, with a bright and cheery atmosphere. What was comforting to me was how the restaurant was not noisy with loud chatter.

For appetisers, I had one order of the deep fried saute silver bait. It was very addictive and I finished it in no time.

Under the premium item, I ordered the premium shark’s fins. I was expected the serving to be small, but was pleasantly surprised. The bowl was large and the chef was certainly generous—there was a sizeable amount of shark’s fins with a delicious gelatinous thick gravy and bean sprouts.

Under the fresh seafood delight, I ordered the deep fried soon hock fish. The whole fish was crispy even the bones, yet there was no oily taste. The light soya sauce wasn’t overpowering enough to hide the freshness.

Although the broccoli with XO sauce looked plain, it was well executed with a fair amount of crunch. The XO sauce also helped to bring out the flavours well. The stewed “Mapo” beancurd was spicy enough for my liking.

With such a large dim sum offering in the menu, I had to order my usual favourites such as xiao long bao, four season crystal dumpling, BBQ pork pastry with sesame, jade shrimp dumpling and pan fried beancurd skin roll. On the whole, they didn’t disappoint—including the steam salted egg custard bun and mini egg tart, I had for desserts.

For the price of $35.80++ (minimum of 3 persons) per adult and children at $21.80++ (age 4 to 12) for lunch, this restaurant is value for money. There were more interesting dishes to try like the Hakka pork trotter vinegar and sea cucumber and head abalone, which piqued my interest.

I know that I will be coming back for more soon.

Address:
6 Raffles Boulevard
Marina Square #03-129A
Singapore 039594
Tel:  6858-1588

Image Credits: Dragon Bowl