Min Jiang @ One-North

Min Jiang is a, if I'm not wrong, Sze Chuan restaurant that used to be at Goodwood Park Hotel. With that kind of reputation, I guess everyone has high expectations of that place! Located at Rochester Park, it gives a feeling of exclusivity (though I do wonder how they survive..), with the valet parking, choice of indoor/outdoor seats and old British house settings.

Food at Min Jiang isn't ridiculously expensive, considering their reputation. However, I would say it's a little on the steep side, considering the quality.

Dim Sum is from $4.50 a basket, with 3 pieces. This means $1.50 a piece, which is really expensive. The Char Siew Bao tasted quite different. It doesn't have the usual sweet taste and it didn't look very appetizing due to the dark-brownish colour of the meat. Their Steamed Baby Pork Ribs in Black Bean Sauce was sub-standard to me. It was not pork ribs to begin with, it was more like pork-fat ribs. It was rather unsightly. Then there were other things like this Dumpling in Sweet and Spicy sauce (I can't remember the actual name). It was pretty unique and I liked it because it was spicy. However it was a really oily dish - chilli oil I think. One of my favourite was the Deep Fried Beancurd Skin Roll with Japanese Seaweed . The beancurd skin was very crispy and the filling was abit like fishcake. I think it contained some prawn-cake thing? I couldn't qutie tell =x And if you want to try something more, you can try their famous Appetizer Platter that consists of a crispy eel coated with sesame seed, lobster in egg white (in an edible party cup!), crispy diced chicken (a little like popcorn chicken) and a huge piece of scallop coated in sweet and spicy sauce. I thought this was great just that the eel was exceptionally hard, not something I saw before nor really fancy. But it'll still be good if you can't quite decide on what exactly to eat. A starters will never go wrong! Other dishes I tried includes Black Pepper Beef which was really tender but the meat was a tad too sweet and String Beans which was kind of salty. Would have been good if it was a little spicy though. A MUST EAT is their Peking Duck ! They have 3 ways of eating it. One is the duck skin dipped in sugar. I've never done this but I realize that the sugar goes exceptionally well with the skin! The only thing is that chewing on the crispy skin was like a mini oil-explosion in your mouth. All the oil absorbed by the skin bursts in your mouth (eww). Tastes good, but unhealthy. Secondly, you can do it the traditional way. Sweet sauce, spring onion and duck wrapped in flour crepe. Another way is similar, just that there's an addition of garlic paste in it. Though the flour crepe was supposed to be "paper thin", it wasn't that thin. But I quite liked it because at least when you chew, you get to taste the full flavour of each component in your mouth.

Last but not least, desserts! The others on the list didn't quite fancy me, so I decided on something more boring – Yang Zhi Gan Lu (with a scoop of Vanilla ice cream). It tasted pretty normal, like what you can get from many other places. The mango base wasn’t that sweet; the pomelo as well. My cousin had Durian Pudding. I think that was awesome! The pudding seemed to be made from lots of durian meat plus a little bit of whatever-it-takes-to-make-the-pudding. With every bite, you can taste the fresh durian meat in it, and you can even see it! Wonderful I must say.. Really really good and fragrant :D

I give the place credit for the wonderful dessert! But truth betold, I don’t think it’s worth revisiting the place. If you wanna explore, do try! But it’s not quite worth the money…

Some pictures here, taken from somewhere else.