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Consistently Inconsistent.
2015-06-02 737 views
Dear readers, if any of you think that I'm overly critical sometimes, know that I will not publish a truly scathing review without giving the establishment a second chance. I'd visited Plentiful Delight Banquet about a month earlier, with my husband, and it was the first time to date that we'd left a dim sum place with uneaten food on the table. The woody vegetables would have upset any local, and the dried shrimp vermicelli rolls actually had me wanting to reach for a barf bag. I could not eat
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Dear readers, if any of you think that I'm overly critical sometimes, know that I will not publish a truly scathing review without giving the establishment a second chance.

I'd visited Plentiful Delight Banquet about a month earlier, with my husband, and it was the first time to date that we'd left a dim sum place with uneaten food on the table. The woody vegetables would have upset any local, and the dried shrimp vermicelli rolls actually had me wanting to reach for a barf bag. I could not eat them, Sam-I-am. I'd rather lick fermented Spam. I could not, would not, on a boat, I could not force them down my throat...

But okay, I thought, let's give this another go. We returned, poured ourselves some bolei from the restaurant's signature red and green teapots, and waited for our eight baskets to arrive.
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 We concluded that Plentiful Delight's problem was its inconsistency. See, some of their dishes are actually quite good. They offer certain items that our everyday dim sum restaurants don't have on the menu. But be warned--when it's bad, it's really bad. The trick is to bring a friend who already knows what to order; it's simply not safe to just choose blindly from the list.

My favorite dish was the basket of crystal custard buns, more like the salted egg custard than the Western variety and yet surprisingly sweet.
Crystal Custard Buns
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 Other dishes that I liked and would order again included the Shanghainese sheng jian bao, shrimp dumplings, beef meatballs with tangerine peel, and radish cake. They arrived hot and were, for lack of a better phrase, correct.
生煎包 / Shanghai Pan-Fried Buns
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Beef Meatballs with Tangerine Peel
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蝦餃 / Shrimp Dumplings
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Pan-Fried Radish Cake
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 Now on to the critique. Poor Plentiful Delight seems to be unable to source young and tender vegetables. Instead, we get ancient, wizened, and wilty. Husband and I got two different kinds just to make sure (the kitchen only counted them as one item, so the restaurant ultimately charged us for seven dishes total, yuhhhhhh). And I absolutely wouldn't recommend gambling on any vermicelli rolls at this establishment. These were fresh shrimp--and the prawns themselves tasted fine--but the rice vermicelli tasted like it had been dunked in an aquarium. My eyes kept wandering to the fish tanks across the room, and it seemed to me that the live seafood wasn't all that had been swimming in them recently.
Lettuce, Chinese Kale / Kai-lan
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Shrimp Vermicelli Rolls
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 Oh, and we spent about $200, which is roughly $40 more than at the other dim sum places in Yuen Long--so it's not even cheap. The bottom line? An inconsistently good dim sum restaurant is not a good dim sum restaurant. Go somewhere else, unless you really want those crystal custard buns.
(The above review is the personal opinion of a user which does not represent OpenRice's point of view.)
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DETAILED RATING
Taste
Decor
Service
Hygiene
Value
Date of Visit
2015-04-06
Waiting Time
5 Minutes (Dine In)
Spending Per Head
$100 (Lunch)
Recommended Dishes
Crystal Custard Buns
生煎包 / Shanghai Pan-Fried Buns
Beef Meatballs with Tangerine Peel