Food Review: Victor's Kitchen @ Sunshine Plaza

Finally had a chance to try out the famous Victor's Kitchen that is raved by so many of my friends. I have been wanting to try out their dim sum for a really long time now, but their closing time of 8pm makes things really difficult.

The shop has a very simple old coffee shop style kind of layout. A very small dining place with fuss-free wooden tables and plastic red chairs.

Because the tables and chairs are so closely clustered together, it makes it quite a challenge to maneuver your way between the tables when getting the order papers and making payment. My back was practically touching the back of the girl sitting behind me as well.

You have to collect two different order papers from the counter yourself, one is for the drinks and one is for the dim sum.

The famous carrot cake with XO sauce. But I find this dish so-so only. It was palatable, not nothing to scream in joy about. In fact, it was a tad plainer than the carrot cakes that I'm used to because it didn't come with a generous stuffing of the chinese sausage and other 'liao' that you expect. I very much prefer the Mongkok Dim Sum version to this.

Authentic HK milk tea. This was a really interesting drink because the tea is served chilled in a dish of ice, so you don't have to worry about your drink being diluted as the ice melts. I quite like it, it was sweet with a slightly bitter after taste. 

Golden egg yolk Lava Bun. This has got to be the highlight of the night. I have heard so much good things about this dish from friends that I was initially quite afraid that I might be disappointed. But it far exceeded my expectations. Seriously, it's totally worth it travelling down just for their golden egg yolk lava bun. The sweet and salty combination is by far the most perfect that I've tried. It even beats the one at Royal China or Bosses hands down.

We also ordered the prawn cheong fun. But this was really disappointing. The skin was too thick and floury, with two measly prawns per roll. We took out the prawns and left the skin untouched.

We also had their queen siew mai and fried prawn dumplings, because the steamed har gow wasn't available. Unfortunately we were too busy eating by then and didn't take photos for those. But the fried prawn dumpling is good.

We spent around $30 for about 6 - 7 dishes and two drinks. The price was okay because there wasn't GST or service charge. Some of the dishes were quite disappointing, but nonetheless, the golden egg yolk lava buns totally made up for it.

Definitely worth a try!

91 Bencoolen Street

#01-21 Sunshine Plaza

Tel: 9838 2851

Tue - Sun: 10:30 - 20:00

Bosses (Vivocity)

I had this immense dim sum craving and wanted to go to Bosses to get it satisfied. But what we didn't count on was that ... they didn't serve dim sum during dinner time! T.T

Should have checked before going I know.

But dinner turned out to be really good nonetheless. :) very very satisfied with the meal and the whole dining environment.

Sorry for the low picture quality, I didn't bring my camera out so took all of it with my iPhone.

The place had this really cool fusion vibe that I really like, it's like, all the posh looking chinese decoration and all mixed with the black theme gives this really unique ambience.

I requested for a table with sea view, and they managed to reserve it for us even though our reservation was damn last minute. And... it was a really wise decision! I'll tell you why later. ;)

So for dinner, they don't serve dim sum anymore, but they do have their signature custard buns and xiao long bao. So we ordered those once we sat down. I think the standard procedure is to order tea first? But we didn't because I read somewhere that the tea is expensive or something, and I'm not a fan of teas so we didn't get it.

 They served fried fish skin as starters. K didn't eat fish skin at all and I didn't really want to eat too much fried food so we left this barely touched. But I tried a bit and it was really good, not too oily but still really crispy. And not too salty as well.

 The custard buns didn't come in the white bun that I normally see elsewhere, it looks so pretty and it was really fluffy and soft to the touch!

 The photo is blur but I thought the custard looked really tempting. Hahaha.

 We tried breaking the bun in half from the top so that we can get a good shot of the filling oozing out, but it keeps squirting out from weird places like the sides and bottom so we gave up before all the filling is gone. Haha, as you can see a lot of it dripped onto the plates already.

This is really one of the best custard buns I've tried so far, no wonder it's their signature. I prefer this to the Royal China ones as this is more 'watery'. The Royal China ones had really thick filling that leaves you thirsty after every bite, but this one just oozes out continuously and I was really surprised at the amount of filling inside.

 Xiao Long Baos - $6.80 for one long of six.

This were slightly bigger than xlbs found in other places like Ding Tai Fung and all, and the zup was heavenly. K commented that this must be one of the best xlbs he tried so far. The broth was piping hot and there were a lot of it! You can just keep sucking and sucking, plus the broth tasted really nice. The skin of the xlb was really thin and soft as well, went very nicely with the pork filling.

 We also ordered the buttered spinach. The price was $12 or $14 I think. But this was heavenly good. The butter taste is not very strong, but the spinach tasted awesome. I was telling K if I had vegetable like this everyday I wouldn't dislike them anymore. And this coming from a carnivore like me is really really rare.

This is the crispy chicken with garlic (not very sure of the exact name), and costs $18 for half a chicken. We wanted to order the Peking Duck at $45 at first but the waitress stared at us in shock for a while before telling us she didn't think we could finish it. She was right of course, the half-a-chicken almost killed us. We could barely walk after dinner.

But this dish, again, was really awesome. The skin was really crispy, and the taste of the fried garlic didn't overwhelm it at all. The chicken was really tender. But there was a bit of reddish marks? close to the bone of the drumlet. I don't know what you call it but it comes from it not being cooked for long enough, not saying that it's not cooked thoroughly la. But K didn't like seeing the reddish part so I ate it.

I read online that the service really sucked but on our visit there, it totally wasn't the case. In fact, the service was really really good despite it being full house on a Friday night. We weren't exactly dressed nicely, just like two poor students out on a dat (although technically K started working already). But despite not looking as if we had lots of cash, they were really attentive. They brought stuff (like ice water, tissues, NEW PLATES) to us really quickly. Made really good recommendations without being condescending, changed our plates when they saw that the ones we were using were dirty. All in all, I was really impressed with the level of service.

And...ta-dah! We were free riders on the fireworks at USS! Hahahaha!

Perfect ending to a perfect dinner. :)

Total damage was around $65 to $70 for 2 person. K didn't let me see the receipt but I did my own calculations. :P

I will totally come back again!