ding tai feng and rasa malaysia

i don’t read many food blogs. several of the food blogs i read (like those that appeared in my sidebar) i visits once in a while, not regularly. however, there are two food blogs that i visit everyday without fail, which i consider the best food blogs! they are rasa malaysia and backstreet gluttons malaysia.

rasa malaysia is started by a young sweet charming lady, a penangite (my kaki lang) who now resides in US. i’ll refer to her as BY (her initial). i like her blog because of the lovely, clear food photos she put up, and also that beside posting about food she had taken, she also supplied recipes for food that she come out with!  oh and another thing is i found out that she and i have kind of similair taste in food,

well, i had the chance to meet her when she was in penang for the chinese new year. we met on 1 march, thursday… and of course where else to meet but in a restaurant. she recommended me a shanghainese restaurant at bayan indah (the block just next to queensbay). this is the restaurant:

welcome to shanghai’s ding tai feng restaurant!
spicy mincemeat ramen mee. very nice… especially the sauce. we share one plate.

fishball soup with er… forgot what’s that vege call. i don’t like this vege as it is such a big piece for biting. further, it tend to stick to the teeth. this dish is ok.

this is er… cheese toast prawns i think (a dessert). not bad. but only 2 pieces and we took one each.

now what is this? looks like a normal meat dumpling, right? well yes it is meat dumpling… BUT with something special. it has soup inside! BY said this is one of the restaurant’s speciality. indeed. i never came across before a dumpling with soup inside. how on earth do you think the soup can be inside? well according to BY, they freeze the soup as a stock cube, then put the cube inside the dumpling and have the dumpling steam. now when it is hot with the steaming, the cube soup will melt, and thus you have a dumpling with soup inside.

BY even taught me how to eat this dumpling! gently pick it up with chopstick… very gently so as not to break it because once you break it, the soup will flow out! so you pick it up, put on a spoon, then gently give a small bite, then suck in the soup! hmm… heavenly! the soup taste nice and the meat is soft and tender. there were 8 dumplings for the price of RM12.80. two of the dumplings due to not being gentle, i break them when i try to pick it up with chopstick and arggh… the soup flow out. no soup to to take together with the meat then.

(UPDATED:  found out later from rasa malaysia that this dumpling is known as ‘xiao long bao’ in cantonese.)

since i don’t do food review (and i don’t cook), sorry lah i can’t describe the food well… with strong, lovely adjectives like what rasamalaysia (BY) did or very colourful, bold adjectives, like backstreet gluttons (tonixe) did. i highly recommend you to visit these two food blogs and i’m sure you will like them.
BY, you should come in to desribe these food as you know better.

i spy a lot of other dishes, snacks, buns, etc on the menu of the shanghainese restaurant. they all look so good but our stomach cannot take it too much food! i hope to one day return to the restaurant and order other food which i haven’t try.

for those who love chinese food, i recommend you to give a try. it’s located at a corner of the block just next to queensbay. (oops, BY, i lost their name card. it might pop out tomorow – then i’ll post the full address with the contact no.)

NOTE: all pictures were taken by BY of rasa malaysia. don’t forget to bookmark her blog eh!

UPDATED:  a review of this restaurant can be found here.