tongshui café @ 54 zion road

janet suggested having dinner there and it so happened that doris is also meeting annie and wendy there for dinner as well.

was there early so i got a table first... waited for prince cayden and his entourage which consists of janet, jason and his maid-in-waiting, nora. eric, tracy, doris, annie and wendy made up the rest of the party.

the place was decorated like shanghai tang as grace had described. bold colours with mini chandeliers. tables and chairs were chinese-styled so it wasn't so comfy. the menu has a impressively wide selection of food found in a typical traditional hong kong café and more.

i ordered the iced-8 treasures tea and the instant noodles with pork chop. would have preferred that the tea to be slightly sweetened 'cos it tasted quite bland without sugar. the noodles were cooked ok, the pork chop was average with a hint of porkiness. nothing to shout about. i think the pork chop at hong kong café is tastier.

eric's verdict of his dry noodles order was he had already been doing that since he was 7, 8 years old. it was just some mixture of ketchup and chilli sauce unlike the version he had at hong kong café.

the zhu chang fen that tracy and janet ordered were "what you can get at the downstairs kopitiam" in eric's words. but the accompanying pieces of fried you tiao were rather enigmatic. we couldn't decide if it had any fillings or not. the inside texture is different and seems to be more "doughy" in the middle but not in a negative way.

the desserts were too sweet! too much "tong" as grace put it.

i had the sesame paste. it was rather sweet but not to the extent where i needed to add water which tracy and jason had to for their dumplings in ginger soup. and still they couldn't stomach the soup. it was that sweet! and the waitress even had the cheek to tell tracy that they charge for water when she asked for a glass!

so unless you need a sugar overdose, skip the 2 desserts we tried. wonder if the cold desserts are any better. the pictures look good though.

i also ordered the toast with peanut butter and condensed milk. came in a thick slice of thick toast with melted peanut butter and swirls of condensed milk. yummy if you love peanut butter like me.

otherwise, the general consensus is that the food is not as good as hong kong café. maybe we should have paid more attention to the green stickers and try the chef's recommendations instead. ;) haha...

jason even said we could do the instant noodle thing for christmas eve dinner since it's so easy. :P