Red Star Restaurant
Red Star Restaurant
Blk 54 Chin Swee Road
#07-23
Singapore 160054
Tel: 6532 5266 / 6532 5103
Ratings: 7.5/10
Congee
How can you tell if a particular popular eating-place really serves a lip-smacking meal?
One method that I use to judge is to observe the kind of crowd the eating-place draws (Note: this method is only applicable to our local hawker fare and Chinese food). If the crowd is predominantly young, i.e. the below-35 crowd with the occasional tag-along kids, there is usually a higher chance that the food will not be exceptionally mouth-watering. However, if the crowd mainly consists of people from the pre-1965 era, then there will be a much higher chance that the food served will be lip-smacking.
Red Star Restaurant is located in an inconspicuous office building in the old HDB estate of Chinatown. There is only a cranky lift in the building. The next alternative to get to the restaurant that is located on the seventh floor will be to take the stairs.
Eating at Red Star seems to be a three-generational affair, where the grandparents will join their grown-up kids and their grandchildren for a weekend get-together meal. Occasionally, you can also spot elderly couples enjoying their dim sums or groups of middle-aged friends who have decided to gather for a delicious dim sum brunch.
Do these signs point to a delicious meal? You bet.
Fried Dough Fritters with Mayonnaise
Dim sum, a Cantonese term, is literally translated to mean "dotted heart", meaning to order to one’s heart’s content. A variety of small food items made up a meal of dim sum. Personally, I feel that the literal translation, "dotted heart", is a very apt description of dim sum itself. Dim sum is called dian xin (点心）in Mandarin. "Dian" in mandarin means "little" or "dotted". "Xin" in mandarin means "heart". Lots of hard work is devoted into the preparation of each of these exquisite products. It is as if the chef has put his heart into preparing these savoury dishes for your tasting. Thus, the dainty works of art served in bamboo skewers that are finally presented to you on your table are actually "little hearts" presented to you by the chef.
Siew Mai, or steamed pork dumplings
Red Star Restaurant has been a long time favourite of mine to savour these delicious "dotted hearts". Unlike many Cantonese restaurants these days, where you order your dim sum on paper menus, the dim sums at Red Star are still served in the traditional way where the waitresses will push mobile carts piled sky high with bamboo skewers filled with different dim sums around the restaurant. When one of these mobile carts are pushed to your table, you can then order the dim sum directly from the waitress who will never hesitate to visually whet your appetite by showing you the different items she has on her cart while giving her recommendations at the same time. The cluttering of trays and noisy chatter create a friendly and heart-warming dining ambience that is a characteristic of traditional Cantonese dining.
However, rest assured that there is also no stereotyped rude service associated occasionally with Cantonese restaurants. The service at Red Star is friendly and prompt. My family wanted a certain combination of dishes. However, this combination of food was not present on the particular dim sum cart from which we are ordering. My dad wanted roasted duck while I wanted to try some of the roasted pigskin. The waitress promptly went to get that particular combination of roasted duck and pig skin for us so that each of us can get what we wanted.
Roasted Duck and Pig Skin
Of course, the main reason why I love Red Star’s dim sum so much is the palatable dishes they serve - exquisite and scrumptious. Almost every dish that I called never fails to surprise me in terms of their delicious quotient. At the end of the meal, I seem to have tasted a myriad of tastes, each as memorable as the next.
One of the best "taste" experiences a person can have is when the food literally melts in your mouth when you taste it. The extremely crispy pigskin almost melted in my mouth when I bit it. Similarly, for the taro root dumpling, it was so light and fluffy that they seemingly melted upon tasting. Even for the egg tarts, after biting through the flaky outer crust, the sweet egg custard that fills the middle of the tart melted the moment I tasted it. Egg tarts are one of my favourite dim sums and so far, the egg tarts at Red Star are one of the best that I have ever tasted.
Egg tarts
Fried Wantons with Mayonnaise
Some fruits were added into the mayonnaise that is being served together with the fried wantons. This exceptional feature makes the mayonnaise an even-more savoury sauce to go with the fried wantons.
Xiao Long Bao, or Pork Dumplings
The only dish that I had some nit picking to do was the Xiao Long Bao or Pork Dumplings. I was surprised to find this Shanghainese cuisine in a Cantonese restaurant. I supposed this was an addition to the menu because of the growing popularity of Xiao Long Bao in Singapore. Sad to say, this dish was the only dish that disappointed that day. Although the skin of the Xiao Long Bao was delicately thin, it seems overly stuffed with pork and the most important characteristic of Xiao Long Bao, that steaming soup that spurts out of the Xiao Long Bao upon the first bite, was missing.
Finally to round off the meal, it was dessert time.
Mango Pudding
Black Sesame Paste
The desserts made it to the crème of the crop of the meal. It has been a long time since I have tasted such mind-blowing desserts. Yes, you had not read wrongly. It is mind-blowing desserts. My first reaction upon tasting these desserts was a big "wow".
Instead of the usual coconut milk that is added to the Honeydew Sago, condensed milk was added, making the Honeydew Sago taste like liquid ice cream. The mango pudding has a strong but not over-powering taste of mango in it, making it simply yummy.
Black sesame paste is one of my favourite desserts. However, I have not found one that tastes satisfactory to me, except the ones that I had tasted in Hong Kong some time back. They are either too thin for my liking or taste crumply and thick that makes me feel sick eating it after some mouthful. The black sesame paste that I tried at Red Star tasted just right. It has a silky texture and a strong sesame taste to it. It was just absolutely delicious.
I was a happy and satisfied customer when I left the restaurant. Did I just grumbled about Singapore being a lost food paradise and that the last delicious meal that I had enjoyed was in Sydney? I guess these grouses of mine were happily forgotten by the time I left the restaurant. Gabriel was just asking me why I give such low food ratings. I suppose I tend to nit pick more than dishing out compliments most of the time. However, when I do come across an eating-place that truly deserve a high rating, I will never hesitate to dish a good rating out to it. This is definitely one of the rare moments where I am going to give a high rating to a restaurant, for letting me enjoy a truly satisfactory meal in Singapore since a long time.
