Spice Art, Greater Noida
I may not be a fan of Yo China: it is a project that has outlived its use and hardly caters to the tastes (and price points) of today. The latest offering from the same stable is dimsumbros. and THAT is something that is all set to rock the NCR. A single restaurant has cleverly made two sections, each one invisible from the other. In the middle is an effective partition: a dimsum kitchen on one side and a bar on the other. I visited the dimsum section and was completely overwhelmed at two things. One is the quality and sheer range of the dimsum on offer, the other was the price.
It takes a certain sort of genius to serve 37 varieties of premium, baked, steamed and fried dimsum at rock bottom prices in a mall. This means that the clientele inevitably consists of those who have never encountered say, a radish cake or a custard bun. Thus, the idea has to be explained to them by the painstakingly trained staff. Do be warned that you’ll get ticked off (in the politest way, to be sure) if you mismatch your sauce and dimsum! It’s all for a good cause. You can opt for four, six or eight baskets of dimsum per meal, each basket containing three pieces. Eight baskets (Rs 950/1250 veg/non-veg) will get you two baskets from the premium section plus any other permutation; four baskets (Rs 550/750) will get you no premium dimsum, and six baskets will get you one premium dimsum basket. You can treat the dimsums as a complete meal or as a starter and order an oriental meal in a bowl after that, but to do so would be to somewhat miss the point.
The two finest dimsums of my meal was scallop suimai with sturgeon caviar (Rs 700) and almond prawns with wasabi mayo (Rs 500). The first was served in a Chinese soup spoon: all you had to do was ladle it into your mouth. There was enough scallop used in the filling to justify the name, but the “caviar” was anything but! Almond prawns had been thinly coated with a batter to keep the whole thing crisp. There was a touch of wasabi and the almond slices were razor thin and added texture to the morsels.
It is not easy to steam chicken glutinous rice lotus parcel and get the rice whole, while imbuing it with the flavour of the lotus leaf. Usually the rice becomes gooey (a cardinal sin) and the lotus leaf just forms a flavourless wrap. dimsumbros. has one of the finest versions I have tried in a long time. Similarly, do not miss the playboy dimsum. The corny name is because the dumpling is shaped like a bunny rabbit, ears and all. Inside, a juicy morsel of prawn and enoki mushroom add texture and flavour.
For those who like their dimsum deep-fried, fear not. There are options that underline the point that the management has been hard at work trying to do something different and unique. I liked the concept of the chimichanga roll: diced vegetables in a cheese sauce wrapped in a wheat wrapper and deep-fried. Chicken sui cot is a quaintly pear-shaped dimsum with a potato coating on the chicken filling that has been deep-fried.
Ratings
Food: 3.75
Service: 3.25
Décor: 3.50
R 303, 3rd floor, Ambience Mall, Gurgaon
Tel: 0124-4029281
Meal for two: Rs 1,500
Alcohol served; credit cards accepted
Open from 12 noon to 4 pm; 7.30 pm to 12 midnight.
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