I received an invite to try out the Royal China in DIFC last week, and truth be told, I only accepted because I had a slow weekend. Even after I accepted, I was a little wary going in, and the fact that the Zomato map led me to a dead end didn’t exactly spike my enthusiasm. All this goes to prove what a foolish imbecile I am for not knowing what I’d been missing out on this whole time. The Royal China serves some of the best dimsum I’ve had in Dubai, at par with Din Tai Fung, and Hong Loong .
It’s crucial for dimsum to be served and eaten super hot and super fresh. It’s also important for the filling to be perfectly seasoned, and for the wrapper to not be too thick. ALL of the dimsum I had at the Royal China Friday brunch (priced at AED 188/pax for the soft beverage package), were absolutely exquisite and checked out on all the aforementioned criteria of good dimsum. In addition to the brunch items, we were also offered some ala carte options (advantages of tastings), but I wasn’t a huge fan of all of them. I’m going to elaborate on everything I tried in the captions of the pictures below.
We started off with these deep fried turnip cubes in xo sauce. While super fresh, they seemed to have been missing said xo sauce.
The dimsum feast commenced with some prawn Har Gao, and some prawn & chives dumplings, and both were excellent. Fresh off the steam, the wrappers weren’t too thick, and he flavors were on point.
The prawn lover in me was making snow angels with the amount of prawns I got to eat that day, and these crispy sesame seed coated prawn rolls were only round 2 and were so, SO good. Here’s what was sloppy and careless though: a mayo dip on the side that was clearly just squeezed out of a bottle (probably store bought)? Come. On.
The chicken gyoza followed suit and only paved way for the extremely satisfying dumplings we stuffed in our faces that day
1. I don’t like Shu Mai and that didn’t change at Royal China. 2. they were visually very sloppy, which is surprising since I find Shu MAi to be the easiest dumpling to make. The roast chicken paos however (on the right side) were little pillows of love. They were so, SO good.
The coriander in the chicken and coriander dumplings (left) was distinctly detectable but not overpowering. There was nothing outstanding about the scallop dumpling though.
The chicken chili dry was the least impressive entree. There was nothing wrong with it, but nothing stood out either. It was not nearly as spicy as it looks, but I loved the entire cloves of fried garlic in it.
We devoured the tender, succulent cubes of aged Australian beef in a black bean and pepper sauce. It wasn’t very peppery though. What was unimpressive was the plating though.
I’m not a fan of egg fried rice and that’s exactly what this was, wrapped in a lotus leaf. M however, who loves Nasi Goreng, loved this.
I was very curious to try the prawn Cheung Fun. It’s made with a rice flour wrapper, very similar in texture to Mochi. It was not as impressive as Mochi is though.
Wow. I usually do not enjoy grilled prawns as they are over done and dry way more often than not, but these were an exception. These were grilled and then tossed in xo sauce, which is a mixture of dried chili, ginger and seafood sauce. Absolutely delicious.
We weren’t offered any dessert (haha), but frankly we were too full to have any, anyway. There’s no conclusion to any meal of mine without a cup of green tea though, and these guys serve up a fancy cup of blooming jasmine tea! Yay! Blooming tea never tastes as special as it looks, but that doesn’t stop me from having it every chance I get.
Overall, the strongest link was the dimsum. None of the food was bad and I especially appreciated how none of it seemed to have cups and cups of sugar (I don’t know why some chains feel that Chinese food needs to be entirely sweet), but what’s going to pull me back to Royal China is their dimsum. The dimsum here was really, really good, and that’s not easy to come across.
I highly recommend the Friday brunch at AED 188/pax (soft beverages) for unlimited dimsum for all the dimsum lovers out there (me).
You can make a reservation on 04 3545543
