Asia Grand is more customer-oriented compared to many other Chinese restaurants, so the service here is top-notch. Very friendly. Even though the big manager only speaks Cantonese, and our Cantonese sucks, we still meet each other cheerfully and understand each other. There is another manager, a smaller guy, who is very efficient and observant of our needs. The China waitress too pours our tea frequently. Can you imagine, out of the three restaurants in this Dim Sum Classics, only Asia Grand pours our tea, a usual practice in Chinese restaurants?

The decor is also more updated than many Chinese restaurant, more lavish too with chandeliers.

Must order: fried carrot cake XO with chili ($9), very fragrant (although Mr NGFL prefers it to be heavier flavored); cheong fun with century egg ($5.80) sounds very strange and unique but it tastes extremely savory with saltiness of soya sauce and muskiness of the egg. We are surprised other restaurants haven’t picked up this dish yet.

Avoid: siew mai ($4.20) is so bad! and liu sha bao (salted egg yolk custard bun, $4.20) too. While we appreciate that the restaurant tries to be innovative in putting the custard in a coffee-flavored bun, as pictured above, the flavors just don’t work. And the custard doesn’t flow. Quite a disappointment.

Another MUST ORDER is Peking Duck ($38; an addition $10 to fry the meat with noodles). Almost every table has it. This is truly the star of the restaurant. Amazingly crispy and well-balanced with the egg crepe and sweet sauce. Not a bit oily. So delicious, and probably one of the best Peking Duck in Singapore.

Another dim sums we tried but thought they are so-so: har gow ($5.20), XLB ($4.80), chicken feet ($4).

For desserts, we ordered mango cream sago ($7) and xue ge (hashima $10). The hashima is truly worth the money. The entire bowl is full of the frog’s fallopian tubes that there is hardly any syrup. Do you know that hashima has the same nutrients as bird’s nest? So hashima is good for beautifying too.

We spent $145.70 for three people–almost $50 per person. This is not cheap dim sum but out of the three Dim Sum classics restaurants we visit–the other two are Red Star and East Ocean–Asia Grand is our favorite because the service is the best, and it is more leisurely and not so hurried. You can sit for 2-3 hours without feeling guilty because nobody is queuing outside the restaurant, sending bad karma to the people eating inside.

Asia Grand Restaurant 亚洲金阁海鲜酒家

331 North Bridge Road
#01-02 Odeon Towers
Singapore 118720
T: 68870010

Mon–Sat: 11.30am – 2.30pm, 6.30pm – 10.30pm
Sun & PH: 10am – 2.30pm, 6pm – 10.30pm

Rating: 3.556/ 5 quack quack