On the last dinner of my family's visit to Singapore, I brought them to Shanghai Ren Jia located at Upper Thomson Road (beside Han's Restaurant) upon ieat's blog recommendation. Apparently, the shen jian bao is said to be extraordinarily good and well proven by the various news paper clippings and foodie reviews pasted on the glass walls of the eatery.
The place is too small though, to properly accomodate a dinner crowd (around 10 - 12 tables?) and we waited for almost half an hour before being seated. Of course theres a reason why we waited so long, everything has a reason right?
Blah blah blah, with recommendations from friends and blogs in my head I shot off my orders with a few other recommendations from the lao ban niang herself.
The handmade noodles with beancurd, pork chop and chicken pieces came first and tasted like.. maggie mee. I'm not kidding! It's bad enough that the noodles were springy and had a texture like maggie mee, the sauce wasn't at all fantastic and chicken pieces were scarce. The pork chop even had the texture of rubbery fish cake, in the form of pork. I very much prefer Crystal Jade's zha jiang mien. Hmmm, not a good start huh.
The second bowl of noodles, beef noodles recommended by the lao ban niang, was well.. a little worser. In my opinion, I think the soup tasted like MSG and really maggie mee-like but maybe thats just me. Or is it? A $7++ for a bowl each with really, really small portions, I'd say go to Crystal Jade. This is starting to get ugly.. Did I mention that they served really small portions?
The luo han vegetables were okay tasting but for $4.50 a serving the size of my palm, its not very economical. Thumbs down again.
The mei cai kuo rou (preserved vegetables and three layer pork) is kill people put fire! Sa ren fang huo! At such a small bowl, (imagine a small rice bowl-size), it cost us $6++! And the large bowl which I think SHOULD be the price of the small bowl's, cost us $13++. Murder!
Taste wise, it was alright. The sauce was a little on the thick and salty side but is quite tasty but the vegetables were a little hard. I would very prefer if the vegetables were boiled to an even softer consistency. The pork was also too thinly sliced and doesn't have a good "kou gan" or in english, no bite! However, the owner said that the oil in the fats had been squeezed out to give a good bite feel yet without the added calories a.k.a fat on the waist. Err.. Okay man, whatever you say.. Haha.
The xiao long bao had the similar taste as Crytal Jade's. However, it's juicier and you can't really bite into the meat filling. That could be a good thing, or bad.. depending on how you look at it.
Don't fret though, good things come in the midst of bad things [I don't know how the hell I came up with that] and the drunken chicken was really good. Man, the moment it was served it did some kind of drunken aerobics on the table followed by an impersonation of Jackie Chan's drunken fist. Oh, did I forget to tell you that their drunken chickens are served live? Yeah, and then they slaughter it and cook it right there. Just kidding, I'm not that sick, and neither are they. The drunken chicken (cooked.. chicken) was really tender to the bite and especially in the breast meat. Such tender breast meat are really hard to come by and the wine was just nice, not overly strong and indeed made the dish quite delectable. This however, will set you back at $8++.
Lastly (literally), the shen jian bao ($7++ for 6) was served. My gawd it took them almost an hour to serve this man (which kinda explains why we had to wait so long for our seats) Now, I understand that their shen jian baos are made from scratch when you order but seriously speaking, the taste doesn't justify the wait.
Granted, its much better than Crytal Jade's (which is harder and tougher) but theres nothing really special about it. The broth is same as the xiao long bao's and it is simply wrapped in a bun. Of course, the bun has a nice bite to it with a oh-so-cripy bottom and a spongy top if thats what you're here for. However, I was looking for surprise and I didn't even get a kick out of it.
Shanghai Ren Jia is THE place to go, if you have THE money to spend. The dishes are exorbitantly priced, I wouldn't say unreasonably but rather, inappropriately. Taste wise and portion wise, they have much to improve on and I certainly hope they do so.