As a treat my brother took me to Royal China for some Lobster Noodles. Royal China, as a posh Chinese restaurant, certainly looks the part with dark panels for the walls, low lighting, glass topped walls between dining sections, gold-plated cutlery and
waiters/waitresses dressed to the nines. If only their food lived up to these expectations!

For our meal, my brother and I started off with some wonton soup. The portion size was definitely not the biggest I’ve ever had and therefore I was expecting something special in the wonton itself. Well, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was horrible, it was nothing special. Pat reckons it was because the wonton had more prawns in it than normal but I wasn’t too sure. Something in the flavour just wasn’t quite right for me.

We then moved on to our main course of Lobster Noodles (with ginger spring onion) with a side of bak choy in garlic. The Lobster Noodle is apparently one of Royal China’s signature dishes so once again I was expecting something stunning. The lobster itself certainly looked good but was let down by the noodle and overall taste. The sweetness and succulence of the lobster was let down by the fairly bland ginger spring onion sauce. I could barely taste the ginger and the only time I could get the flavour was when I was chewing on the gigantic ginger pieces! The noodles also failed to absorb any of the juices of the dish and in fact I would even say that I felt the noodles cheapened the dish’s overall appeal.

I hate to give Royal China negative press as the only other time I’ve been in here was for the dim sum (which was pretty good if on the expensive side) but sadly it was a thumbs horizontal for me tonight.

Photos courtesy of my brother.