Rising Sun’s all-you-can-eat dim sum

On Sunday morning, we decided to try the all-you-can-eat dim sum at Rising Sun Restaurant, at 29 Manning Road, Cannington.

The all-you-can-eat dim sum costs $11.00 per person, and is available on weekends from 10:30am till 2 or 3pm, I can’t remember (bad, baad TFP!). You pay at the cashier before you are seated, so get your money ready! And if you’re dining with a group, they won’t seat you until all members of your party are present.

As soon as we’d been seated, a dish of hot dipping sauce was delivered to our table, along with a pot of Chinese tea. Jac tried the dipping sauce, and yes – it was as hot as it looks!

Hot dipping sauce

I started to get a little impatient though – we did sit there for a while with our tea and hot sauce, waiting for waiters to visit our table with food, watching other people around us tucking into their spring rolls and steamed dumplings. It was 11am or so when we got there, I hadn’t had breakfast, and I guess I was really hungry. Thankfully, eventually, food arrived! We started with a little plate of fried squid tentacles. They were quite salty, and Jac didn’t really like their sambal-like flavour. You know, when I was a kid, those immensely 3-D suckers would have really grossed me out.

Fried squid tentacles

From then on, the waiters kept stopping by with their (very noisy!) trolleys or trays of food, asking if we wanted whatever they had to offer. These pork spare ribs looked ugly and knobbly, but they were quite tasty. We realised we might need something cold to drink to help wash down all the saltiness. The tea was good, but a little too hot to drink to quench thirst easily! Jac asked if we could have some water, and the waitress returned with a glass bottle of water (you know, one of those large wine bottle-sized glass bottles restaurants and cafes like to use) – but just the bottle, no glasses. Jac asked her if we could have glasses, and she returned with… one glass, which she handed to Jac. Um… thanks? We just ended up sharing the glass.

Pork spare ribs

We had to say yes to a serve of siew mai (steamed pork dumplings). But these looked strangely naked to me! Where’s the little orange garnish on top?

Steamed pork dumplings

Next, pork wrapped in beancurd skin. I love beancurd skin! But yes, this was an extremely porky meal.

Pork wrapped in beancurd skin

I got a little excited when the next dish to appear was steamed stuffed beancurd. Yes please, yes please!

Steamed stuffed beancurd

Knowing that we’d already paid for our meal and it was all-you-can-eat, it was quite tempting to just be complete pigs and say yes to everything! And yes to multiple everything! But we didn’t do that, keeping a reasonable grip on our gluttonous tendencies. We did knock back a couple of dishes – chicken feet, and sticky rice. At one stage though, we had half a dozen dishes in front of us – quite a feast, with more to come!

These salt and pepper chicken wings were OK. They looked a little old, dirty-oil old – but they were absolutely steaming hot underneath the batter. The chicken beneath the crusty batter was actually very moist.

Salt and pepper chicken wings

These were beef balls, I think – they tasted very much like sausage meat! They were served on a lettuce leaf and a black vinegar sauce. The lettuce leaf was nicely wilted from the heat of the beef balls, and Jac enjoyed it, maybe even more than the beef balls – she always has to have something green, especially when the rest of the meal is so meaty!

Beef balls

The char siu pao (BBQ pork buns) were smaller than average, but I think smaller pao are a great idea for dim sum when you’re eating all sorts of other goodies. They were quite nice, with discernible pieces of BBQ pork inside.

BBQ pork bun innards

A waitress came by with two buckets on a trolley. One contained pork and century egg porridge, and the other, sago pudding. We asked for one of each. I was served a bowl of porridge topped with chopped spring onions and a fresh sprinkling of white pepper. Jac took a mouthful of the porridge and made a face – no, it wasn’t the century egg that put her off. It was the watery taste of the porridge! She’s been spoilt by my mum’s flavourful thicker-style porky porridge, and just didn’t care for the more watery-style restaurant porridge. I thought it was OK, and the little bits of shredded pork were quite nice, but yeah, my mum’s homemade porridge wins, hands down!*

Pork and century egg porridge

Jac wasn’t keen on the vegetarian noodles (noodles, spring onion, mung beansprouts), but after all that meat I welcomed this meatless dish. They were very plain and simple, but quite nice. The beansprouts were still quite crisp, providing a contrasting texture to the other more chewy meaty/proteiny items on our table.

Fried noodles

We ended our meal with a couple of rounds of deep fried items. The spring rolls had a little too much skin, I thought. You can see in the photo that the spring rolls had a lot of “roll” to them.

Spring rolls

The prawn toast was pretty good. The little sesame seed-encrusted triangles were served with a light sweet and sour (the pink variety!) sauce. By this time Jac was getting very full and wanted to leave room for her pudding, so I must admit I ate most of the prawn toast.

Prawn toast

Jac enjoyed her sago pudding very much. The little pink bits you can see in the photo were watermelon. The cold pudding was quite watery in flavour. I think Jac couldn’t help but compare this to the mango sago pudding she had at Marigold’s while we were on holiday. Marigold’s pudding was richer and fruitier, in content and flavour. Jac also thought there was too much sago and not enough liquid in Rising Sun’s quite shallow dessert bowl.

Sago pudding

For $11 a head you will get fed. It’s very simple fare – you won’t get anything fancy or decadent here. There’s not a lot of variety – it was a very porky meal. I suppose if you want a cheap feed (and you’re not vegetarian), it will do the trick. But I reckon I’d rather spend more money at a different dim sum restaurant and be able to choose from a wider range of dishes, including egg tarts! Jac missed having har gow (steamed prawn dumplings) – and I guess that’s the other thing – you can’t really expect much by way of seafood for $11.00 a head, can you? :)

I did really like the seating in the restaurant – lots of booth-style seats. It just feels a lot more intimate that way.

NOTE: If you’ve left a comment in the past few days or emailed me in the past week or so, rest assured I will reply soon.

*I also love my mum’s fish porridge, which is flavoured with fresh strips of ginger – the fish is added to the porridge right at the end so it doesn’t overcook. We eat the gingery fish porridge with drizzlings of soy sauce and sesame oil, so gooooooooood.

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