Dim Sum

We also tried the char siew baos at Canton Paradise as we were craving for more dim sum. The char siew baos here are different from those that are sold at your usual coffee shop drinks stalls, as the pork filling is encased within a bun that is baked, which makes the exterior really crispy.

We love the slight buttery taste in the crust, and the fact that the pork filling comprised quite a fair bit of fatty meat as well. Furthermore, the amount of meat served in each bun was pretty generous too! You pay around $6++ for three char siew baos, which I guess is a fairly reasonable price for dim sum in a Chinese restaurant.

The liushabao at Canton Paradise are so cute as they are decorated with the faces of pigs! Don't worry as the ears and noses of the pigs are perfectly edible and it's otherwise a standard liushabao, with egg and custard filling enclosed within. We like that they were served piping hot although you should probably be careful when biting into the hot filling!

However, we thought that the restaurant could be more generous with the filling, as the bao layer was much thicker than we expected. At $6++, the dish also doesn't come cheap although you may want to try it once as not many places serve liushabao decorated with the faces of pigs!

These are basically deep-fried chunks of batter, complete with slices of banana and a small prawn hidden inside. We especially loved the banana, since it is not common to find banana-based dishes in dim sum eateries. We also loved that Swee Choon served this dish to us piping hot, with an extremely crispy exterior.

We visited Swee Choon at around 2 pm on a Sunday afternoon and we were glad to get a table within 15 minutes. Thankfully, the lunch crowd should have already passed by then!

The egg tarts weren't in the menu and the staff wasn't even sure whether they had them when we asked. He came to us eventually with a packet of 3 which were most likely baked much earlier and wasn't kept warm. They would have tasted much better if they cared to warm it up though. Pretty standard egg tarts, the cookie crust was sweet and buttery and the egg filling tends to the sweeter side.

We were curious what kind of liushabao wouldn't have salted egg as we thought it's definitely an essential ingredient so we decided to order this to try! The filling which was pretty generous, tasted like sweet corn custard and it was not bad, though we definitely still prefer traditional liushabaos.

Texture was not bad but it tasted really plain.

This isn't your typical xiaolongbao as the soup is outside the bao. They do serve it without the soup as well, which baffles me as xiao long bao is all about the soup inside, if not it'll just be like a regular dumpling. Their soup is unique, with it being rather rich and salty. The texture tasted a bit like collagen soup. This is worth a try but our hearts are still with traditional xlb and probably won't get this again.

We ordered the deep-fried dumplings with cheesy as we thought it would be great to try something unique to 126 Dim Sum Wen Dao Shi! However, it turned out to be a bad choice as it was quite strange for mozzarella cheese to be on deep-fried dumplings. Aside from that, we thought the dumplings were a little over-fried and some parts of the dumplings tasted a little burnt. 😑 We probably will not try anything out of the ordinary if we were ever to visit Dim Sum Wen Dao Shi again!

These are miniature bite-sized versions of the usual char siew paus and we guess they are slightly easier to eat? Otherwise, they taste as normal as other char siew paus!

Very normal siew mai to be honest and nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the fact that they are noticeably larger than most other siew mais. Nothing to rave about either! Based on the other reviews, it seems that 126 Dim Sum Wen Dao Shi had better times in the past.

Nonetheless, we thought the greatest selling point of the eatery is the fact that it is open for 24 hours. Hence, it was a great stopover for us on our night cycling journey in the east. In fact, it was really crowded at 4 am in the morning so do be prepared to be unable to find seats as it is one of the few jaunts that are open at the wee hours in the morning.

Chee cheong fun with char siew was pretty average as well and it is really filling for 2 pax! Suggest to order this only if you are visiting Swatow in a bigger group or it really takes up your tummy space!

Swatow was around half-full when we visited at 9 am on a Sunday and there were still sufficient tables for 2! Nonetheless, the restaurant got pretty packed at around 10 am and we think it's best if you make a reservation if you are planning to head down in a bigger group!

This item was pretty lacklustre today - while the roll contained prawns, there was almost zero hint of mango! Furthermore, we thought Swatow went a little overboard with the sesame seeds and the sesame flavour was actually a little overpowering. We got this as it seemed like a pretty unique dim sum item, but it wasn't fantastic in our opinion. ☹️