Continuing with my China food entry (even though it’s 7 months too late), here is a restaurant that i absolutely adore in Futian, Shenzhen. It is the Tao Yuan Restaurant (陶源酒家) which serves superb dim sum before noon.
 

The interior is extremely classy with a huge hall and beautiful chandeliers hanging over the ceiling. Big plasma TV hangs at visible corners. At the entrance there are aquariums with fresh seafood selections. For a minute i was worried about burning a hole in my pocket; the place certainly looked expensive.
 

On the contrary, the price of food here is surprisingly reasonable. At under RM200, we enjoyed the most scrumptious and satisfying breakfast of dim sum for 7.
 

First let’s take a look at the more conventional dim sum dishes. The siew mai and har gau were graced by huge crunchy shrimps. The bite was just amazing. These completely spoiled us and now we can’t stop comparing every time we have dim sum in Malaysia.
 

Also delicious is the other dumplings in the restaurant. The dumpling skin was just baby smooth and the pork fillings were extremely fresh and in generous portions.
 

There were many dim sum dishes to choose from too, many not available back at home. For example, they have what i think is mince beef with spring onion dim sum. It was really good because it was huge, sweet and fragrant.

There’s also the baby octopus dish that were served cold. Thumbs up.
 

The radish cake we had here is slightly different from the one we had at Ju Bao Restaurant, Guangzhou in terms of presentation, texture and taste. I like this better than the one in Guangzhou because it is simple, less starchy and the texture is springy as compared to Ju Bao’s radish cake which was a bit too mushy. All in all, the spring onion gave it a tangy flavor.
 

Chee Cheong Fun is one of my favorite during a dim sum excursion. It is something to do with the thin and smooth slices of rice noodles that glide so effortlessly in the mouth and the piquant fried onion that accompanies it.
 

Here it the noodle is not only silky but the fried dried shrimp sprinkled on top and the fresh shrimp wrapped within was fantastic.
 

I don’t recall exactly what type of congee did we ordered but i do remember that it was not bad and the congee is consistently smooth, very soothing to the stomach.
 

“Sou” or pastries are not my favorites when it comes to dim sum. I always find it too dry or to flaky. However, at Tao Yuan the pastries looked absolutely tempting and taste wise it is great.

Not a fan of lotus seed paste but those available at the restaurant was delicious. They were at just the right amount of sweetness and the skin crust was crispy as well.
 

My favorite however was the onion biscuit.  The highly seasoned pastry is more like a bun but i don’t know what else to call it. Just the smell of it is enough to make me drool. It might look hard on the outside inside it is fluffy and once you chew and get the ingredients (sesame seed, chives, onion infused biscuit) all mashed up in your mouth it has a flavorful crisp taste.
 

Egg tarts were in mini sizes which were easy to put into the mouth in whole. Love egg tarts always so i’ll never have bad comments about any of them anywhere. LOL.
 

Again we had the Lau Sar Bao (Egg Custard Bun). Oh, i fear!

The last time we had these were at Ju Bao Restaurant in Guangzhou and i felt glutted by the end of our session.
 

The custard fillings at Tao Yuan were equally sweet and overwhelming. The difference is here, the custard actually thick and fluid instead of having clumps of sugars here and there. It’s much more fragrant and delicious but again it is too sweet and if taken too much will be cloying.
 

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Tao Yuan Restaurant (陶源酒家)
Futian District,
Shenzhen Futian South Road,
Regency Square,
King 7 (near Huanggang)
Tel: 0755-83693688