Fook Lam Moon

LT has gone back to US for good. We had our farewell dinner at Fook Lam Moon 福臨門.

I would have never imagined myself dining at FLM since it's one of the tycoon's restaurant and I would have assumed the waiters are stuck up and it would be cheap and awkward to order non-abalone dishes in the restaurant.

I was wrong about the service. The staff there were very professional and didn't give us lousy service even we didn't order the expensive items on the menu.. although they did push for their shark fin soup when we asked for recommendation.

The food was good and delicious... but whether it deserved a rave review I really doubted it. I mean.. other than the more delicate items and extravagent ingredients which we didn't order, other dishes were normal cantonese food which was in par with a normal chinese restaurant. and a lot of the items we ordered I found inferior to many places I have tried before.

Cha siu - bbq pork - I think the one I had at Fu SIng tasted better, the meat was more tender and juicy at Fu Sing. But again, I am not a huge fan of bbq pork, the quality was good enough.

Fried frog legs - I haven't had frog legs in ages.. Chinese don't make good frog legs dishes.. but Thai does. I need this dish to be more spicy.

Sweet and sour pork - it was tasty, no surprise, but I wouldn't rate it high if comparing to the seafood place on lamma island, that one was awesome the pork was juicy and fried perfectly with the perfect sauce. This one was too average.

Vegetable dish - it tasted as normal as it looked.

Chicken - The skin was thin and crispy and the meat was tender and juicy and not fatty at all. interestingly the dipping sauce was lemon juice mixture unlike others which use white pepper and salt.

"Hong Siu" Tofu - The sauce was light and tasty, and the tofu was soft and silky.

Crab shell with crab meat - This is the most surprising item for the dinner. They stuffed the shell with lots of crab meat and covered with a thin batter that's not too oily to taste. It retained the light crab flavor every bite of it was crab meat. It was very nicey done although the presentation was just so-so.

Pan-fried sword fish - I found what my mom made would be better than this. The sword fish didn't come in one piece but in broken pieces. You would have thought the chef was experienced enough to not mess around the fish when it wasn't done yet. I was disappointed.

Fried rice wrapped with lotus leaves. This was the best executed dish for the dinner. The rice was chewy and not mushy, had very heavy taste of soy-sauce with bits of fried eggs inside. There weren't traces of many ingredients inside but the rice was packed with flavor.

Almond soup with egg white - Lots of egg white inside, above average quality.

Well.. I probably shouldn't set a high expectation for my first visit since the press commented it as a tycoon restaurant.. they should have very picky taste buds right?! I still felt the pressure of ordering the more expensive items on the menu, and I thought the pressure was not justified for the quality of food they offered.