Zhong Hua Dim Sum

Somewhere along Midlands One Stop in Penang, there lies a Chinese restaurant by the name of Zhong Hua. Truth be told, I had never even heard of this restaurant before during the more than 3 years I stay in Penang. My friend highly recommended this place for dim sum, so I decided to go and give it a try.

Entrance

One of the highly recommended dishes would be the fried radish cakes or cubes, however you want to call it. This dish was fried just nice, and especially not too oily. In addition, you could even smell the aroma of this dish once it's served on the table. I dare say, I would order this dish every time if I visit Zhong Hua again. :)

Fried radish cakes

The manager of the restaurant recommended their chicken herbal soup, which was apparently home cooked and their specialty. I thought it was weird to drink soup for dim sum, but anyway, the taste was above average. Maybe I was more interested in the dim sum instead. :P

Chicken herbal soup

Finally, real dim sum at last! Shrimp dumplings or har kau, were meticulously wrapped and presented to us. The size of these dumplings were larger than usual and were filled with several fresh and succulent prawns! Certainly well worth the money.

Shrimp dumplings (har kau)

They had something special in the menu, which was deep fried crab meat and mango roll. Since I am a fan of mango, I ordered this dish, but I was deeply disappointed. Firstly, the crab meat used was actually just the instant crab sticks that you could find from the supermarket. Secondly, the combination of crab stick and mango was utterly weird! Not for me.

Fried shrimps with mango

Ahh.. fried radish cakes again. This time, they're fried with one whole piece instead of chopped into cubes. I loved these as much as the earlier version.

Stir-fried radish cakes

Chee cheong fun lived up to our standards as well, judging from how each piece had its own fillings. The flat noodles were soft and smooth, and most importantly for me, they're piping hot. I don't get how some restaurants served their chee cheong fun cold! I think the temperature of a dish makes a whole lot of difference to the taste of it.

Chee Cheong Fun

Next up was char siew pau also known as meat buns. Sometimes chicken meat was used but most of the time, pork meat was used instead. Typically, char siew pau is one of the most basic dishes to be prepared in dim sum, and if it is not good, it's similar to having failed your primary school exams. Thankfully, the dumplings here passed with flying colours. :)

Char siew pau (meat buns)

Fried yam cake with meat fillings were not too bad, although I do not really enjoy yam.

Yam cake with filling

We also ordered siew long pau or Shanghai dumplings. The appearance was really cute, with a green pea on top. The taste and quality were still lacking compared to Dragon I, in my opinion. Probably the skin was a tad too thick.

Siew long pau

And let me introduce to you the star of the morning! Apart from the fried radish cakes mentioned above, one simply must order the siew mai/meat dumplings. Usually, the siew mai is filled with pork meat, but Zhong Hua got creative and added a big piece of succulent prawn on top of it. The size of the siew mai was also much larger than the usual. Trust me, you wouldn't regret ordering this.

Siew mai

Finally, as you could very well observe, I never missed to order the egg tarts. :) The egg tarts here did not disappoint!

Mini egg tarts

Look at what we had for the morning! Definitely lasted me until dinner. :)

Hearty breakfast

Zhong Hua Restaurant
488D-G-19 One Stop Midlands,
Jalan Burma, 10350 Georgetown,
Penang, Malaysia.
Tel. no.: 04-229 9818