Oriental Pavilion, Jaya 33

The thing I love about Monday public holidays is the fact that it's just like Sunday, but Sunday is usually taken up by Church, afterwhich half the day is gone, and by the time lunch is over, it's nap time. Or exercise, depending on the weather.

So, Monday holidays allows us to go Yum Cha, which is nice. Sister invited us to try the new Oriental Pavilion, at Jaya 33, opposite the old Jaya Supermarket. You can't miss it unless you were blindfolded. True Fitness is displayed in all its glory, and seems more tasteful than the Hartamas one, which resembles a gigantic lighted hamster cage, where you can see the little creatures running on the treadmills, on various levels.

Parking was easy enough. It's a rather spacious building, with generous ingress and egress. The restaurant, part of the Oriental Chain (Ming Room, Noble House, Oriental, etc), is adequately ID-ed, not over the top, but still, it is basically a Chinese restaurant.

At 11.15am, the crowds were trickling in already. In another half an hour, the restaurant would be packed, and we would overhear the table next to us threatening to complain to the malay mail because of the slow service. Gosh, some people are impatient, and I thought I was bad.

For a place like this though, I'd have expected it to be teeming with trolleys of steaming stuff, with a swarm of waitresses plonking masses of dim sum on the table. Instead, we had to virtually grab whatever crumbs that were left in the trolleys.

The food however, is fairly consistent with their other outlets, which is usually of an acceptable standard.


Bean Curd Rolls, nice and crispy, and despite visible oil stains, didn't taste overly oily.



Egg Tarts, definitely a must. The pastry is gorgeously flaky, and the filling nice and smooth, if not a bit on a sweet side. I would have preferred them piping hot, but as I said, one had to grab whatever came by.


Har Gao...well, nothing spectacular, though I can't really say I HAVE tasted spectacular Har Gaos anywhere. Some items are just destined for mediocrity in the food chain. I mean, like how orgasmic can har gao or siew mai actually be?



The Fried Sang Mee Noodles with sea food. Rather generous with their prawns, I have to say. I love sang meen, and it would take quite an effort to really botch up a plate of fried noodles. Again, nothing that you'd see me swooning over. Life gets harder as you get older and more jaded.


Platter of Roasts. The duck was excellent, skin done just right, and meat tender and moist. The char siu, well, nothing to shout about. The pig must have been going to True Fitness next door, for it seemed rather lean. Worth a mention is the roast pork, which was crisp almost all around. How did they manage that? Again, maybe from the same pig, aka Mr Lean.



The cheong fun....smooth, melt in the mouth texture. Alas, by this time I was a bit distracted with the sms I received informing me of the sudden death of one of my classmates. "Jatuh di kebun", was the COD. (cause of death). Sometimes the lack of detail can cause imagination to run wild, but I later on found out that it was a heart attack. All this in the same breath as talking about the lack of fat in siu yoke.






Fish Balls, which are the kid's favourite food when it comes to dim sum. Nice and springy, but I think now with my magimix, I have been producing better fish balls any time.

The bill sounded reasonable, about RM30 per head. Nice to know that there's yet another dim sum joint in town. Actually, where ELSE can one get good dim sum, (apart from Hong Kee)?