Lao Beijing 老北京食堂

It has been a while since I last ate from here. Today I need to buy my MIL share so I'm limited to mainly chinese food. After flipping through the menu, I ordered my all time fave Beijing fried noodle, Crab meat fried rice, Country style claypot tofu and 2 types of 锅贴 (pan fried steamed dumpling).

Beijing fried noodle with seafood 北京炒面 $10++
This is very good...got wok hei and generous amount of ingredients added.Crab meat fried rice 蟹肉炒饭 $14++
This is a little lacklustre, no wok hei and kinda bland...maybe I should stick to Yang zhou fried rice..Country style claypot tofu 家乡豆腐煲 $12++
This is also my fave, spicy beancurd cooked with leeks and chili and salty bean paste...served sizzling in claypot...thumbs up. No sizzling claypot for takeaways but still tasted yummy.三鲜锅贴 6pcs $6++
This has filling of prawns, pork & chives...pan fried to perfection..very delish.五目锅贴 6pcs $6++
This has mainly pork and vege filling...nice too.Overall food standard is still there, will be back for more..

2013-06-15

SGD 18(Dinner)

To eat yummy xiao long baos I usually go for the hi tea buffet at Lao Beijing.

The high tea buffet is really cheap! At around $12 per pax and you can enjoy free flow of xiao long baos!The xiao long baos are filled with delicious tasting soup and juicy pork. It is really good! The skin is not too thick. Hence, you can really taste the rich flavour of the broth

The hi-tea buffet offered at Lao Beijing has quite a bit of spread. The dumplings and xiao long bao are mostly on the ala-carte menu – you have to order what you want on a paper and they will serve you accordingly. The buffet spread on the table offers some traditional Chinese cuisine appetizer and some warm carbo food which tastes good. The highlight of the buffet is the do-it-yourself popiah. It comes with a few condiments, veggies and the braised turnips slice. The popiah skin provided is thin, which is good because when you wrap the ingredients with it, it taste wonderful. Overall a pleasant experience and definitely having fun with wrapping the popiahs!

Located at a cosy corner of plaza sing, you have to make a reservation in order to avoid a long Q.
The waitresses were extremely warm and welcoming. Some of the tables are specially fitted with a mini aquarium in the middle that lets u see the fish swimming while u eat (a wonderful guilt-trip for those who order fish dishes).....

The dishes were great but if u're health conscious, make sure u tell them LESS OIL when u're ordering. Oil seems to be 'free' in some of their dishes, so it is a MUST to emphasize on less oil if u dont like greasy brinjals and tofu.

A new membership card is out so grab them while u can.

2013-01-25

SGD 30

The Food
I ordered their house specialities- Guo Tie and Xiao Long Bao (Steamed Juicy Meat Buns)
The Guo Tie skin is crispy and the meat inside is tender and moist and taste nice when dipped with the special soy sauce.
As for the Xiao Long Bao, even though is not so big but the soup inside is very rich & flavorful in taste. The meat inside is very fresh and can taste the natural pork sweetness.

The Service
As I went on Sun late afternoon hence the queue is still acceptable. The waitress who take down orders also friendly with a smile and also topped up our tea often.

The Ambience
The decor inside and surroundings are very nice and have a feel of Beijing style. Very good and pleasant dining experience for having family gathering

The Price
Reasonably priced at $50 plus for 2 persons for the good service and food

Overall
I will definitely come back again to try their other dishes and highly recommended to try this!

2013-01-20

SGD 30(Dinner)

My friend checked out reviews here and thought the hi-tea buffet should be pretty good for a rather cheap price of $11.80++. Hence, she suggested that we come try out the place. Dumplings (饺子), xiao long bao and noodles are ordered ala carte from an order chit. Other appetizers, soup, dessert and some dim sum were placed on a buffet table for self-service.

Surprisingly, I'm in a rather good zen-like mood today (something that's not so frequent, as my husband might attest to apparently), so I was calmly analyzing each dish carefully. But boy oh boy, my dining companion was about to explode. We heard rave reviews about the xiao long bao, so the first thing we did was to order that once we sat down at our table at around 3 pm. We waited, waited and waited...until the xiao long bao finally came after one hour's wait. During that time, we brought up the issue repeatedly with two waitresses. What made it worse was that all the other tables around us had their xiao long bao served up long before us. Hey, we were definitely one of the first to order the xiao long bao! In fact, within 5 minutes of us sitting down, xiao long bao was being served out to the rest of the diners. We would have been more appeased if the staff admitted their fault of missing out on our order instead of insisting that the order will be coming up soon.

I gave a 2/5 star for the service, as I was feeling forgiving. The fault probably lies with the first waitress who took our order. Granted, another waitress (PRC) we pointed the issue to was very apologetic and did help to check on the kitchen frequently. My friend told me she would have given a 1/5 star rating instead for the service. 0.8 for the PRC lady, 0.2 for the second waitress who glanced over once at our table to check.

Talking about the xiao long bao, it's definitely over hyped. The skin is quite thin and there's a fair bit of soup that oozes out from each xiao long bao. But the soup broth is only normal broth made from soy sauce and there's no sweetness of pork that I'm expecting and no depth to the broth. The pork within the bao was mushy and the amount given was too little, resulting in the xiao long bao being a bit flat. Definitely not up to standard.- Lacklustre xiao long bao

Moving on to the other ala carte stuff from the order chit:

Pork and cabbage Jiaozi came cold. Could not tast the shrimp inside the shrimp, pork and chive jiaozhi. The pork in the jiaozhi is the same mushy kind used for the xiao long bao. They should improve on the quality of the pork used. Noodles came in small single-bowl servings, but it's still best to share one bowl of noodles among 2.
The zhajiang noodles was too dry, the minced pork topping tasted ok but was not fantastic.
Beijing-styled braised noodles contained egg slices, bamboo shoots and shredded black fungus - tasted ok.
Spicy beef noodles soup was quite nice, the beef itself nicely braised and tender. Soup base slightly 麻辣
Noodles for all three were the same, I find it to be a little too soft for my liking.

For the self-service items from the buffet table:Sliced pork with garlic slice was not bad, the sauce is sweetish and fragrant with the garlic. Pork were sliced thinly and had a mixture of lean meat and fat.

Sliced beancurd skin with peppercorns - Too salty, not recommended.

Stewed peanuts - Normal stuff, ok as well.Seaweed vermicelli with bean sprouts - Quite appetizing and crunchy for the seaweed. Braised mushrooms - The only really above-average item here. Braised very well until it's tender, in a tasty sauce.Hot and sour soup was too spicy - even for someone like me who can take spice. There's definitely too much pepper added to it, which is a pity else it might have tasted ok.
Special fried pancakes - The fried pastry tasted really like roti prata. Cannot taste much of the spring onion or chives filling inside.Mixed platter

Spring rolls were crispy but I do not like that they added mixed vegetables (tasted like the frozen kind) into the filling.

Steamed custard buns - Tasted ok, custard's smooth. Luckily the bun's not too big.

Siew Mai - Quite horrible, everything tasted mushy, the skin and the pork.

Guotie - Surprisingly still pretty good even though they were offered at the buffet table and not by order. But you gotta be fast as they get wiped out real quickly. Skin was thin and amount of meat inside quite generous, pan-fried to a nice crisp on one side.

Desserts offered: Hot red bean soup and almond longan with fruits. Tasted normal, nothing special. I could not taste the almond in the almond jelly.

I realize that the last review for their buffet was about 6 months ago. Has their standard dropped so drastically since then? The previous reviews for the buffet were all favorable. My friend was actually very sorry and "paiseh" to have asked me along to try out the buffet. A really disappointing meal.

2013-01-17

SGD 14(Tea)

Love this fried rice alot as i love the generous portion served which is good to serve two people. The diced salted fish really has enhanced the rice which make it really fragrant and not too salty as well. There are also not of other ingredients such as chucky chicken meat, scrambled fried egg, spring onions in it, which make every mouthful of it
very satisfying.

2012-11-25

SGD 10(Lunch)

Well, I must have to say the dim sum here are really great. I simply like how fresh they are!
I especially like the '8 treasures tea' here! Very healthy and taste really good!!!!

Siu Long Bao is my favorite dish, it is very juicy and fresh!

Tofu in chili tomato sauce also tastes really good! It is best to taste with rice

I would definitely come back again!

2012-11-10

I went to lao Beijing for their high tea buffet with my mum and her friends. We went to the plaza singapura branch. The buffet is really good if you are a dim sum junkie. For a fixed price, you can order as much dim sum as you want. Dim sum has always been pretty expensive, some times you tend to over order and your bill makes your eyes wanna pop out. The quality of the dim sum here is really good, I like their dumplings. They are so generous with the filling and every dumpling is fat and juicy. the skin of the dumpling is not too thick as well. i like their dessert, it is very light and refreshing. it was really delicious and value for money.

i had an outing to lao Beijing for their high tea buffet. after a gym sessions, all my friends were absolutely hungry and we ordered a lot of their dumplings. We whacks a couple of longs of their xiao long bao. Their xiao long bao is really good. the skin is not too thick, yet it does not breaks when you clip it with your chop sticks. The soup in the xiao long bao is very tasty too. I like their hot and sour soup sauce for the dumpling, the soup is very thick and tasty, when you bite a mouth of the dumpling and dip it into the hot and sour soup, it is absolutely heavenly. Really filling for us hungry guys.

Lao Beijing is famous for their dim sum e.g Steamed Juicy Meat Bun, Beijing-style Shao Mai, Vegetable and Chive Pancake etc .

The restaurant also serve lunch , hi tea buffet where by the price is reasonable, they also have set menu.

i like the steamed Juicy Meat Bun as the skin is not too thick and the meat is tender and the juice . once bite it melt in your mouth , the noodles is springy and qq .

2012-05-26

It has been a long time since I ate Lao Beijing's popiah. It was discontinued but returned recently. Knowing that it was back, I asked my dad to eat that for dinner. He agreed. It was nice, put a little expensive. $22 for 6 pieces. Well, but I guess it was worth it, for the taste. Still, there are better ones out there. At Lao Beijing, the popiah is different. We get to make the popiah ourselves. That made dinner really fun and enjoyable. The ingredients given were more than enough, so we added extra to each popiah. It tasted a little sweet and it wasn't salty. Perfect. I wouldn't hesitate to step in more times to eat this dish in Lao Beijing.

2012-06-08

Though the food from Lao Beijing generally taste quite good, I feel that there is nothing special about this place. In fact, I will deem it as just another Chinese restaurant. Perhaps the only thing which I can differentiate this restaurant from the rest of the Chinese restaurant is the fact that the waitress from Lao Beijing will always promote the Ba Bao Tea which I feel that it is not worth trying.

2012-04-14

SGD 25(Lunch)

my family and i went to Lao beijing for dinner

we had the groupon promotion which was the beijing duck..

it was half size.. well i think they only serve the meat.. and not the other parts such as drumsticks.. as you can see from the photo..

and finally there was egg crepe.. compare to the plain skin...

sauce wise is slightly sweeter than tunglok signature's

overall taste not bad...

The manager, Lili, made my ROM there a breeze. From the food dishes to the table layout, she was prompt and professional in helping me realise my wedding preparations. The guests also complimented on the tasty food especially the Peking duck which was quite fun for them to roll. Recommend this place as a serious contender for future celebrations.

2011-06-05

SGD 50(Lunch)