I had lunch with my wife at Taste Paradise a couple of weeks ago. It is a really posh place and we walked in without reservations, so we had to wait around 30 minutes before we can get a table. Luckily, they are quite flexible in that they will get your number and you can walk around and when your table is ready, they will phone you. At Taste Paradise, the must order is the custard pau which comes in a basket of 3 paus. The custard is very savoury and sweet and care must be taken in eating it, if not you will risk wasting all the delicious flowy custard. The pau thickness is just right to contain the custard. This is my favourite item here. We also orderd the siew mai which comes in a basket of 4. The siew mai is rather ordinary, but I like that fresh ingredients are used instead of shirmp/meat paste as filling. I would say most of the items that we had are good, and dining in here is worth the price and wait. The bill came up to around $60 for a total of 8 dim sum items ordered, plus tea.

I was introduced to this dim sum at Chinatown by one of my colleagues who frequently goes there for his dim sum fix. As I only had my wife with me, we ordered a few dishes to share, the har gow, siew mai, yam cake, century egg porridge and deep fried prawn roll with beancurd skin. Of all the dishes that we ordered, my favourite one is the yam cake and the har gow. The yam cake is topped spring onions, dried shrimps and bits of chinese sausage. Eaten as a whole, the taste is really good. Also the yam cake is quite soft and there are bits of yam inside. It is flavourful on its own without having to add any chili or sweet sauce. My other favourite dish is the har gow because of the crunchy prawns which has a lot of bite. The filling is made using prawns and not prawn/meat paste. The har gow skin is also very thin and soft which is basically what a good har gow should be. For good and affordable dim sum, Tak Po is definitely my choice.

I have always tried the peanuts soup when ordering my bowl of Ah Balling dessert so for a change, I decided to order it with ginger soup instead. The ah balling ginger soup is surprisingly nice. The ginger taste is not too overpowering or spicy but it is just a hint of it. I find that it is in fact better than the peanuts soup as there is a greater contrast of taste since the ah balling is sweet. The ah balling fillings are sweet and the skin is not too thick. The fillings range from the conventional peanuts, red bean to more unique flavours like green tea and black sesame. 6 ah ballings together with the soup costs $3.

I saw many people queuing when I was waiting for my wife outside Crystal Jade hence I decided to order one egglet as well. I got the chocolate flavour egglet which costs $2.80. The wait is around 10 minutes. The bag used to store the egglet has holes in them so as to ensure that the heat is not trapped within the bag, ensuring that the egglet is not soggy. It isn't an issue to me as I am planning to eat it immediately and it is very crispy. There are also bits of chocolate chips added to the egglet which results in bursts of chocolate flavour when biting into them. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It seems like a lot of people order the cheese egglet so I may try that next time.

My wife and daughter wanted to eat at The Soup Spoon, so I decided to go along with them as well. The Soup Spoon has a total of 8 regular soups and 3 chef specials soup at any one month that you go. I didn't really like the chef's specials for the month, so I went ahead and ordered the mushroom soup instead. The mushroom soup seems to be quite a popular choice as I saw quite a few patrons having the same soup as well. I am not a big fan of mushroom but even I was wowed by the taste. The soup is full of chunky mushrooms which includes button mushrooms and some other types which I can't really identify but are nonetheless delicious. The soup itself is also not too creamy, there is a good balance so I had no problems with finishing the entire bowl of soup myself. The soup is also good for dipping the bread in as it is thick enough and I even had another piece of bread at 70 cents to soak up every bit of the delicious mushroom soup.